Strangecoin: a proposal for a nonlinear currency • Hacker News Board

Re: Strangecoin: a proposal for a nonlinear currency

#21

Post by tonypace » Sun, Mar 30, 2014, 3:29 AM UTC

I was always dispirited by how conservative in sentiment Bitcoin and most altcoins were. It always felt to me that Bitcoin was mostly redundant to gold, neglecting the inherent advantages of ecurrency. Something more ambitious deserves to be implemented.

That endorsement aside, the inhibition transaction does disturb me. It would seem to encourage mob-like behavior in the culture of early adopters, as heretics of whatever sort were forcibly ejected from the system. I don't trust the dynamics of groups enough to think this will be a good form of self government.

Re: Strangecoin: a proposal for a nonlinear currency

#22

Post by djestrada » Sun, Mar 30, 2014, 3:33 AM UTC

whyenot wrote: post #16

iancarroll wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you do if I created another address?

author: don't use a url shortener or HN will kill your post. For those who don't have showdead turned on, here was his response: From my G+ reshare, in the context of a question about account caps: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+DanielEstrada/posts/hQfNmirDfsm > I suppose one way around the cap would be for users to maintain multiple accounts. I have no objection to this in principle, although it has an impact on the n…

Thanks! Fixed.

Re: Strangecoin: a proposal for a nonlinear currency

#23

Post by yale » Sun, Mar 30, 2014, 3:48 AM UTC

tonypace wrote: post #21

I was always dispirited by how conservative in sentiment Bitcoin and most altcoins were. It always felt to me that Bitcoin was mostly redundant to gold, neglecting the inherent advantages of ecurrency. Something more ambitious deserves to be implemented. That endorsement aside, the inhibition transaction does disturb me. It would seem to encourage mob-like behavior in the culture of early adopters, as heretics of wha…

Inhibition is a two-sided transaction, requiring the consent of both sides.

Re: Strangecoin: a proposal for a nonlinear currency

#24

Post by djestrada » Sun, Mar 30, 2014, 3:49 AM UTC

tonypace wrote: post #21

I was always dispirited by how conservative in sentiment Bitcoin and most altcoins were. It always felt to me that Bitcoin was mostly redundant to gold, neglecting the inherent advantages of ecurrency. Something more ambitious deserves to be implemented. That endorsement aside, the inhibition transaction does disturb me. It would seem to encourage mob-like behavior in the culture of early adopters, as heretics of wha…

In the transactions I describe, inhibition is a two-sided transaction, meaning it requires approval from both parties. Presumably parties won't enter into such transactions without good reason for consent.

Re: Strangecoin: a proposal for a nonlinear currency

#25

Post by aaron987 » Sun, Mar 30, 2014, 4:03 AM UTC

This is an interesting economics thought experiment, but I don't see this working simply because it is too complicated.

Virtual currency already has a learning curve that most people haven't gotten used to. Adding strange attractors into the mix certainly isn't going to help.

Re: Strangecoin: a proposal for a nonlinear currency

#26

Post by djestrada » Sun, Mar 30, 2014, 4:16 AM UTC

jchrisa wrote: post #20

djestrada wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Traditional money makes certain features of the economic system tractable, but it masks other important relationships that constraint its behavior. The question isn't whether or not the the transactions should be shaped by feedback from the network; the question instead is which features of the economic network do we want to make salient to agents in that network. You might think of Strangecoin as a way of making fea…

I think Strangecoin is super interesting. I think his analogy was that with a coin where relationships matter, you have to care how a person is connected, when you deal with them. I think it could be a feature, not a bug, even if it makes things less efficient.

Efficiency isn't some absolute value. Efficiency is always relative to the goals we have.

Re: Strangecoin: a proposal for a nonlinear currency

#27

Post by djestrada » Sun, Mar 30, 2014, 4:29 AM UTC

aaron987 wrote: post #25

This is an interesting economics thought experiment, but I don't see this working simply because it is too complicated. Virtual currency already has a learning curve that most people haven't gotten used to. Adding strange attractors into the mix certainly isn't going to help.

My idea isn't so much to propose a single solution to the worlds economic problems, but instead to ask: what else might digital currencies do?

I don't know of anything else being proposed that works in a nonlinear way, and I don't know if the idea is even on the table as a possibility. I'm hoping that putting it on the table might give other people who can penetrate the complexity ideas for how to make the system work.

That said, I think the transaction types I list are fair intuitive. When I'm going to make a purchase, I have some options: I can pay a lump sum directly, or I can engage in an extended relationship of support, for which I can specify the duration of time, and the amount of support I'm willing to give it. There's different ways that support might work, but that's the gist.

Re: Strangecoin: a proposal for a nonlinear currency

#28

Post by witten » Sun, Mar 30, 2014, 4:41 AM UTC

A1kmm wrote: post #9

'Basic income' which is not coupled to any expenditure (e.g. by mining) will have a tragedy of the commons problem in a pseudonymous system. In a pseudonymous system, I can make as many addresses / accounts as I like (since a pseudonym is, by definition, not tied to any real identity). Therefore, to maximise income, someone can create duplicate addresses, causing the basic income to be distributed according to the nu…

While this is a valid objection to the design as stated, there are solutions. For instance, the insight behind Bitcoin is that instead of the one-IP-one-vote policies of previous distributed protocols and the sock-puppeting that ensues, proof of work means that it's one-CPU-one-vote. And schemes like proof of stake go even further so it's one-coin-one-vote.

Re: Strangecoin: a proposal for a nonlinear currency

#29

Post by NoodleIncident » Sun, Mar 30, 2014, 5:36 AM UTC

A1kmm wrote: post #9

'Basic income' which is not coupled to any expenditure (e.g. by mining) will have a tragedy of the commons problem in a pseudonymous system. In a pseudonymous system, I can make as many addresses / accounts as I like (since a pseudonym is, by definition, not tied to any real identity). Therefore, to maximise income, someone can create duplicate addresses, causing the basic income to be distributed according to the nu…

djestrada 2 hours ago | link [dead]

Answered to another question below, from my G+ reshare, in the context of a question about account caps:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/+DanielEstrada/posts/hQfNmirDfsm

> I suppose one way around the cap would be for users to maintain multiple accounts. I have no objection to this in principle, although it has an impact on the networks they can develop on any one account. If I have 20 Strangecoin accounts all coupled to and supporting each other, but are only receiving income through one account connected to the external network, then my subnet isn't going to grow larger as a whole than the one node connected externally. So I can't use multiple accounts to inflate just my identity. If I'm using multiple accounts, it's because I want to maintain multiple identities. Again I have no objection to this, or at least the protocol I've described doesn't rule it out.

Re: Strangecoin: a proposal for a nonlinear currency

#30

Post by olalonde » Sun, Mar 30, 2014, 5:58 AM UTC

tonypace wrote: post #21

I was always dispirited by how conservative in sentiment Bitcoin and most altcoins were. It always felt to me that Bitcoin was mostly redundant to gold, neglecting the inherent advantages of ecurrency. Something more ambitious deserves to be implemented. That endorsement aside, the inhibition transaction does disturb me. It would seem to encourage mob-like behavior in the culture of early adopters, as heretics of wha…

> I was always dispirited by how conservative in sentiment Bitcoin and most altcoins were. It always felt to me that Bitcoin was mostly redundant to gold, neglecting the inherent advantages of ecurrency. Something more ambitious deserves to be implemented.

There is a good reason Bitcoin is conservative: it has to be, by design. It's also what makes it attractive.

Also, you are completely wrong if you think that lack of ambition is the reason we don't have a cryptocurrency that doesn't neglect "the inherent advantages of ecurrency" by now. Lots of smart people, including esteemed computer scientists, have been thinking really hard about the subject for years and I find your comment a bit insulting towards them (I'll pass it off as ignorance on your part). I too really hope we can eventually come up with a better cryptocurrency but please don't assume people are not trying.