Topic: Did The Inventors of the Internet Want A Native Currency Early On? (Read 275 times)

Can you point to that book? I'm not familiar with anything similar. Wei Dai and Nick Szabo both did talk about electronic cash in the 1998 (which was early in commercial Internet terms).

Electronic payments were possible before 2009, through financial institutions. Maybe there wasn't big need until the Internet reached mass adoption. Maybe Internet users hadn't lost trust in financial institutions until 2008 either.

The issue with some things or situations in life is that some need to experience them or go through them in order to provide solutions. It is not easy to visualize and project situations that we do not understand if we do not experience them, it is not for everyone.

If you don't understand me, it happens with theoretical physicists, their formulas lead them to visualize things that they only understand when a formula guides them, after that it's light, it's easy, not before.

 They move on a different thought frequency.

Now, let's get to the point of the matter, You have you ever given a check. So, do you know that a check traveled from point A to point B offline, this as a simple example of how before some transactions were mobilized and in that process, the technology worked with punched cards, etc.

Then! There were many people visualizing in one way or another something similar to what we have today, but in your precarious perception of the situation you need to have accurate documentation of names...that perhaps does not exist today and that it is lost or relegated to oblivion... at least as collateral of the precise and well documented information that does exist.
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Read about these two characters, their contributions to the subject can be very specific. But they denote that concern for a solution like Bitcoin can be persistent in related areas, as well as in others that we would never expect to see.

Milton Friedman, visualize a idea that resembles we know today.

Richard Feynman, one of the greatest minds of the 20th century, I speak, mentions something very similar to the idea behind Bitcoin, not specifically about what we know today, but he mentions it, it is understood that he refers to a similar system.

So,  your search is extensive if you want to look beyond what is known by short reference or is the most formal and best documented.

This is exactly what I was looking for, thank you.

I think this might be what you have seen::

"The HTTP 402 Payment Required is a nonstandard response status code that is reserved for future use. This status code was created to enable digital cash or (micro) payment systems and would indicate that the requested content is not available until the client makes a payment."

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status/402

Can't find where the original source is but it might be from the W3C when HTTP protocols were getting standardised.

Edit : It's in the protocol W3C released in 1997, so not really the early internet even if it was discussed for years first.

Perhaps you should start sharing where you have always heard that these things exist. Where did you hear those rumors that the early developers of the internet had already recognized a possible protocol for money in the internet?

I haven't taken the time and effort to really trace the development of the internet, but although it is indeed possible, it's probably a way to innovate fiat so that it is also usable online. They're probably not talking about Bitcoin or an entirely different currency which is solely designed for internet transactions.

The Internet doesn't have a single inventor or a group of inventors, the Internet as we know it is a product of gradual improvement of computer networks that was going on for almost as long as computers themselves. And it kinda doesn't matter what the inventors believed in, because it was simply a practical task - establishing communication between machines here and now. They didn't have some grand picture of the future, perhaps they didn't even know just how important the Internet will become.

I'm not sure if they were aware of what they are going to invent for the future because the shape of the old internet was not same as the what we can see these days, as far as I know, Internet was not created for what we see right now like buying stuff online, So having an internet currency was not a thing in the early years and none could even think about it, however, the idea of internet token was start a few years ago the name is ICP but what jut an alternative coin and it was not started in the early years.

The developers of ARPANET, the precursor to the internet, varied in philosophies, with "free give and take" being a common one, which does not involve money. And on the other end of the spectrum is BACS, the Bankers' Automated Clearing System, which you no doubt have used many times and which began in the 1960s during this age of ARPANET.

The sub-cultures that you may be looking for may not have been recorded well, but here are some references that gives thoughts contemporaneous to your desired time-period. David Chaum's 1983 paper is usually regarded as the first digital currency, although I'm not sure that is true.

Diebold, J. (1967, December). When money grows in computers. Columbia Journal of World Business, pp. 39-46

Reistad DL (1967) The coming cashless society: Implications and benefits of pending system. Business Horizons 10(3): 23–32

Bacard, A. (1994, January). A cashfree society: Nirvana or nightmare? The Humanist, pp. 41-42

Bátiz-Lazo, Bernardo, Thomas Haigh, and David L. Stearns. "Origins of the Modern Concept of a Cashless Society, 1950s–1970s." The Book of Payments. Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2016. 95-106.

Lauer, J. (2020). Plastic surveillance: Payment cards and the history of transactional data, 1888 to present. Big Data & Society, 7(1), 2053951720907632.

Before Bitcoin there was bit gold as a form of electronic payment if you search you will definitely find documentation but obviously it was not what Bitcoin is for us today, the freedom it can give you is unique and before Bitcoin there was no means of payment that could approach this.

Considering that the Internet was a US government funded "invention" to be used by the US military and both of these organizations crave centralization and full control and they worship the Dollar, what you suggest sounds very unlikely because creating another currency for the internet goes against the "dollar dominance" that US regime dreams of.

As humans, we always want something that will make our lives easier. Imagine the early era when the trading of value was stones and gold. That will be heavy and hard to transact and proceed with, and money is the solution. Backing with the gold standard. That's why it's essential to have that to prevent inflation. And now, in the digital era, it's better to have digital coins that run on the blockchain so that every transaction can be tracked and monitored.

Internet currency is already being explored with the invention of the internet, and the "double-spending" trick is solved by blockchain technology.

Here is an video from Milton Friedman talking about a monetary system on Internet. I feel like this could be a sort of inspiration to Bitcoin creator.

https://youtu.be/DPzNArH8lFM

You're discuss about Bitcoin prehistory, you can read it here in this graph.

For sure a bot, right?

History is by people and their demand, products to satisfy their demands.

In the past, no Internet
In the past, with Internet, no e-commerce
Later we have Internet, e-commerce growth and adoption.
Since 2009 we have Bitcoin as a peer-to-peer electronic cash for everyone with their own banks.

Platforms can create their own currencies to internal payments, tipping but they must be allowed by local laws, legislation, governments, central banks. Less freedom with their native currencies than with Bitcoin.

I have always heard that there were discussions, debates, papers, etc. wherein the inventors of the internet early on (in the 80s, even 70s) recognized that a protocol for money built right into the internet was a good idea. But... where is the evidence of this? Where are the papers? Who were the computer scientists discussing this?

Does this rumor come from a book? Who said they were discussing a native internet currency that early on? Where are the receipts?

And further, did they actually say it was because of the Byzantine General's Problem that this was impossible at the time? If anybody can point me in the direction of some sources for this idea, I would greatly appreciate it!