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FT Alphaville
Park says that 2008 has marked only the beginning of a much deeper and more structural paradigm shift in finance. A shift connected to many of the old system's practices becoming outdated and technological advancements opening the door to a completely new way of banking and exchange. He uses the word `paradigm' to explain this transition, a lot. (Note - his personal blog is called The Park Paradigm.) Understandably, with Anthemis, Park is now steering investments into start-ups which complement this broader vision. That includes the notion that in the future there will likely be more currencies not less. "Perhaps even billions of currencies," he says, sketching out a world where every individual and every human network boasts its own unit of exchange. He believes that city-states will become more relevant than nations. And that communities and networks will take control over their own units of account. Virtual currencies such as BitCoin or Facebook credits or others not yet invented, meanwhile, could well start to rival established state-issued money both in private exchange and international trade. And community-led Peer2Peer networks will run alongside more established currency systems.
Park says that 2008 has marked only the beginning of a much deeper and more structural paradigm shift in finance. A shift connected to many of the old system's practices becoming outdated and technological advancements opening the door to a completely new way of banking and exchange. He uses the word `paradigm' to explain this transition, a lot. (Note - his personal blog is called The Park Paradigm.)
Understandably, with Anthemis, Park is now steering investments into start-ups which complement this broader vision.
That includes the notion that in the future there will likely be more currencies not less. "Perhaps even billions of currencies," he says, sketching out a world where every individual and every human network boasts its own unit of exchange. He believes that city-states will become more relevant than nations. And that communities and networks will take control over their own units of account. Virtual currencies such as BitCoin or Facebook credits or others not yet invented, meanwhile, could well start to rival established state-issued money both in private exchange and international trade. And community-led Peer2Peer networks will run alongside more established currency systems.
My response when I read that post this morning (thanks to following Izzy on Twitter) was....
I think there will be billions of credit/IOU issuers - within suitable 'framework of trust' agreements - whose credit is based upon their capacity to provide goods and services. But this people-based credit does not mean exactly mean each issuer creating a separate currency. What is needed is a unit of account by reference to which such exchanges are priced, and a framework within which these people-based credit units may be cleared and settled. At the moment we use completely abstract (base-less/worthless) units such as £, or $. In my view we will exchange our credit/IOUs by reference to a unit of energy. And we will not just exchange our 'money's worth' units of credit for each other's units of credit, but will also be able to exchange them for units redeemable in payment for different types of energy, and above all for units redeemable in payment for property rentals. A standard unit of account is not the same thing as a unit of currency. One can no more run out of units of account than one can run out of metres or kilogrammes. But one can certainly run out of currency/IOUs based upon finite resources.
But this people-based credit does not mean exactly mean each issuer creating a separate currency. What is needed is a unit of account by reference to which such exchanges are priced, and a framework within which these people-based credit units may be cleared and settled.
At the moment we use completely abstract (base-less/worthless) units such as £, or $. In my view we will exchange our credit/IOUs by reference to a unit of energy.
And we will not just exchange our 'money's worth' units of credit for each other's units of credit, but will also be able to exchange them for units redeemable in payment for different types of energy, and above all for units redeemable in payment for property rentals.
A standard unit of account is not the same thing as a unit of currency. One can no more run out of units of account than one can run out of metres or kilogrammes. But one can certainly run out of currency/IOUs based upon finite resources.
What militates against a rapid changeover is the huge amount of inertia in the system. There are certainly much better alternatives available for personal banking, business banking etc, but the existing market-share holders will continue to extract rents from us, colluding between themselves, and with the authorities, as necessary. It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II
Clearly great minds think alike ;-)
The dynamic which is changing things is the fact that dis-intermediation to a role of service provision is actually in the interests of the intermediaries themselves - because minimal capital is necessary - and that is why they are already doing it and fucking up organised markets by selling passive 'inflation hedging' investment to muppets while they are at it. "The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson
What militates against a rapid changeover is the huge amount of inertia in the system.
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