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Public Coin
What is public coin?
A public coin is any exchange commodity for which the total supply is public. It is any money in which everybody knows how much there is. Compare this to a “publicly traded company”. Such companies have a list of shares that is public, which makes the supply of shares public knowledge. A public coin is analagous, in that it has a money supply which is public. It represents a public commons, of which anyone is free to participate.
Satoshi’s bitcoin is a public coin. However contrary to common belief, bitcoin was not the first public coin. The Rai, as used on the Yap islands, predates it. However the Rai coin was not globally used, nor electronic, nor so easy to use as bitcoin.
The advantages of public coin were laid out by Wei Dai in his proposition called B-money (1997). This system was later implemented by Satoshi (2008) using proof of work. Quite simply, monetary supply fraud such as counterfeiting, hidden issuance, and private dilution, is completely eliminated from such a system.
Today there are thousands of public coins in use, of which bitcoin is the most common, and they are the preferred way of doing business amongst those willing and able to wield political power in the form of monetary choice. After the dismal record of the counterfeiters and fiat issuers and what they did with their wealth during the 20th century, this is a most promising development.
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13 responses to “Public Coin”
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[…] many public coins out there! Unfortunately, a lot of them have suffered from a problem of not considering the long […]
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[…] It’s the economy, stupid! – Free your Frass on Public Coin […]
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[…] It’s the economy, stupid! – Free your Frass on Public Coin […]
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[…] Christopher Malmo’s Ignorance is Unsustainable – Free your Frass on Public Coin […]
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[…] The LIGO result is bunk and other concerns – Free your Frass on Public Coin […]
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[…] Smart Contracts could save the Legal System – but not in the way you think – Free your Frass on Public Coin […]
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[…] proceeding it might be worth pointing out that by "bitcoin" here we are implicitly including all public coin, but this distinction hardly matters. By exchange value main-net BTC is still more than 85% of […]
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[…] a future is that which many public coin users hope for. Ask yourself who is more likely to waste energy, somebody who can issue currency […]
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[…] Addressing the Energy Consumption Issue – Logarithmic Bitcoin Blog on Public Coin […]
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[…] many public coins out there! Unfortunately, a lot of them have suffered from a problem of not considering the long […]
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[…] public currency is simply one in which anyone can verify the money supply. In the case of the Rai stones of Yap […]
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[…] blame for the Iraq war, police brutality, and the war on drugs?". You might think at first that a public coin afficianado like myself would dislike the message here, but you'd be wrong. As Jia Yung Lee points […]
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