Forking Currency

August 5th, 2017
bitcoin, money
Lets say I start a new currency, the Credit, to compete with the Dollar. The traditional way to do this would be for me to offer to convert between Dollars and Credits, but let's say instead I give credits to existing Dollar owners. You show me a Dollar bill with a serial number I haven't seen before, I give you Credits.

I think this is a helpful analogy for thinking about the recent Bitcoin Cash fork. Anyone can make a Dollar fork, and for people who hold Dollars in their native form, paper, this isn't a problem: you can choose to participate in the fork or not, mostly based on whether the fork ends up being worth something. On the other hand, what if someone owes you a Dollar, perhaps because you loaned it to them, or you deposited it in their bank? In the Dollar case this is very clear: they have no obligation to interact with Credits at all, and if they happen to give you back bills that have already been registered for Credits that's your problem. If they registered all the bills they held and kept the Credits for themself, even that would probably be fine.

Why is people's sense of what's reasonable different in the cryptocurrency case?

Comment via: google plus, facebook

Recent posts on blogs I like:

Starting With Chords

A lot of people play fiddle. Basically nobody starts by learning chords before learning melodies. But that's actually how I learned. I started with chords. One of the nice things about learning to play violin this way is that you can go busking even…

via Anna Wise's Blog Posts November 15, 2024

Stuffies

I have some stuffies and I just have a bunny. Bunny is a rabbit. Woof is a seal. My favorite stuffie is bun bun. I play with my stuffies. Sometimes I jump up with them and I roll them. I can just throw them in the air when I want to play bthululubp wi…

via Nora Wise's Blog Posts November 15, 2024

You Can Buy A Malaria Net

2024 election takes

via Thing of Things November 6, 2024

more     (via openring)