Topic: Physical bitcoins, take 4 - page 3. (Read 10907 times)

Isn't minting a physical currency what got liberty gold or whatever in trouble in the first place?


I'm inclined to agree, but with some caveats. Obviously, the more people using BTC the better - but I don't think that should come at the expense of jumping through hoops doing things like printing notes just to make them more comfortable with it (particularly if, like my assumption above, it opens the system up to action by governments).

The fractional reserve idea, the central-issuer idea, isn't that what people interested in BTC are trying to move away from?

Bruce, what you describe, with bills of credit expiring after a set date are very, very similar to an old concept known as "real bills" or "real bills of exchange", scroogle that ... and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_bills_doctrine
They were common when the gold standard was widespread and met there end around the same time the Federal Reserve system of banks was established. They worked well for many years before the centralised, mildly inflationary disease took over the minds of the intellectuals.

This may help in your thinking for the details of how your bills would work ... it may have all been done before already for you.

I still like the idea of using invisible ink notes. The issuer would have a public key and private key on every note. The public key would be visible but the private key would be invisible. You'd have to void the note to reveal the private key.

I'd prefer that the notes have expiration dates. It would help to prevent counterfeiting.

I'd trust the issuer most if it was a non-profit mutual bank or something similar.

Features I had considered printing on notes, besides denomination:

• a unique public key that can be verified to hold the amount on the note;
• enough contractual language to make the note a binding promise;
• a line/box on the reverse to actually write in an address you would like the note paid to, like depositing a check.

For a moment I got really fancy and considered having postage pre-paid so you could just drop the whole shebang in the mail, but I don't really think sending cash naked via USPS is a great idea, and I don't want to encourage it.

An expiration date was one of my suggestions earlier. It would be good for security, as you said, and the issuer could forego a minting/printing fee in hopes of turning a profit on unredeemed notes. But first of all it would be easy to pass off expired or nearly-expired notes to someone who wasn't looking too closely, and secondly I just don't like the smell of it. Stockpiling cash should be a feasible method of saving money.

What to do about small denominations (like less than one bitcoin)? There's no theoretical barrier to having a 0.05-bitcoin paper note, but it seems unusual. The terrible part is that hard tokens will cost more to produce, but it's the smaller denominations they'd be wanted for. No one will pay 0.55 for a 0.05 coin. Maybe cash could be sold in fixed bundles that include some number of "coins", and enough paper notes to offset the cost?

Yes.  Exactly.  We care VERY much that Bitcoin become accepted, understood, and used... by the average Joe.   ....AS FAST AS POSSIBLE.

In the end, its common usage by everyone may be the only thing that saves it... from big governments and the big banks that own them.

http://www.documentsecurity.com/sp_documents.php

Here's what I'm thinking..... for a paper currency...
Printed on it could be.... what?
Besides a Bitcoin denomination --- like BTC 1, BTC 5, BTC 10, BTC 20, BTC 100.
A verifiable public key & owner.... so that anyone could verify that this key was still owned by this owner.... as long as this paper was in circulation ...?

To help prevent counterfeiting, there could be a predetermined expiration date... by which time it must be redeemed...?  At that time, old bills could be replaced with the
newest bills, with improved anti-counterfeiting features.

Obviously, real Bitcoin is superior to anything paper...  However ...

Paper Bitcoin is just a stepping stone for ordinary people to play with, handle, look at, and even shop with... on a small scale.  

I agree you don't need regular folks for a valid or successful network...regular folk need bitcoin !

An efficient market exchange will only be successful if it is useful, and the more people involved wanting to exchange the more useful it becomes to those people,and therefore the stronger the value..
   After all, market exchanges are all about speculation, betting on the rise or fall in those values and competing against other markets.
like it or not governments will get involved,labeling you a terrorist movement, tax evaders and criminals then you've become a political movement.

 If regular Joe is not educated you will care if bitcoin is portrayed in this way, an evil anarchist religion,  against his county and the so called freedom that he works hard for by paying taxes that fund the wars that are against his religion.

 So i believe we should care if people don,t like it .

 If we are to screw anyone, it should be the current system and those who control it ! 

We don't need to bring "regular folks" to the network.  Screw them.

Bitcoin can be a perfectly valid currency without being accepted by the average Joe.   As long as we have efficient market exchanges, we don't need everyone to even know about bitcoins.

Bitcoin is not a religion nor a political movement.  We don't have to care if people don't like it.

a physical coin is needed as a stepping stone or bridge to bring regular folks over to bitcoin.
a silver coin is the best possible way of doing this that has no dollar amount marked on it and should look exactly like the bit coin logo .
being 99.9 % fine silver of a certain weight could be exchanged at the market rate against any currency including bit coin and could not be counterfeit.
They would be valuable in there own right and a useful tool in marketing & advertizing to friends.
not necessarily designed to be spent in stores for coffee and the like, but definitely exchangeable and liquid enough to change into cash at any coin shop or pawn dealer..
i know that i for one would spend my electronic bit coin to buy them for investment purposes and as a second option of storing  my accumulated digital value.
silver minted coins always command a higher price than the spot or melt value and thats how the mint makes its profit. putting labor into raw silver and making a finished product.
we already have enough paper to trade, so use that to turn attention to bitcoin it,s quite simple.
instead of stamping www.bear-river-dollar.com right across it in red ink ,you stamp the bit coin website.
every time you spend cash you tell people about it.
when the bitcoin community has accumulated enough silver between them, we will be in a position to issue our own bitcoin plastic instead of mastercards and visas, as mastercard and visa will be wanting to rent your technology and not you renting theirs at point of sale.
only discovered bitcoin this week and putting links down here  www.bear-river-dollar.com

I personally think this is the best way forward. If we can create a cheap throwaway physical client, that would solve the "real-world bitcoin" problem in a way that should satisfy purists.

I don't think this would work with physical.  I mean you can do it and it might last for a century but in the end it will fail.  It failed with the gold and the goldsmiths.  Suppose there is a 100,000 bills backed by 100,000 there is no real way to verify the bitcoin and who owns them, thus you would be taking the banks word that the bitcoin backs the currency.  Sooner or later someone is going to cheat and the bitcoins won't be there.  Just ask FDR in 1933 or Nixon in 197X.  There is the moral hazzard no one is responsible, so what happens is the paper currency crashes.

But this is no problem, why not just trade real bitcoins in the future you could push a button and beam someone a bitcoin and it would not get your hands dirty.  bitcoin is far better than physical.  Assuming the whole system does not come down.

straight paper can be counterfeited - in fact, so can gay paper. 

Bitcoin cannot be counterfeited.  and just about everybody on earth has a phone - soon, everybody will.  and integrating a tiny, purpose-based printer into a phone isn't terribly difficult.  they already exist.

all it has to print out is QR code.  there. that's your paper money:  little squares of print-on-demand QR code.

Those things are all coming.   

On Saturday, in fact.   

Basically, the Bitcoin for Android wallet app.  That will be (effectively) the same thing.

It will work off the network as well as on the network. 

But this proposal is all about the hyper - Low Tech.... paper money.

How can I find the best private company that can print me some of my own paper currency (or "credit receipts", technically)...?

What company prints those other private paper currencies, like BerkShares and Detroit Bucks, etc...?

BSD runs on *anything* - or so they're fond of saying... 

Well yeah, or a smartcard.  That would be nice, but AFAIK, noone has ever compiled bitcoind for such a device.

hmmm...

what about this:

a little coin-shaped USB thumbdrive-type gadget, with just enough storage for a couple of blocks and an implementation of SHA-256?  and a tiny CPU of course.

you carry it around loaded with whatever - say, 100 BTC - on a part of your blockchain that has been reserved, or 'frozen', from participating in normal transactions.  but those blocks are known to be frozen across the network.  you give it to somebody, they plug it into their phone (or netbook or iPad) to verify that those frozen block(s) have adequate BTC for the transaction being contemplated.

then, once they've verified it against the blockchain residing on their device, you plug it into *your* device, authorize the transfer of X-number of BTC (which changes your frozen blockchain for later upload), they plug it back into their device and the transfer is completed.  their blockchain updates, removing the freeze from that quantity of BTC known to the network as having been frozen.  for somebody with whom you've established trust, the first step (them plugging it in to verify) could easily be eliminated.

cash!  ...and p2p off the internet.

This story is just outrageous.   This guy has nothing to do in jail.

And yet I'm sure some rapists or murderers will go out of jail before he does.

By the way...  Any thoughts on this item?

http://www.chrismartenson.com/forum/defendant-convicted-minting-his-own-currency/55031

Another case for using paper, I should think.

I totally agree!   

And I know several shop owners and small businesses that would begin accepting it immediately --- just on my word that I would redeem it for them.

Now....  I guess I need to research "minting" (printing) your own paper currency.

If I find a printing method that I'm convinced would work, I'll begin doing this tomorrow. 

And yes, it would be backed 100% in Bitcoin reserves, based on my personal reputation ...and the reputation that The Bitcoin Foundation not-for-profit would build.

It's not even a stretch.  No one knew Jed the day he launched MtGox.com

I'm maybe 3 days into learning about bitcoin and tbh don't even 100% understand it yet, but I can guarantee you that if I could buy physical currency I'd be handing it out by the dollar just for the novelty of it. I think it would be an awesome way to get people interested.

There is no way you can prevent the counterfeiting of a physical stuff.  Unless it is based on a rare physical element.


Also, what do you mean exactly by "backing"?  Who would guarantee that your paper can be turned into bitcoins?  Banks?  States?

I have nothing against a private corporation guarantiing such a backing, based on its reputation.  But it would be fiat money.  I might use some but I'd prefer use a precious metal based money.