digital cash

[Eric Hughes <hughes@soda.berkeley.edu>]

>How about putting the digital money in a game/bbs
>environment?  

I had a talk with a fellow named Joichi Ito at CFP about this subject.
He's a total MUD addict and told me, "I would pay real money for MUD
money."

The legal issues involved in setting up a real world money system are
enormous.  Doing a game environment implementation would allow the
technical issues to be worked out without having to hire lawyers.  And
if some people transact for real money, we can't help that.

For MUD's in particular, there's a problem with conservation of mass,
er, gold.  It's really easy to create more MUD money.  However, if
there were a currency exchange system available between MUD's, you
would have a classical free banking environment.  Everyone issues
currency, and as gamemaster your money deflates to the extent that you
allow more gold to exist in your game.  I can't think of a better way
to get people to learn about monetary effects in macroeconomics.

I also spoke with Pavel Curtis at CFP, but only enough to interest him
in talking further.  Pavel runs the largest MUD on the planet.

Eric