Year | 2015 |
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Author | Benjamin A. Munro and Julia McLachlan |
Publisher | SSRN: Independent and Independent |
Link | View Research Paper |
Categories |
Cryptocurrencies / Regulation |
We propose a high-level network architecture for an economic system that integrates money, governance and reputation. With this system we introduce a method for issuing, and redeeming a digital coin using a mechanism that solves large scale economic challenges and aims to create a sustainable global economy and a free market. To maintain a currency’s value over time, and therefore be money proper, we claim it must be issued by the buyer and backed for value by the seller, exchanging the products of labour, in a free market. We also claim that a free market and sustainable economy cannot be maintained using economically arbitrary creation and allocation of money. Nakamoto, with Bitcoin, introduced a new technology called the cryptographic blockchain to operate a decentralised and distributed accounts ledger without the need for an untrusted third party. This blockchain technology creates and allocates new digital currency as a reward for ‘proof-of-work’, or ‘mining’, to secure the network. However, no currency, digital or otherwise, has solved how to create and allocate money in an economically non-arbitrary way, or how to govern and trust a world-scale free enterprise money system.