
Show HN: Offset – Credit card powered by trust between people - realcr
https://www.offsetcredit.org
======
jonahbenton
Congratulations. You have reinvented tally sticks.

Snark aside, I wish you lots of luck, have thought about this model a lot,
think there is probably a small place for it in the world.

Two suggestions from random stranger on the internet, take them for what
they're worth:

* don't use the word "money." This is a private credit network, not money. Private credit networks sometimes become money, but they don't start out that way. Stick to that language.

* don't solve for "inflation." There is a lot more to say here but fundamentally there is a tension between store of value and medium of exchange. Be a private credit network/medium of exchange, not a store of value.

Good luck!

~~~
centimeter
> there is a tension between store of value and medium of exchange

This tension only exists under Keynesian reasoning. It goes away when you use
a theory that does a better job handling equilibria.

The Keynesian claim is that if you have a deflationary medium of exchange,
people won’t spend it. This isn’t actually true - the end result of a
predictable deflationary asset (e.g. something with a fixed or essentially
fixed supply) is similar to the situation we have now, but more efficient.
Instead of having, say, 10% of your money in cash and 90% in spoos to avoid
getting screwed by inflation, you can just keep 100% of your money in cash.
You will have the same exposure to global capital growth, people too poor to
have a brokerage account will have exposure to growth as well, and you don’t
have to deal with converting between spoos and cash when you spend money.

~~~
technotony
It's less that they won't spend it, and more they won't invest it. As you
point out if you can get exposure to global capital growth by keeping your
money in cash you will do that. This starves the world of risk capital being
invested in new projects, the net benefit of which is responsible for capital
growth. So nobody invests and technological progress drives to a halt (well
maybe governments invest in military technology ands whatso but net investment
in risky tech drops).

~~~
splintercell
But here's the issue in Keynesian thinking, all savings is investment, it's
investment in money. Like any investment, it has a return (which comes from
the increased value of money), and risk (if instead of increase value, the
value of money is decreased).

~~~
Enginerrrd
Yes, but hiding your money in the mattress doesn't create jobs, businesses,
innovation, etc. I fail to see the "issue in Keynesian thinking" you're
talking about.

~~~
splintercell
It does. When you hide money under your mattress this is equivalent of you
giving your money to all the US dollar investors out there in proportion to
the amount of investment they're making.

So let's just say if there is a small economy where there are only two
investors you and Elon Musk, and you decide to skip investing in any business
and hide money under the mattress, then this is equivalent of you giving the
money to Elon Musk to invest in his business. How? Because now you're not
competing him for raw materials, labor and capital.

Then when he built self-driving cars and economic growth happens because of
this productive activity, when you take your money out of your mattress it is
now worth more , and I'm presuming no new dollars were produced and this time.

You can see the effect if a major stockholder of a company decides to not
participate in the functioning of the company, this in effect is equivalent of
him lending his stocks to the other stockholders. This does not mean that
somehow the company is working at a reduced power.

~~~
Enginerrrd
Ah ok I see your angle now, but I think there's a critical flaw.

Your investment into the general market is really only the amount of interest
earned on deflation of that amount.

Compare this with investing the whole amount into a local bakery. The utility
difference is dramatic.

~~~
splintercell
> Your investment into the general market is really only the amount of
> interest earned on deflation of that amount.

Your investment is the whole amount which would have purchased the 3
components of production (land/labor/capital), because the price of all these
goods have fallen, which have allowed other entrepreneurs to buy them for
their own investment.

What you're saying is like telling people who invest in index funds only that
their investment is only the interest on the yearly return they get from the
fund.

------
mangodwango
This is interesting, but I’m really skeptical about the implementation. I’d
really kind to see a much more concrete specification, and details about
adversarial conditions.

It feels like it’s easy to create identities, establish credit lines with no
intent to repay, and propagate bad money into this system. It only takes one
bad actor to corrupt the chain of mutual credit. From the documentation on the
website it’s not clear at all how it handles even simple adversarial
conditions like this. The fallback seems to be that you can limit what you are
willing to lose by only establishing mutual credit up to a certain amount with
each trusted party.

If a store doesn’t have a direct relationship with me it has to initiate a
payment between an arbitrary number of intermediaries in order to fulfill the
credit. Anyone have more insight into the practical application of mutual
transitive credit?

~~~
realcr
Hey, interesting questions. Let me try and answer.

> I’d really kind to see a much more concrete specification

The best I can show you at this point is here:
[https://docs.offsetcredit.org/en/latest/theory/mutual_credit...](https://docs.offsetcredit.org/en/latest/theory/mutual_credit_protocol.html)
This document is far from a full mathematical proof of safety, but it shows
how things work. I expect the protocol to change in the next months, so I
didn't want to be too detailed about the current protocol. Just to be sure it
is known, Offset is open source, and you can find the full schema of
communication here:
[https://github.com/freedomlayer/offset/tree/master/component...](https://github.com/freedomlayer/offset/tree/master/components/proto/src/schema)

> It feels like it’s easy to create identities, establish credit lines with no
> intent to repay

You can in fact create as many new identities as you wish with Offset,
however, an identity doesn't worth much without established credit lines.
Establishing a credit line requires human intervention. You will not be able
to trick your human friend into adding your multiple identities of yourself as
new credit lines to his Offset client. In other words, what protects you from
Sybil attacks here is real world relationships with people.

If you ever decide to open your own "hub" or "bank" with Offset, giving credit
lines to many strangers, you might want to have extra security, like maybe
asking for their id card, or asking for some kind of collateral. But if the
people you arrange credit line with aren't strangers, I don't think you have a
real issue here.

> It only takes one bad actor to corrupt the chain of mutual credit

A bad actor can only compromise his direct "Offset friends", not a whole
chain. When you set up your Offset node and add credit lines to your direct
"Offset friends", you have to set up credit limits. Those credit limits limit
how much money you can lose if any of your friends defaults. You can never
lose more money than what you set up as your credit limits. If a friend of
your friend defaults, your friend loses the money, not you.

> If a store doesn’t have a direct relationship with me it has to initiate a
> payment between an arbitrary number of intermediaries in order to fulfill
> the credit

Offset does this automatically for you. You don't really need to worry about
this during the payment.

I might have missed something with my answers. Please tell me if you think
something is missing!

~~~
mangodwango
I think what I’m missing is how a default works in this instance. If I
establish a 200 unit mutual credit line with someone, spend 200, what does a
default look like? Is there some time period in which I have to pay it back?
Without collateral it seems that there isn’t a way to enforce payment.

If I buy a good, from someone accepting offset do they pay me back in credit
the value of the good that they deliver? Thus netting us back to zero?

Thanks for answering my questions.

~~~
geocar
> I think what I’m missing is how a default works in this instance. If I
> establish a 200 unit mutual credit line with someone, spend 200, what does a
> default look like? Is there some time period in which I have to pay it back?
> Without collateral it seems that there isn’t a way to enforce payment.

Who do you think the "with someone" is? It's either a friend who is willing to
loan you $200 whenever, or a credit company who will offer you $200 in
exchange for information about your employment, spending, etc.

What do you think your friend does when you stiff him? He might offer a
repayment plan, or to forgive your debt, or maybe he sues you in court and
stops being your friend. Same thing that credit companies do.

> If I buy a good, from someone accepting offset do they pay me back in credit
> the value of the good that they deliver? Thus netting us back to zero?

No. That's between you and whoever you and this _other_ someone know in common
(the someone 1). It's credit, not cash.

------
stagas
This looked initially like a cool idea, then I realized that to trade with
someone you have to have a mutual credit line with them, or through someone
who already has a credit line. How is this any different than the current
model, where the bank/government/central money issuer is our mutual credit
line and why wouldn't this model eventually end up with banker-type people
managing the credit for everyone? You could go now to a bakery and ask for
mutual credit, the problem is they would prefer the safest route, which is
credit through the current monetary system. How is Offset protecting against
the same thing happening? Am I missing something?

~~~
fiatjaf
If one, this would be open.

The current banking system doesn't suck because people are greedy or bankers
are bad people. It sucks because it is closed and no one can join.

(If you're tempted to say: "no, anyone can join, they just have to fulfill the
regulations blablabla", then this is your answer.)

~~~
stagas
There are local communities around the world that run their own credit lines
for exchange of goods outside of the banking system, so it's not that Offset
is enabling something that isn't happening already. Maybe the software is more
convenient but is it any more different? I'm trying to understand. My question
is what's preventing few people accumulating trust and credit lines and
eventually becoming bankers for this system? Everybody needs bread, but those
that sell bread don't need javascript applications, so there has to be a
middle man even in this system for me to buy bread. The current banking system
exists because it has established credit lines with goods that are almost
impossible to acquire without a middleman, like petroleum, electricity,
infrastructure.

~~~
rjmunro
> My question is what's preventing few people accumulating trust and credit
> lines and eventually becoming bankers for this system?

The way I understood it nothing is preventing people doing that. Quite the
opposite, in fact. That's the whole idea. That's what is supposed to happen.
The difference is that the barrier to entry for those people is essentially
nothing, rather than having to start an actual bank, which will encourage
local competition, keeping fees low.

------
rydre
This is an idea I always wanted to build, though never got the time.

Congrats on the work.

Now this is something I'd be willing to use. I've never used cryptocurrencies
before because of POW (I believe it is a fad). But trust based crypto is
something that will likely change the world like the internet, and this or
something like this is gonna be it. No more banking gatekeepers. No more
private credit scores.

------
d10
Interesting! For folks who like this idea, I recommend looking up Ryan
Fugger's Ripplepay
([https://classic.ripplepay.com/](https://classic.ripplepay.com/)). That was
inspiration for Ripple Labs, who unlike Offset did go the cryptocurrency route
(XRP).

I appreciate that Offset is not spawning a cryptocurrency where it doesn't
need one. There are other projects influenced by Ripple and Ripplepay which
are also not their own currency. For example Synchronized Network Accounting
Protocol
([https://michielbdejong.com/blog/20.html](https://michielbdejong.com/blog/20.html))
and Interledger Protocol
([https://interledger.org/](https://interledger.org/)).

One of the thought provoking ideas in interledger is that a single payment can
be delivered in packets. Meaning that if Alice is making a payment to Bob,
some of that payment might go through an intermediary Ivan and some of that
same payment might go through Isaac. I haven't read much about Offset, but I
saw that it described payments as atomic. Interledger specifically decides not
to be atomic. This is not what most people expect with payments, but giving up
atomicity gets other nice qualities. For example, if Alice is making a large
payment to Bob, they are not limited by the liquidity of any one intermediary.
Like data finding an efficient route on the internet, a payment can find an
efficient route over interledger.

Glad to know about Offset. I'll add it to my list of interesting network money
projects.

~~~
realcr
Thanks for the kind words! I am a great fan of the classic ripple myself.

------
susano
Cool stuff! This seems to effectively be a digital, distributed,
implementation of a LETS[1], a system which has had some popularity in various
places at various point of the last 40 years.

This sort of system is particularly useful in communities where there is a
lack of money. For instance say everybody is unemployed and nobody as money to
buy anything, but people would be happy to trade services/goods with each
other if there was a way to do it efficiently. They could barter but that is
inefficient and it is difficult to match services/goods of different value.

Because the system allows monetary creation, it enables people to start
trading even when nobody has money.

It may be useful to check out the circumstances in which LETS were/are used,
as it may be a good indication as to which types of community may be most
interested in using Offset.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_exchange_trading_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_exchange_trading_system)

------
jiofih
Eh. This is how the banking system works.

Once some entities in the network become big enough, and transactions large
enough to warrant credit checks and so on, what do you have? A bank. This is
nothing more than an unregulated settlement system.

~~~
rjmunro
Yes, but that's a good thing. It handle's the microtransaction case in a small
community cheaply (I paid the bill today, you can pay next week) but scales to
being a service banks could join and offer.

------
alexmingoia
The biggest advantage over bitcoin is that this is truly p2p. Bitcoin isn’t
p2p in the sense that transactions require third parties (miners).

You can only transact as long as miners choose to mine. If miners stop mining
for any reason bitcoin is unusable. There’s also no risk of 51% attacks and
hard forks.

You could also run offset off the Internet on local networks.

~~~
jkhdigital
> If miners stop mining for any reason bitcoins are worthless

That's like saying "if your heart stops beating for any reason you're dead".
True, but meaningless. Miners mine while bitcoins have value, and bitcoins
have value while miners mine. In fact bitcoins had zero value when they were
first created, and yet someone still mined them.

------
johnorourke
This is novel and interesting, and could be used on a micro scale (say a group
of friends who regularly split dinner bills) or macro. How would you solve the
issue of losing data and nodes (through corruption, hardware failure, etc), or
people being offline? I suspect if it grew, people would offer "hosted nodes",
where they keep your data and stay online for transactions 24x7, in return for
taking that transaction fee... so, like a bank!

------
redis_mlc
> [banker refused to cancel a personal credit card because it was the bank's]

The comment disappeared, but I wanted to illuminate ...

Banks do have reasons for delaying account closures:

\- good reason - delay closing until statements arrive and are paid. This is
also commonly done with checking accounts in the US, which has delayed final
settlement for inter-bank transactions.

\- bad reason - employees get rewards for signups and face consequences for
cancellations. See Wells Fargo scandals.

~~~
rjmunro
> delay closing until statements arrive and are paid

They should cancel the card being able to make further payments, but keep the
account open for repayments until it is settled.

------
rjmunro
I would market this as an app for a few friends to install and keep track of
what they owe each other when one of them settles the bill at a restaurant.
Whoever owed the most could settle that day, and everyone else's bill would be
deducted. A network of friends could expand from there.

A "credit card" has negative connotations for many people.

Watching the "setting up" video here:
[https://docs.offsetcredit.org/en/latest/intro/app_manual.htm...](https://docs.offsetcredit.org/en/latest/intro/app_manual.html)
it's too convoluted. Everything that needs turning on should be turned on by
default. The default servers should be used unless you go into settings before
you start and turn them off. When you add a friend, the default currency
should be selected, and a default amount put in ($50 seems a reasonable
starting amount that I'd be prepared for a friend to owe me, but the default
should go in settings).

It would be good if the names of your friends copied over automatically.

~~~
realcr
This comment contains some really useful feedback. Highly appreciated. Not
sure what would be a good branding instead of using the term "credit card".
What do you think?

About the default servers, I always have the fear the system will become too
centralized, so I tried to force the user to understand he can pick any server
he wants. Maybe I am wrong here, this needs some extra consideration.

About the other defaults that seem convoluted: I picked those due to security
considerations, but maybe you are correct, and it is better to leave things
open by default there.

If you are interested in reviewing the next versions before they are
published, please stay in touch. You can send me an email directly or join the
mailing list if you like.

------
tkfu
Is there any concept of a distinction between the size of the line of credit
you're willing to extend to a person directly, and the credit you're willing
to extend to that person's friends (and friends-of-friends, etc.)?

Most of the time, if a friend asks for a loan (unless it's a really trivial
amount), my response will be along the lines of "Sure, what do you need it
for?" If my sister asks me to lend her 500 euros because she's short on rent,
I'd say "Yes, of course!" But if she asked me to lend her 50 euros because her
smack-addict downstairs neighbour really needs it to fix their sink (my
sister's a soft touch who likes to help people and always gives folks the
benefit of the doubt), I'd say hell no.

David Graeber went into a lot of the issues around this in his book "Debt: The
First 5000 Years". The element of debt that's monetary and recorded in ledgers
is only half of the story. Most of the truth of how we relate to debt is much
more socially intertwined.

------
A4ET8a8uTh0
Very interesting. I had a somewhat complicated question about sanctions, but I
think the main question boils down to whether you are based in US.

------
throwaway0x00ff
It's interesting to compare this model to the Lightning Network on top of
Bitcoin. Essentially, the Lightning Network uses this kind of "friendships"
(payments channels) with the exception that parties do not need to trust each
other in order to transact. It would be interesting to add LN to this page:
[https://docs.offsetcredit.org/en/latest/intro/blockchain_com...](https://docs.offsetcredit.org/en/latest/intro/blockchain_comparison.html)
Basically, the differences between LN and Offset would be the security
foundation (bitcoin contract) and origin of money (we put actual bitcoin in
channels).

Offset's model of relays, nodes, transactions encoding, routing, multi-path
payments could very well share a lot with the Lightning Network's model of
nodes, gossip protocol, onion routing, and so on. I could even see both
systems work together.

I am still going to try Offset with my friends, could be a good experiment!

~~~
matheusd
Spitballing here but it seems you could even (re-)implement an Offset-based LN
by using an alternative (non-PoW) blockchain underlying the channels.

This alternative blockchain would work for accounting purposes so it can be
entirely local (i.e. each node has its own local blockchain).

------
kingo55
From the website:

Incentives: Blockchain: Rewards first adopters. Offset: Early and late
adopters have the same money creation power.

Does this mean there's a negative incentive for early adopters? I.e we take on
more risk with an untested technology but late adopters get the same benefits
at lower risk, once the technology is mature.

~~~
vertex-four
If it’s useful for you, you’ll adopt it whether someone who comes along later
is better or worse off.

------
greatgib
It is just a world-wide scaled IOU. The concept looks good to me but still
need to evolve a little bit. For exemple, it would be useful to be able to
differentiate simple credit lines (negatives) offered to someone and
advance/collateral that was already provided by this third party.

------
osrec
Incredibly interesting. As an ex-banker, I've always thought our current money
creation mechanism is a bit messed up. This is an interesting alternative.

Questions from me:

If someone wishes to make a payment, Offset will find the best path via
friendships to facilitate the transaction. What if a bunch of people are
offline and no path can be found? Does this require the creation of a direct
friendship?

Do you imagine certain nodes trying to become "hyperconnected" so that they
may connect as many people as possible, and earn fees from providing this
service?

What algorithm do you use to compute the shortest/cheapest be path between two
counterparties? Does this scale well in a distributed, self-hosted system?

How does one establish a friendship/trust with another party, and who sets the
credit limits for the relationship?

~~~
geocar
> If someone wishes to make a payment, Offset will find the best path via
> friendships to facilitate the transaction. What if a bunch of people are
> offline and no path can be found?

What do you think happens when Visanet is down?

My experience is people either delay their purchase, or they find some other
medium to exchange.

> What algorithm do you use to compute the shortest/cheapest be path between
> two counterparties? Does this scale well in a distributed, self-hosted
> system?

That seems to be answered here; looks like it's not distributed.

[https://docs.offsetcredit.org/en/latest/theory/network.html](https://docs.offsetcredit.org/en/latest/theory/network.html)

> How does one establish a friendship/trust with another party, and who sets
> the credit limits for the relationship?

That seems to be answered by the demonstration videos; each party sets the
credit limit they offer to all of their friends separately.

------
thoughtstheseus
A nation-state will ban or monopolize any competitive alternative to state-
backed currency or debt (obligation transfers). Just look at current
macroeconomic policy around the world, vast sums of obligations ("debt") being
created.

~~~
aSplash0fDerp
Autonomous/robotic manufacturing/production could very well bring back
bartering, depending on your definition of innovation.

Gerbil wheel economics (debt until infinity) doesn't take into account low-
cost, low-labor 24/7 manufacturing, so don't invest too much logic in
antiquated theories that require libor-rate'esqe techniques to make it
believable.

~~~
thoughtstheseus
Going “back” to bartering is a myth. Human interactions were greatly more
complex and varied prior to money and debt standardization.

------
viraptor
It's an interesting idea, but I've got 2 questions:

\- What happens with fraud? I can reverse my cc transaction, but here there's
no insurance. (Just in case someone answers with trust - see how many finance
SE questions go like "brother asked me to guarantee a loan and disappeared,
what do I do")

\- How is this usable for people working in online services? I'm never going
to be paid in OUSD, or by local people, so it looks like I'd either have to
continuously exchange money with a person I know, or some banker-equivalent
online. That gives me no benefit over CC.

------
evandijk70
Seems quite similar to a Dutch app, wiebetaaltwat, which is used a lot here.

It is mostly used for thinks like days out and group holidays, and allows you
to share expenses as well. Still, I have heard some people never settle their
balance and just have an ongoing list. Whoever owes the most picks up the tab
the next outing.

[https://wiebetaaltwat.nl/about/how](https://wiebetaaltwat.nl/about/how)

------
wolfgang42
Is this related to the Offst project that was released about a year ago (HN
discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19756353](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19756353))?

I thought it was a neat idea when I read about it then, but never got around
to looking into it further. I’ll have to make some time soon to try it out.

~~~
realcr
Yes, some friends offered a rename. I noticed that every time I wanted to tell
someone about the project, I had to explain that it is written as Offset, but
without the "e". It was always awkward, so offsetcredit.org it is.

------
Nursie
I'm amazed how many people are on the "Inflation Bad!" bandwagon these days.

Having a flexible money supply that can be manipulated by a central authority
for the benefit of the economy as a whole seems to me like a good thing.

I like this aspect - "You will not get rich by joining early", but I fear that
without get-rich-quick mania, adoption will be limited.

------
jfdsfsfdsf
Interesting! Take a look at
[https://trustlines.app/#/](https://trustlines.app/#/) built ontop of
[https://trustlines.network/](https://trustlines.network/) Very similar
economic theory, somewhat different terminoloy.

------
yellowapple
So looking at the economic model, and the transaction where Bob pays through
Charli to Dan...

This means that Bob can "pay" Dan through Charli, run off without paying, and
now Charli somehow owes Dan? Does Charli consent to being in the middle of
this transaction? This seems like it's ripe for abuse.

~~~
wolfgang42
Charli consented by giving Bob a line of credit. (If she hadn’t, and hadn’t
owed Bob any money, the transaction wouldn’t have gone through her.) It’s up
to each individual participant to set the credit limits on their friend
pairings according to their own risk tolerance and trust level. If Bob turns
out to be a deadbeat, Charli probably shouldn’t have given him any credit; but
that’s not a technical problem.

In practice, I’d expect that if Offset (or another p2p mutual credit system)
catches on, you’d see mostly two main ways of using it: friends and maybe
local businesses giving small amounts of credit to each other (think splitting
the bill for lunch, or a local plumber and a bakery) based on mutual trust,
and writing off the occasional bad debt the same way they do now; and larger
“commercial” lenders who work like present-day credit card companies, tracking
credit scores and the like and with the force of law behind them if you don’t
pay your overdue bill.

------
jbb67
Is there any way to do anything with this right now? Is there anything you can
buy or sell with it? Do I need real life friends to use this so I can set up
"trust" as this will be a problem preventing me from even trying it out? (I
have friends, just not ones that will try this)

~~~
realcr
Sorry, there is nothing you can buy with Offset right now! Maybe I should set
up some kind of a demo website so that people can try it out.

One thing you can do is open two Offset cards on your own mobile phone, and
try to pay with one card to the other (:

~~~
jbb67
Perhaps it needs a test net so you can try out buying imagineary things on a
real network while not risking real currency.

I guess actually though, you could do this with the real thing, just use a
TEST currency that has no value and let people sell imaginary things for that.
Then random people would be happy to be lose this fake currncy for something
they didn't know.

------
Mizza
I'm actually kind of into this idea, even if it's purely as a Free and Open
Source alternative to Venmo. But even then, you'll have to give me some good
selling points to get my normie friends to use it, as they all already like
Venmo.

------
xrd
I really liked this note:

"Offset’s algorithm for discovering routes for payment generally prefers
routes with lower fees over routes with higher fees. This allows open
competition for fees."

------
panosfilianos
Do you have any social media handles? The project is pretty interesting and
I'll probably address some things on a blog post. I'd like to mention you when
I share.

~~~
realcr
Thanks for that! I am realcr on twitter, though not very active there. Best
way to contact me is probably through email, see "contact" on the Offset
website.

------
thinkloop
Being a business owed many small amounts of money from many people seems
expensive to collect - any thoughts on that?

------
jbb67
this looks really interesting and an awesome idea. I downloaded the app but
then realized that with nobody I know using it, and nobody I can buy things
from using it, I literally can't do anything with it.

any ideas how to use it for ...anything..?

~~~
rjmunro
Persuade a friend who owes you some money to install it. Keep track of how
much you owe each other.

------
bluesign
I am not sure how this works. Lets say we have path of 4 for a transaction.

A - B - C - D

Lets say 100usd transaction amount.

For the sake of arguement, lets consider every node has 100usd credit one way
(reverse path)

So if A want to send 100usd to D.

A gets 100usd credit from B, B gets from C and C gets from D.

Until D spends money, system is locking 300usd credit for 100 usd transaction?

------
dsr_
It's interesting that at no time is legality or regulation discussed.

~~~
realcr
This is intentional. I really know nothing about this space, but I hope to get
help about from some friends in the future.

------
xwdv
Inflation isn’t coming. Interest rate is 0. Banks were ready for inflation for
years, it never came. We might even see deflation at some point.

Also, I trust very few people. People are scumbags when it comes to money.
I’ll take a regular credit card thanks.

------
ComodoHacker
I'm not convinced the economic model is viable. Who's going to pay the
operating expenses?

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mister_hn
What if all the people involved are kind of "untrustworthy"(e.g. criminal
organizations)?

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peter_d_sherman
_> "Money creation in Offset

Money in Offset is created and destroyed by users. Offset is designed so that
the money supply changes to match the market. As the market expands, the money
supply increases. When the market shrinks, money is destroyed. Therefore, You
will not become rich by joining Offset early.

The total sum of balances in Offset is always zero. Consider two Offset
friends: Bob and Charli. If Bob’s balance with respect to Charli is x, then
Charli’s balance with respect to Bob is -x. The sum of those two balances is
always 0.

We count the amount of money in an Offset network by summing all the positive
balances. For example purposes, consider again the two Offset friends: Bob and
Charli. Suppose that initially the balance between Bob and Charli is 0.

Next, assume that Bob buys a chocolate bar from Charli for the price of $2.
Now the balance between Bob and Charli is -$2 from Bob’s point of view, and
+$2 from Charli’s point of view. In the moment of purchase, new money was
created by Bob. In this case we can say that the total amount of money in the
market is $2.

The money created by Bob’s purchase will be destroyed when a complete buying
cycle is complete: For example, Charli will use the newly created money to buy
something from Dan, which will use the money to buy something from Eve, which
will eventually buy services from Bob. When Eve buys from Bob, the money is
destroyed."_

A lot of good and interesting ideas, but what about the Infinite Hotel
Paradox, as applied to money?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert%27s_paradox_of_the_Gra...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert%27s_paradox_of_the_Grand_Hotel)

That is, consider users as hotel rooms, and money as guests for those hotel
rooms...

That value, as it approaches infinity, is sort of the theoretical upper limit
of Milton Friedman's "Velocity Of Money" theory...

Also, as a side note, you'd probably find economic islands, that is, users who
were corporations, where they produce much more than they consume, where,
without taxation or other depletion, money would gel and pool and basically be
prevented from circulating...

And, what about the people that borrowed, on credit, and never replenished
from society what they took? If there's no limit, no "credit limit", then what
prevents them from continuing to take, and what prevents everyone from doing
this, resulting in a crashed economy?

Also, if there's no limitation on what constitutes an identity, then what
prevents someone from signing up multiple times as different users, and giving
themselves extra "credit" (ability to take) and taking, that way?

This being said, I think you have a lot of good ideas, and perhaps the only
way to know if/when/where/how users "game the system" would be to deploy it --
and see what happens.

Does it succeed? If so why? Does it fail? If so why?

Either way, information could be gained to determine how to create more robust
systems in the future.

Your system could work, and I hope it does!

Wishing you well in your endeavors!

~~~
rjmunro
> If there's no limit, no "credit limit",

There is a limit. It's the limit set by your friends.

> If there's no limitation on what constitutes an identity, then what prevents
> someone from signing up multiple times as different users

Nothing, but it doesn't matter:

> .. and giving themselves extra "credit" (ability to take) and taking, that
> way?

They'd only be able to give extra credit to themselves. No one would give
credit to any of the extra users they have created, so the extra users would
not be able to pay anyone anything.

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paulie_a
An actual credit card is blazing fast too. I don't know how this is immune to
inflation.

At best this honestly is a solution looking for a problem.

At worst it's yet another ico scam.

I don't know why anyone would be interested in this. Sorry to be harsh but I
worked in payment processing. This is a project going nowhere because it
doesn't do anything new or useful

