I hope we aren't too close to "territorial currencies" where each feudal lord was authorized (or not forbidden) to mint his own currency, which couldn't be carried over the next feud. Think awarded "miles" by your credit card, or tickets in a games center.

https://ndl.ethernet.edu.et/bitstream/123456789/41452/1/112....

▲

mandevil 19 hours ago | parent | next [-]

During the Free Banking era of US history (from when Andrew Jackson killed the 2nd National Bank until the Civil War, roughly 1837-1863) essentially every company that could get their state to give them a bank charter (very very poorly regulated) could issue its own paper notes that were treated as currency, with the very poor state regulation alone responsible for ensuring that they didn't print more notes than they had specie to back up.

You'll never guess, but most banks didn't actually have enough specie to back their notes, and banks constantly failed during the Free Banking era. If a bank failed then the notes value went to zero, and so notes always traded at a discount to their face value, and there were even brokers who were paid by local merchants to give them the latest correct discount rates for all the local banks (updating daily), and if a bank note got far enough away from the bank that the local broker didn't know about it, well, then it wouldn't be accepted by a local merchant. So effectively a similar result here in the capitalist, non-aristocratic US for about 15 years.

This is an enormous amount of overhead in actually running an economy, which was why it was ended and we had the National Banking Acts of 1863 and 1864 to try to create a more uniform currency, and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing created in 1862, etc. Because the actual businesses started to demand simpler accounting, and so more financial regulation of the banks.

	▲	palmotea 19 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> You'll never guess, but most banks didn't actually have enough specie to back their notes, and banks constantly failed during the Free Banking era. If a bank failed then the notes value went to zero, and so notes always traded at a discount to their face value, and there were even brokers who were paid by local merchants to give them the latest correct discount rates for all the local banks (updating daily), and if a bank note got far enough away from the bank that the local broker didn't know about it, well, then it wouldn't be accepted by a local merchant. That sounds like a libertarian paradise. Sign us all up!

▲

direwolf20 18 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don't see how this relates to that.

Ironically enough though, could feudal currencies actually be better on a blockchain? Think shares in a business. Bitcoin is backed by nothing, but if businesses all trade on Ethereum–style L2s, you could lock in whatever you want. Think: I want 2 tonnes of lumber for my new house build so I will trade whatever for 20000 $HomeDepotLMBR and it entitles me to exactly that amount when I go into the store.

▲

b40d-48b2-979e 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You know what else entitles you to two tons of lumber? Cash in the amount of two tons of lumber. That transaction even goes into a database for the business reporting.

	▲	direwolf20 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		That relies on a third party to maintain the value of the currency. Maybe I'd prefer to minimise my dependence on third parties. The crypto ecosystem makes it much easier to trade six cows for two tons of lumber and offload all of the exchange risk to speculators. It still can't enforce the physical exchange of goods, but it can atomically negotiate a swap from anything to anything through as many intermediaries as required. With a suitable transaction fee — which may come out of the transaction inputs. A cryptocurrency system can negotiate that my six cow NFTs (which are not jpegs, I guarantee they are exchangeable for cows) for two Ethereum, of which 0.05 is taken as a fee and 1.95 flows on to Uniswap to buy Home Depot coin which buys two tonnes of lumber at a specific location and time. Except oh dear — Home Depot only trades on Polygon. Well then my 1.95 ether is bridged to Polygon where my 1.94 wrapped ether is traded for 9999999 POL and then for Home Depot coins. Or I buy wrapped Home Depot coins atomically on Ethereum and then unwrap them back to Polygon. Crucially it all happens automatically. That infra doesn't exist since cows and lumber aren't being traded on a blockchain, but it's the kind of thing that could be enabled. Since I only hold ETH, WETH and POL during the transaction, their absolute value doesn't matter.

▲

18 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]

▲

wahnfrieden 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Epstein was kicking around that idea in some of his newly released emails