Tim Bouma on Nostr: About four years ago, I went deep on central banking and monetary operations. Just ...

About four years ago, I went deep on central banking and monetary operations. Just over two years ago #Cashu came along, then I discovered #nostr. I realized you could build an entirely new monetary and payments infrastructure using Bitcoin as the base layer, and something that could rival the likes of SWIFT, BIS, etc. and which could handle a sat micropayment as effectively as a final settlement in the millions or billions.

So I set out to build it to prove it. So far, it does not disappoint. I am now doing zaps of 1 sat to a record I set yesterday of $250 USD. All with the same tech!

#nostr #safebox

quoting note10xx…x8ar

Hear me out.

Credit is not a bad thing. It enables the monetary system to expand and contract when necessary. This was the case in Canada where the private banking system could issue notes that were redeemed at par at the competing banks. This was especially important during harvest season (August-September) when an increase in currency was required to facilitate transactions of buying/selling grain.

If any of you have read George Selgin’s or Larry White’s work on private banking you realize how effective it was. In the US, it was a disaster because private banking was over-regulated to begin with, forcing state banks to bank only within their state, while in Canada, branch banking was allowed across the country. So if you were a grain farmer in Regina and someone paid you in Bank of Montreal dollars, you could deposit the full amount into your Bank of Nova Scotia dollar account at your local branch.

Not to say the system was perfect, but it was pretty damn good, until someone got the bright idea that we needed a central bank like the US, most likely to help the government borrow and fund large projects (wars).

How does this relate to below? We can return to the banking yesterdays of yore, but instead of paper credit notes (cash) we can use electronic credit notes (ecash). By virtue of their instant redeemability it keeps everyone honest and a system that keeps its equilibrium. If you want the theory, read Larry White’s book on private banking, which I did, and then applied the theory to what I am currently building, #nostr #safebox. note1z0l…vuxa