HACKER Q&A
📣 febin

Can programmable money (need not be crypto) create a better future?


Since the introduction of UPI(Unified Payment Interface) in India, it is significantly easier to send and receive money for producers as well as consumers.

So, I was wondering what potential future can programmable money create. It need not be cryptocurrency. But the ability to move currency through digital logic if implemented by any means of infrastructure, is it beneficial?

Also any books, resources that elaborate on such ideas?

  👤 OJFord Accepted Answer ✓
I don't know about UPI in India specifically, but I suppose I would way that money is already programmable, and things like this (and my bank Monzo has an API, Teller offers one for many banks (but web-scrapes unfortunately)) just lower the barrier to entry.

Basically, B2B and B2C (or mostly 'C2B' as it were) is already programmable, (in UK, Europe, North America at least - and certainly bigger businesses in India. I appreciate smaller or kore rural businesses may have cash or otherwise 'manual' payment relationships with suppliers etc.) the untapped area is C2C. But are there interesting uses for that? 'Decentralised Patreon'?

👤 salawat
No. Not really.

The problem with money movement, is that the medium of exchange and space of negotiable transactions are two massive levers utilized for population scale control.

If there's even a glimmer of probability of something being useful as a medium of exchange, it will end up in the same place as everything else.

👤 HamburgerEmoji
Well, I think you're zooming in on why it is important that programmable money be true cryptocurrencies, i.e. no admins or VIPs with some special level of access.

If there are special people with more authority than others, that authority will inevitably be used to say this person can't get paid, this person can't pay that person, you can't buy this stuff with it, these transactions will be taxed this much, etc.

The key term is "trustlessness". The main idea is that the smart contract is specified, it can't be changed, and then the deployer locks himself out forever. Now there's no way to make a special exception for anyone, or change the inflation rate, or any other funny business. Everyone can see the rules and everyone can verify they can't change.

Another useful set of criteria is aantonop's "five pillars of open blockchains".