

Google once considered issuing currency - Eric Schmidt - jitendra_
http://www.itworld.com/networking/254124/google-once-considered-issuing-currency

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jandrewrogers
Interestingly, the relative weakness of reserve currencies has made this
plausible in a real way. As the debt risk of countries becomes closer to the
strongest multinationals it creates the possibility for the debt of
multinationals to be lower risk than any currency it can be denominated in,
which happened briefly a couple years ago for the first time ever. In effect,
the debt instruments are currency.

Right now, governments have the ability to inflate their currencies to pay for
their excessive spending. If non-governmental instruments become stronger than
reserve currencies then it will create a novel situation where they can't
inflate away the debt even if every other government is doing it. That is new
territory. Companies that generate and preserve value on a global basis will
have financial instruments that are de facto currencies, much in the way gold
is.

That would be an interesting time.

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JumpCrisscross
Companies do have "currencies" that can hold value independent of FX - secured
bonds. Otherwise, commodities take the role of liquid non-fiat value holders.
Substituting a government-backed currency with a corporate-backed one is a
terrible idea given that a corporate is subjugated to a sovereign (and pays
its debt in sovereign currency [ignoring the marginal role in-kind bond
payments play]). Thus, one is accepting an inherently inferior proposition.

It should be noted, though, that many multinationals' bonds trade healthier
than many sovereigns' currencies.

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justincormack
Er, bonds are denominated in currencies. There is no independent value.

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JumpCrisscross
One can just as easily say that currencies are denominated in assets. When
valuing a currency one inevitably resorts to trade flow and capital production
statistics. A better way to think of these flows is as swaps instead of
"buying" things with money.

In the modern banking system Treasury bonds function just as much as money as
Federal Reserve notes (which are technically a debt). Before the crisis AAA
corporate bonds were accepted as collateral nearly on par with Treasury bonds.

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mrb
> The idea was to implement a "peer-to-peer money" system.

Wow. I wonder if it literally means they were thinking of duplicating the
(world's first) digital peer-to-peer currency: <http://www.bitcoin.org> Or is
Schmidt using the term "peer-to-peer" liberally?

Edit: looks like I am right, a CNN article specifically mentions Bitcoin:
[http://money.cnn.com/2012/02/28/technology/google_future_of_...](http://money.cnn.com/2012/02/28/technology/google_future_of_internet/index.htm)

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samstave
I lived on a hippy commune from 1974 to 1979 - we had our own currency then,
called 'trash' in which we could buy anything we wanted. It was a peer-to-peer
currency which was printed on the packs of cigarettes.

When I was 4 years old, I bought my first vehicle with Trash, a golf cart
which I drove around the property.

Bit-coin may be digital, but it is not the first peer-to-peer currency.

We also had our own TV station, which was powered by the very first Apple
computers. This is where I encountered Apple first...

~~~
ced
How is the hippy currency peer-to-peer? Isn't it just like any other fiat
currency?

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joejohnson
Maybe Satoshi is a Google pseudonym. Nobody really knows where Bitcoin came
from...

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impunity
The U.S. government takes extreme interest in all alternative currency
schemes. Google "e-gold" for more information. There are two areas of human
experience all governments consider their own domain: the use of force and the
creation of currency.

