Topic: Bitcoin backed paper money (idea) (Read 2890 times)

How would the proposed system be superior to physical bitcoins?

The government wouldn't allow it happen. They want to control the rights of printing money  based on the claimed economic condition report.  Actually they print money to pay debt and push up the inflation.

Wouldn't that basically start the whole fiat press button create money thing all over again? Bitcoin would be the gold equivalent and the Bitcoin backed paper money would be the fiat. Unless somehow every single paper has an equivalence on the Blackchain, but it fucks with my mind trying to imagine such thing without resulting in mega problems.

Hope you are right.

I think that in my humble opinion this will be awesome.

For example im on vocation with my wife and kids, and we want to eat n buy ice cream, woudnt be nice to pay in btc or any other crypto.

The only concern that i have and im thinking about it will be converting crypto in cash on ATM.
What will be provision, in what currency dollar, euro, GBP, any other.

Read some articles and see that we are close to this more rather then paper BTC.

That's what I suspected. Nice marketing trick, but I'm not falling for it. I will wait for the first exchange-on-swipe card to go live and get media attention and then maybe order myself one.

Actually, if you compare to the whole actual process, time and fees are reduced. We will implement exchange-on-swipe soon.

Ok checked out the FAQ of the debit card. I must admit it sucks because it's just another pre paid card. It will not convert the required number of bitcoins on demand. Don't use ANX because they make it seem special while in reality it is just another lame pre paid credit card that simply accepts bitcoin payments for initially loading the card with dollars!

Check out xapo's FAQ for comparison. Id rather use xapo, but unfortunately they're not shipping cards yet.

never say never, dude. unexpected things tend to happen these days more and more.

Anything that can be manipulated with governments (USA, Russia, China and EU) wont pass any law that needs to bee involved on btc accepting in real life shopping (bread,milk....).

Reason are above Governments will never accept Bitcoin to back the fiat money, for the simple reason. Bitcoin cannot be manipulated.

Governments will never accept Bitcoin to back the fiat money, for the simple reason. Bitcoin cannot be manipulated. {Set amount of bitcoins determine the outcome} They might accept a Alt coin, where the
amount of coins being mined, could be manipulated by them.

Gold could not be used anymore, because there was simply not enough of it. And I now see, Mexico wants to use silver, to back their currency, which will anger most nations anyways.

One of these days, you will wipe your #$% with fiat, because toilet paper would be more expensive. {At the rate at which fiat is printed}

Has a what? No, our debit cards works everywhere in the world. As long as your vendor accepts VISA, it works.

Basically that mean if I order it a can use it on vocation for purchasing only if that country that i was going to has one.

Or I get it from. Now that u can buy from all over the world but main question is above.

Problem with a trusted entity holding private keys is basically what happened to Liberty Reserve, centralized entity is taken down by government.

I think the whole concept of bitcoin is to be an alternative to money, especially paper money.

ANX Debit Card is the best, since we are the only company that has shipped them. Ever. So we're the first to actually get working debit cards to customer's hands.
Also, this is not a phishing attempt, ANXBTC and ANXPRO are both brands of ANX.

a phishing attempt? there's also anxbtc.com

anyway, seems there are many entities providing bitcoin debit cards.

https://bitplastic.com/ boasts to be totally anonymous for example.

the question now is -- which one of these is the best?

Guys, ANXPRO has a Bitcoin Debit Visa card. How did you miss the news? Go check it out.

Why would that be better?

Also, this card seems like a really nice piece. Who has pre-ordered it? Should I pre-order it or rather wait for it to go live and see what happens in the news? Maybe xapo will get banned for money laundering or tax evasion?

Hopefully, sometime in the near future there will be a debit card that is issued as part of a more major debit card network, or even as part of the visa network.

Sure it is but only if there are more places that can be payed with this card. This would be the future for sure.

This is actually an awesome thing: https://xapo.com/in/campaign/debit/?src=facebook , a Bitcoin debit card

And by that idea, the decentralization of bitcoin is already compromised. However, in some cases this could be good to some third world countries as it will provide a stable currency that they can use for everyday use, just like what you've said.

In order for this to work you would need to have some central authority (likely the government) that you can trust and that can make bills somewhat counterfeit proof.

IMO this would be good for 3rd world countries who do not have a strong enough economy that would allow it to have a stable currency and that doesn't have reliable internet access and cell phone access for all of it's citizens.

I don't know about BitBills but it's true that counterfeiting will be a problem. I figured that if we face the same problem with conventional paper money anyway and still use it then it must not be that big of a problem.

Casascius coins include private keys themselves which is kind of different from my perspective. I wouldn't include the private keys with the coins themselves but let some trusted entity hold them. Trying hard to play the devil's advocate on the matter but I must admit it is not easy

Even though paper money backed by bitcoins is superior to paper money backed by gold, it is still less functional than using bitcoins directly.

Maybe the possibilities of multi signature addresses/transactions would add something useful to the equation?

Or maybe the notion of decentralized paper money backed by individuals would spark some new ideas?

Using some standard note template, a person would print its own money. The note would be target specific, so that the receiver's address is taken immediately before printing and the note is funded right after printing. The third party of such a multi signature address/note would be some trusted entity.

Why such a construct would be required? Basically only in the situations where the receiver has no smartphone but wants to receive bitcoins. The receiver would have to still know their bitcoin receiving address or its firstbits. If bitcoin differentiates between the order of signatures in a multi signature address then the address could even specify the paying and receiving addresses. The trusted entity would not allow the reversal of the transaction before 30 days for example, allowing the receiver to safely access their credit. Just throwing things out there but seems that this solution will not find its real practical problem.

Yes it can you can transfers found from point a to point b with transfers fee of ~0.0005 BTC.

So u can transfers millions laundered cash with btc around the word. This is quite nice and disturbing and funny in same time.

One of the best things about bitcoin is it's anonymity and no government regulation. Although crime may breed, it's convenient to business

We don't need a fiat backed by crypto. Counterfeit would be a big problem and it will cost a lot to implement anti-counterfeiting measures on the new fiat. It is more efficient to use smart phone wallets.

What about taxes? Those could be used to offset the price difference.

Love to see this happening but ass u said it cost money.

It will be like this Europe is printing it they want cut, if America printing they will want cut, Asia will same and so on.

Sometimes it will be better if we on forum try to create this.

Why? We design we own it. No i want to add this. Just plain and simple.

Dont you agree?

In order for this to work, there would HAVE to be fractional reserve. Why? Because printing bills like that costs money. Especially if you want to make them so good they can't be counterfeit.

Are you aware of Casascius coins (and others) or BitBills?

The biggest problems with the idea are:

1. It costs money to make the bills and maintain the reserve, so the issuer loses money.
2. The issuer has to be 100% trustworthy in order for the bills to be valued at face value.
3. Counterfeiting.

Was wondering if, could you achieve OPs "paper bitcoins" idea by simply printing a bitcoin paper wallet?

If I make a paper wallet and send 1BTC to it, the public address can be checked to ensure it still contains the 1BTC.

I can give it to Fred as kind of an "off-chain" transaction (say to pay for groceries)

Fred gives it to Sally - again "off-chain".

Sally decides to "deposit" it by breaking the wallet seal, and using the private key to send the 1BTC to her online eg coinbase account.

From blockchain perspective, I sent 1BTC to Sally.

Only flaw here is that, as the original issuer, I also know the private key. Nothing (technically, not morally) to stop me emptying the wallet immediately after I give it to Fred and he originally verifies it.

One advantage of the paper bitcoin is instant confirmation. But requiring trust in the original issuer to not empty the wallet probably makes this infeasible as a currency. Not going to propose a government-guaranteed, 'trusted' central printer of bitcoin currency in this forum! :-)

This seems like a solution looking for a problem.
Why would we want a layer on top of bitcoin that has most of the same issues as the current system when we could just use bitcoin directly?

There's a coin coming out called Realcoin, it's pegged to the USD at a 1:1 ratio, and promoted by Brock Peirce or whatever his name was.

He's turning it into a crypto mastercard, just getting banks to use it and having other businesses be able to accept it. It takes away from the cryptocurrency idea entirely. In all honesty, it seems like the worst idea that I've seen in a long time, and I've seen BAD ideas. I'll ask anyone who uses it, "Why don't I just use my credit card?". It's the same thing, according to his protocol. Just it's a "crypto"! Woooow! So cool!

"Now I can be a pro at cryptocurrencies!" - Most people who will use it.

A bitcoin reserve currency? I've pondered this issue myself - your version could work. I like the annual refresh thing to combat counterfeiting and fraud. It seems likely that if bitcoin goes on to become fully mainstream that this is something a bank might do to stay relevant. But IMO if bitcoin is to become mainstream, it'll be because people like having direct control over their money. So ideas like this will be helpful for more anonymous off-chain transactions, but if it goes too far you just end up with the same crap we have in today's system.

I think it would be a lot easier if we implement a sharedcoin/darksend function properly. You can't just toss physical bitcoins over the globe instantly.
Grabbing a smartphone, scanning a code, hitting "pay" is a lot easier than getting out a wallet, fiddle with bits of paper, watch a cashier check its validity and count it and then issue change.

That's a good question. I'd ask it myself too

I think it would solve the anonymity problem that naturally comes with the direct use of Bitcoin itself. Also, it might be easier to use cash sometimes than grabbing for a smartphone and relying on the Internet.

Oh okay, sorry, I misunderstood.
Well, why make fiat backed by Bitcoin when we can use Bitcoin easily, quickly and instantly?

I know there's some coin backed by dollar.

I am not saying that bitcoin should be backed by gold. I am saying that dollar should be backed by bitcoin (to make it sound simple for you).

But why back it with fiat, and not gold? Fiat is worthless and ever-inflating, and that Brock Pierce thing already made a realcoin that is backed by US dollars.

In the ancient times there was this concept of currency backed by gold. I believe I'm referring to this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_standard

The problem with this system is the fact that regular audit is needed to verify that the supposed gold really exists.

With the help of Bitcoin, a much better version of such paper money is possible.

The money issuer stores bitcoins and prints paper money so that each note has:
1. a bitcoin address that holds the bitcoins backing the particular note
2. an expiration date

Bitcoin address is needed so that everyone can see that the issuer really has the coins backing its paper. Expiration date is needed so that destroyed notes could be recovered by the issuer. Users would have to renew their paper notes before they expire.

Every year the issuer proves that it still has the bitcoins it says it has. This can be done by using the associated private keys to sign messages. Every note can then be verified by anyone online to see if it is still backed by the issuer.

Any takers?