dustycloud/posts/fever-dream-cryptocurrency.md

title: Fever Dream: cryptocurrency date: 2015-03-29 12:42 author: Christine Lemmer-Webber tags: cryptocurrency, fever

slug: fever-dream-cryptocurrency

I've been sick the last two days, and for some reason, I've been dreaming in lisp. It's not the first time I've dreamt in code, but all times have been in lisp. Maybe lisp is not as readable as many would like, but it seems dreamable.

Just got up from another nap, another lisp-based fever dream. This one about a cryptocurrencty on an actor model system, built for a MUD/AR type environment... no blockchain required (note: may be inspired by reading Rainbows End between naps):

• Various actors represent "reserves", like the Federal Reserve can print their own money, as much as they like, but there may be various community enforcements of this
• You might have different central banks / reserves on different servers
• The "value" or exchange rate determined by the market, like international currency.
• Currency is non-divisible (you have 100 rupees, but not .1 rupees)
• Bank has a private key, so does each actor.
• Basically more or less passing along capabilities (I think???) but maybe even the central bank signing whoever has "posession". The bank does not know who things are transferred to, but does verify that the transferring owner has the right capability currently belonging to that unit's ID, and does issue a new capability to the new owner.

Does this make sense? I'm too sick to know for now. But transactions flying everywhere, wrapped in parentheses, in my fevered mind.

If I have more crazy lisp fever dreams today I will record them here. No guarantee of sanity.