It's interesting that at no time is legality or regulation discussed.
This is intentional. I really know nothing about this space, but I hope to get help about from some friends in the future.
Show HN: Offset – Credit card powered by trust between people
61–70 of 113 posts
Re: Show HN: Offset – Credit card powered by trust between people
#62Interesting! For folks who like this idea, I recommend looking up Ryan Fugger's Ripplepay ( https://classic.ripplepay.com/ ). That was inspiration for Ripple Labs, who unlike Offset did go the cryptocurrency route (XRP). I appreciate that Offset is not spawning a cryptocurrency where it doesn't need one. There are other projects influenced by Ripple and Ripplepay which are also not their own currency. For example Syn…
Thanks for the kind words! I am a great fan of the classic ripple myself.
Re: Show HN: Offset – Credit card powered by trust between people
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hey, interesting questions. Let me try and answer. > I’d really kind to see a much more concrete specification The best I can show you at this point is here: https://docs.offsetcredit.org/en/latest/theory/mutual_credit... This document is far from a full mathematical proof of safety, but it shows how things work. I expect the protocol to change in the next months, so I didn't want to be too detailed about the current…
I think what I’m missing is how a default works in this instance. If I establish a 200 unit mutual credit line with someone, spend 200, what does a default look like? Is there some time period in which I have to pay it back? Without collateral it seems that there isn’t a way to enforce payment. If I buy a good, from someone accepting offset do they pay me back in credit the value of the good that they deliver? Thus n…
> I think what I’m missing is how a default works in this instance. If I establish a 200 unit mutual credit line with someone, spend 200, what does a default look like? Is there some time period in which I have to pay it back? Without collateral it seems that there isn’t a way to enforce payment.
Who do you think the "with someone" is? It's either a friend who is willing to loan you $200 whenever, or a credit company who will offer you $200 in exchange for information about your employment, spending, etc.
What do you think your friend does when you stiff him? He might offer a repayment plan, or to forgive your debt, or maybe he sues you in court and stops being your friend. Same thing that credit companies do.
> If I buy a good, from someone accepting offset do they pay me back in credit the value of the good that they deliver? Thus netting us back to zero?
No. That's between you and whoever you and this other someone know in common (the someone 1). It's credit, not cash.
Re: Show HN: Offset – Credit card powered by trust between people
#64This looked initially like a cool idea, then I realized that to trade with someone you have to have a mutual credit line with them, or through someone who already has a credit line. How is this any different than the current model, where the bank/government/central money issuer is our mutual credit line and why wouldn't this model eventually end up with banker-type people managing the credit for everyone? You could g…
Hi. You are correct, you need to have some credit line, possibly indirect, between you and the other party, if you want to send money or receive money with Offset. This is the core of how Offset works. > why wouldn't this model eventually end up with banker-type people managing the credit for everyone? I thought about this question for a long time myself. As a first note, I don't think Offset should completely replac…
I think it has potential, as you explain, it's pretty young at the moment. There is certainly some value in a friend-2-friend credit network and the technology looks good, a lot work has been done judging from the repo! I can't help but thinking there is some economic component missing, it feels like everything has been laid out, just needs a final "touch" that would get it off the ground. In any case, good work and keep it up!
Re: Show HN: Offset – Credit card powered by trust between people
#65Do you have any social media handles?
The project is pretty interesting and I'll probably address some things on a blog post.
I'd like to mention you when I share.
Re: Show HN: Offset – Credit card powered by trust between people
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
You just redefined what the word "investment" means, this is not a proper argument. Investment is relatively well-defined in ecomomics, see here for an introduction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investment_(macroeconomics)
If you're going to be so specific about the meaning of the term investment than this is equivalent of saying that when you hide money under the mattress it is not outside the mattress. His point was that when money is hidden under the mattress it is not serving an important function which would be if it wasn't under the mattress. I disagreed with that and explained how it worked.
I'm not trying to be pedantic, but saving and investments are two distinct activities with distinct economical outcomes. Fruitfully discussing economics on the internet is hard enough as is, deviating from standard meanings of core terms isn't exactly helpful.
Re: Show HN: Offset – Credit card powered by trust between people
#67Do you have any social media handles? The project is pretty interesting and I'll probably address some things on a blog post. I'd like to mention you when I share.
Thanks for that! I am realcr on twitter, though not very active there. Best way to contact me is probably through email, see "contact" on the Offset website.
Re: Show HN: Offset – Credit card powered by trust between people
#68Congratulations. You have reinvented tally sticks. Snark aside, I wish you lots of luck, have thought about this model a lot, think there is probably a small place for it in the world. Two suggestions from random stranger on the internet, take them for what they're worth: * don't use the word "money." This is a private credit network, not money. Private credit networks sometimes become money, but they don't start out…
I'm not really clear on how this is supposed to interact with the real payment system: is it a credit card, with a normal acquiring bank? Is there an extension of credit?
Because all credit is also money creation! (Broad money). Anyone with a pen can create money by writing an IOU. This is one of the things the goldbugs don't seem to understand properly.
Also, if this is some form of geek "hawala banking", how does it avoid running into the need for money transmitter licenses that has plagued attempts to legitimse bitcoin?
Re: Show HN: Offset – Credit card powered by trust between people
#69Is there any way to do anything with this right now? Is there anything you can buy or sell with it? Do I need real life friends to use this so I can set up "trust" as this will be a problem preventing me from even trying it out? (I have friends, just not ones that will try this)
Sorry, there is nothing you can buy with Offset right now! Maybe I should set up some kind of a demo website so that people can try it out. One thing you can do is open two Offset cards on your own mobile phone, and try to pay with one card to the other (:
Perhaps it needs a test net so you can try out buying imagineary things on a real network while not risking real currency.
I guess actually though, you could do this with the real thing, just use a TEST currency that has no value and let people sell imaginary things for that. Then random people would be happy to be lose this fake currncy for something they didn't know.
Re: Show HN: Offset – Credit card powered by trust between people
#70Interesting! Take a look at https://trustlines.app/#/ built ontop of https://trustlines.network/
Very similar economic theory, somewhat different terminoloy.