walked across the border with a thumbdrive of bitcoins/litecoins/??coins.
What about walking across the border with the account credentials of a WoW character with a lot of gold?
intranet of cryptocoins for budgeting and spending.
Is there a way to make a "trusted bitcoin" for internal use only where you don't have to do all the computation? I guess at that point it could just be a centralized Excel spreadsheet for all anybody inside the company cares.
I think a company could use an intra-blockchain to run a micro-economy within it. Transactions take place that enable it to function. Also, there is an interface between intra and public blockchains. If your department wants pens, it must buy it internally from the Supplies department. At some point Supplies converts its intracoins to public cash or coins (with management approval^) to buy more pens. You work for intra-coins, and at some point you convert it to cash or public coins. Not sure if the overhead of these micro-transactions are worth it, on the other hand, conglomerates of companies could exist. But the intra-coins have real value, because management will convert them to proper cash or public cryptocoins. The key is making sure an employee can't just cash out with intra-coins somewhere else and quit.
^ the key here is that things can be monitored and controlled on a sped-up blockchain, while still allowing a market mechanism to take place. Perhaps pens isn't the best example, more like certain factors of production.
The more I think about it, the more useful this seems to be. Especially attaching notes to transactions, and mining all coins instantly, and management dishing them out as needed. Perhaps creating more if needed. If the company is running low on cash, it can adjust the exchange rate, so the coins are worth less. If the company is doing well, the value of the coins goes up. This also gives the firm incentive to do well and be efficient, especially if staff are paid in intra-coins.
if you're going to have an intra-company economy with micro-transactions, it's not clear why those transactions are more beneficial than market transactions with trusted external suppliers.
an important and possibly the principal reason for forming companies is to avoid the transaction costs of coordinating numerous independent agents through a market economy.
so, when transaction costs decline, firms don't set up intra-company micro-economies, the supply chain gets vertically disintegrated.
for instance, where before you have a service that could only be supplied by a big company with a data center, now you get a small team providing the service by integrating software and services from a variety of IaaS, PaaS, SaaS suppliers.
basically, either you have a free market, or top-down central planning... if you build a market within the company, there's no point in top-down coordination, and if there's still top-down coordination, no point pretending decisions are made based on an internal free market economy.
Yes I know about this. It's a good question of economics meets information systems. But I do know in larger companies, getting management approval of certain purchases can take a really long time. I have a feeling that with intrachains, management will have more information on hand to determine if and when they can approve of purchases (and they can also track finances better overall.) Also, staff can have a better idea if making such a purchase request is feasible to the company. So firms can be larger, and operate with less oversight... that'd be the goal. I think there are issues of transparency and confidentiality, though, it may be risky for everyone at a firm to know everything happening in the blockchain and a firm's microeconomy in general.. especially if the blockchain is widely used: it could cause political issues, tax issues... other problems.
Maybe I don't understand what you're suggesting. If you view Bitcoin as a currency without a central authority, it's an innovation. But a company would have a central authority, also has the ability to create any kind of financial controls, also the ability to create stock, and different kinds of marketable financial securities. So, a blockchain is just a different, possibly more convenient API than the books and records of the firm, and the stock transfer agent.
I am still thinking through the idea, but in newer comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6935184https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6934281 I've suggested firms run a blockchain hidden from staff for departments to purchase factors-of-production, and then the underlying coins can be sold to the public as a way to raise capital. So I am thinking that a firm could run an intranet where departments and people get coins from management and also earn intracoins, but management can then come in and sell the underlying coins on some special exchange. There's also an intracoin/fiat/btc/ltc exchange tied into this intranet site.
I think there's a startup in this:
"reorganize your firm around your own virtual currency which you can then sell on our specialized exchange to raise further capital."
I should really clarify all this in a "tech vision" blog post. It could really be the next big thing, especially if a single (or hub) of firms, its customers and investors can come together around a single virtual currency.
They already have a 'virtual currency' they can sell on an organized exchange. It's called stock. You're going to have to work on your value prop. I fail to see any advantage vs. internal accounting systems, national currencies, existing stock exchanges and financial markets.
Actually, getting company stock from a company in the form of a cryptocoin could be a really elegant idea. The key is having a system that allows holders of stockcoins to claim a dividend payment in the form of the delivery of some other cryptocoin. So turning a blockchain into a stockpool could lead to some really interesting use cases. I think in China bitcoins are regarded as an asset and not a currency. Stockcoins expands on this notion. Thanks for bringing it my attention. This might be the next big thing I was thinking of.. I was just mistaken in wanting the stockcoins to be used within the company for internal commerce: I don't think that's wholly necessary, although intracoins are another interesting idea, they don't necessarily need to double up as stockcoins.
The key is having one blockchain with multiple stockcoins from multiple firms, but I don't think that's possible. It'd have to be 1 blockchain, 1 company, multiple stockcoins. Stockcoinmarket.com .. the future of equity, where companies go to get (and payout) cryptocoins for their stockcoins.
Ah, that's the part I was unsure about. Setting up a new block chain and instantly collecting all coin issuance sets up a lot of nice use cases.
Yes, that's amazing. If bitcoin ever does become widely accepted, it'll be because a new chain of coins is used that have been 100% mined by a private party (or government) handing them out.
When I was at IBM, each manager had fake "Blue Bucks" they used for internal cross-departmental services (moving a cubicle cost $100 "blue bucks," getting a new ethernet drop cost $50 "blue bucks," etc).
If mining all instantly, the key with intracoins is getting the equations right in terms of issuance and supply. There'd have to be some way of issuing them properly. Even if it just equated to the amount of cash reserves and/or cryptocoins the company had, because the idea is that anyone can cash out their intracoins if they need to. Staff need the confidence that they can do that at any time (provided management approves of it (perhaps only some staff have cashout approval privileges)) but the ability has to be there, even if management's willingness is not. For example, an automotive company needs to buy new tires, and it's the tire department that only has intracoins by having sold tires to production line, so that department cashes them out on the company exchange and buys tires from Dunlop. The production line needs some way of getting reimbursed by management or a Sales department who recycles coins back into it (once cars have been sold), so it can then buy new tires and other factors of production to keep making cars. Perhaps Sales would make an order for xx cars from Production and pay with the intracoins it has converted from the cash/cryptocoins it has gained at the edge of the organization.
And this also leads to interesting use cases with company conglomerates -- sort of like frequent flyer points that can be used interchangeably across certain groups of airlines... but in this case intracoins across certain allianced firms.
It would be insane for employees to accept payment in scrip without a promise of a fixed exchange rate. Even with such a promise it would not be especially sensible (because if the company implodes you lose your job and some of your savings...).
(I mean sure, you could trust that management with their total control of the scrip would not manipulate it to the advantage of management, but good luck with that)
I don't want to get into a full debate over the intricacies of the idea, (problems can be ironed out) ...but you could have part employee payment in fiat, part in public cryptocoin, part intracoin... it's up to the employee. But if we want to see public cryptocoins widely used, having it interface with private chains seems like a prerequisite, or at least a good start.
It's really an information systems topic: technical/business/social. Could be the next big thing.. if implemented right.
Yeah, well, I'm agnostic about public crytocoins being widely used. I'm definitely opposed to encouraging people to taking payment in what is essentially a company scrip.
Setting all that aside, I bet one big problem would be compliance with Sarbanes–Oxley.
What about walking across the border with the account credentials of a WoW character with a lot of gold?
intranet of cryptocoins for budgeting and spending.
Is there a way to make a "trusted bitcoin" for internal use only where you don't have to do all the computation? I guess at that point it could just be a centralized Excel spreadsheet for all anybody inside the company cares.