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Towards a useful alternative currency?

The more our financial systems fail the more appealing alternative currencies become. It's only a matter of time before someone creates an alternative currency that uses social media platforms like twitter or Facebook. Twitter, for example, has all the requisite elements - an account, an accurate record of transactions, and a user specific ID. Twitter units could be traded at an agreed rate per hour for work done for each other. Every time you did work for someone else, they could be paid in Twitter units at an agreed rate per hour. Similarly, every time you wanted someone to do something for you, you could incentivize them withTwitter units (I'm sure someone can think of a better name). This could became a useful currency for anyone working in a creative collective or small business/start up community .

So, what do you need to create a social currency?
(Significantly edited from www.newcurrencyfrontiers.blogspot.com).

1)
An account is the place where information about ONE currency is aggregated and transformed for output - e.g. "account balance.”

2) A transaction is an interaction between two accounts. It is a record of what happened and describes a mathematical relationship between the two accounts.i.e. On February 10th 14:50 “account A” pays 50 to “account B”. This transaction describes the relationship between the two accounts, and records the time it occurred. Transactions could be transferable (debited to the payer, credited to the payee), or non-transferable (not debited to the payer, but still credited to payee) such as a reputation transaction or a thank you.

In order to have the maximum extensibility to this platform, receipts for all transactions within a currency could be aggregated on a server(s) (such as Twitter). These receipts would contain all the information about that transaction specified by the currency.

3) Currency – A currency is set of rules defining the types of accounts, how their balances are calculated, and how these accounts can transact with each other. A currency could have multiple different classes of accounts. For instance, a mutual credit currency might only allow businesses to be issuers of the currency (allow their balances to be negative).


4) Currency Complex defines the relationship between currencies.
Many different currencies could be cross-referenced to produce a rich and resilient tapestry. Because currencies are modular within the currency complex, currencies can quickly evolve in an extensible way. Rules for currency could be contingent on metrics both inside and outside a given currency.


For instance, let’s say you wanted to have a credit limit in a mutual credit currency be dependent on the user's volume of transaction in the currency multiplied by the percent of "thumbs up" ratings. The user would need two accounts within the mutual credit currency, and an account in a second reputations currency. The user's buying power in the mutual credit currency would be a sum of all transactions. The user's transaction volume would be the sum of the absolute values of all their transactions (calculated in separate account). The user's history in the "thumbs up, thumbs down" currency would be calculated as an average. The credit limit for the first, could be linked to the second and the third (credit limit increases to 1000 when you have conducted 10,000 worth of business with 90% thumbs up).


5) ID – A person using this platform will need to have some sort of identity boundary on the currency platform. This is distinct from having an account, since an account, as I am defining it, is merely the place where one currency is aggregated. An ID will be able to have multiple different types of accounts within one currency, participate in multiple currencies within one currency complex, and participate in multiple currency complexes. The ID simply allows multiple different currencies to be grouped and displayed according to user.

Anyone really interested in this subject: CLICKHERE

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