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Comment by jonasvp | Hacker News Reader

I've been thinking very hard about this topic lately and actually went ahead with writing some code. Then I found http://www.opencoin.org who already did some of the work.

I think there's a lot than can be done in this field - not with micropayments, which everybody seems to think about first when they see this. What I find a lot more interesting is the possibility of many competing Internet currencies not tied to any national one.

How about turning HN karma into a currency? Probably no mass-market appeal... what's lacking is a killer application for digital money and when it comes, it'll probably be in a form that doesn't seem like money to us now.

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What I find a lot more interesting is the possibility of many competing Internet currencies not tied to any national one.

Would you also find it interesting to be indicted for money laundering? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-gold http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/06/e-gold/

Well, it would probably be an interesting experience... not that I would care to find out. That's why I said the killer application would probably not look like money to us.

Take Youtube, for instance: people go to considerable lengths to create videos that others find interesting. Then they sit glued to the screen watching the view counter go up. There's a currency: people paying with their time (which everybody only has a fixed amount of) for someone's work creating videos.

Now have some ISP give extra bandwidth to people with Youtube videos over x thousand views. It doesn't cost them much "real" money since bandwidth is more or less a fixed cost but you have turned "virtual" money into a currency.

Granted, the example is a bit contrived but you can see where I'm going with this.

Thanks for the wired link.

With such light sentences, I suspect many people would. E-gold continues to operate and the founders ~8 week so of community service and a $200 were pretty light punishments, (although he's apparently deeply in debt, not least due to legal fees). Their main breach of the law seems to be in not complying with the existing regulations on money-transmittal businesses - and basically the production was saying that the only reason you exchange gold is for that purpose.

I don't know if transferable coupons redeemable for in-kind services would meet that same test, or surely Blizzard would have been prosecuted over tolerating real-money-trading in World of Warcraft assets.

How about turning HN karma into a currency?

Strangely enough I had a dream the other night where I was going to a HN meet with my friend (next SF one will be early September, BTW - and I owe 2 people coffee and didn't email them yet...sorry!) and when I got there, there was a vending machine where you could exchange your karma for everything from pants (?) to programming books.

I woke up laughing because this was so obviously stupid, but then I started to consider that if HN was a more conventional site with advertisers and sponsors, rewarding the higher-ranked posts and users with discounts from the merchant sponsors would actually make perfect sense. It's very obvious on a lot of niche forums who the community leaders are, and how much they influence the thinking (and often purchasing decisions) of others.

What is the HN meet? Can you give more information?

It's a high-powered conference of hackers and founders that takes place on an occasional basis at a private location in downtown San Francisco. That's all I'm authorized to >BANG< >THUD<

Seriously, it's just an informal get-together that seems to take place about once every 6 weeks at a cooperative bar where people can drink beer and network a bit. The last one seemed to go off well so electronslave and I were thinking to have it at the same place. It's not a secret, I'll post it here the week before and day of.

I wish I had the answers for where to go with this, because there's no doubt in my mind it's the Next Big Thing (TM). That said, I strongly suggest reading Down And Out In The Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_and_Out_in_the_Magic_Kingd...), as his Whuffie system seems like a path that needs to be taken, somehow.

Unfortunately he doesn't go into much detail about how Whuffie would actually work. I agree that some kind of karma system will eventually replace money, but the devil's in the details, and Doctorow offers precious few.

Try our monthly magazine for this topic DGCmagazine http://www.dgcmagazine.com

(digital gold currency magazine)

Bet your twitter followers. There's a though :-)

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