Hacker News Reader

Comment by hatu | Hacker News Reader

I basically only use digital currency right now, and it's just your normal Euros. I get paid by the company through internet banking and it gets deposited to my bank account. I pretty much only check my bank information online. When I pay (99% of the time) with my debit card, the card reader at the store connects through 3G to the banks server to verify the transaction. I'll go weeks without even touching paper money / coins. I can't imagine how to make it more digital than that and this is what basically everyone in Finland has done for 5+ years

View on HN

The difference here is that the Euros you're working with can't be held digitally as actual stored value. You can't carry them with you, and they must at all times be tied to an identity. With true digital currency, you're not tied to someone else's server for transactions. You can make the exchange in person, no trusted third party required. Your Euros require a trusted bank to hold your Euros, and a trusted country issuing them.

There have been schemes with cards that you can load digital currency to and off of, that to my understanding remove the server from the transaction. They still don't let you give ¤5 to your kid, but they're a step in that direction. It's just that no one wanted them.

I'm not certain that they didn't need servers, I merely believe so.

Just a small clarification, you can't carry bitcoins with you either.

Bitcoins are not little pieces of information you can hold on a thumb drive, but an agreement by the network that a certain balance belongs to some address.

You are absolutely tied to a server for transactions, and there is a trusted third party required. That third party is the bitcoin network itself. It is impossible to make a bitcoin transaction while offline because making a transaction means updating the state of the network, not merely giving somebody information.

Not the same situation in the south, where your digital balance can receive a 'haircut' (btw why do we call it 'haircut', have you ever cut off 40% of your body in the barbershop?)

Print money is a serious option of safety for many people.

Paper moneys have received haircuts too. To deduct from a balance, all you need is someone with read and write access to said balance, be it physical or virtual.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com