From The Intolerable Clock
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| − | As established in [http://hexarchate-rpg.dreamwidth.org/7653.html?thread=226789#cmt226789 Ursula's comment (Move 5)], this is how currency works in the heptarchate/hexarchate. (Comment has been lightly edited.)
| + | * [[Economics and Currency]] |
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| − | A cryptocurrency that maintained a complete time-stamped record of every transaction would cause problems with the high calendar. So let's assume that we've got a heavily anonymized cryptocurrency that tracks approximate location and relative date: associated with any given mark is information about approximately where it was last spent, and how long ago. (We'll leave the details of exactly how this works to the computer scientists of the future.) This currency is called the mark.
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| − | You can check up on validity of transactions made with marks in approximately the same star system using the markchain; for more spatially distant transactions you're relying on information saved in the marks themselves. The computation you do to validate a mark supports baseline functions of the high calendar. It can't be anything too sophisticated, because if every adjustment of the high calendar affected the currency system there'd be political chaos, but probably it helps ansibles run or something. This means forging marks is a heresy.
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| − | Bitcoin has a difficulty level that affects the rate at which new bitcoins can be "mined." If the mark is the *-archate's official currency, they probably have some equivalent of the US Fed that sets the difficulty. I'm imagining this as a panel of economists, one from each faction, who use a lightweight version of the Kel command mindmeld to achieve consensus. I don't think the other factions would want to leave this to the Andan, and indeed, Andan control of high finance might be part of why this cash-like system gained popularity in the first place.
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| − | The Space Internet runs on microtransactions. Every time you download something, you pay a tiny fraction of a mark, part of which ultimately goes to the creators of the content. If you watch ads, they offset the cost of your Space Internet use. One advantage of the lokwors is that when you're using them you don't have to pay Space Internet postage.
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Revision as of 18:00, 14 August 2017
