Singapore, Amazon lead push for 'purpose bound' digital money Singapore's central bank, the Monetary Authority (MAS), last week published a white paper that proposes the concept of "Purpose Bound Money" (PBM). As the white paper [PDF] explains, PBM contains "digital money as a store of value and programming logic denoting its use based on programmed conditions." Once those conditions are …
Flying cars will never work, theres simply not enuff space. At best where would you land them ? If you opened up a park that barely allows one or two flying cars per football field at you probably need to space them just like airports space planes between runway take offs and landings. Would you trust the morons on the road to also be allowed to fly ?
Would you trust the morons on the road to also be allowed to fly ?
Indded, the argument why this will never happen until we have actually competent people at the helm of organisations that seek to develop auto pilots for real. On the plus side, maybe a good time to get into the hard hat business, also if you keep in mind that such objects are even more attractive to hack as they can cause *way* more damage.
Purpose Bound Money" (PBM).? Smells to me like the gift card scan industry. Take cash up front and then you can get goods later. But the easily forgotten in the digital equivalent of the bottom of the drawer (or, actually, in the bottom of a drawer). After 2 years of cash up front, convert the liability to revenue.
And there is an agent in between. Probably the tax authorities. Or at least, a directly line TO the authority. No problem with the tax office getting their cut, but they needn't know all my business.
"digital money as a store of value and programming logic denoting its use based on programmed conditions." Once those conditions are met, "digital money is released, and it becomes unbounded once again.
Is an English language translation of this available? After struggling with it for a while, I think that it might be proposing some sort of digital escrow. You pay up front. Some unnamed trusted third party holds the cash. The money gets paid out when certain conditions are met. Might be doable. No obvious scam potential other than the "trusted third party" absconding with the cash. But just because it could be done doesn't mean there is any need for this.
I read it as closer to putting a hold on the money whilst it is still at your bank (so no extra trusted third party) and transferred in payment when the conditions are met (delivery of goods); one also hopes that the conditions are also set to allow cancellation of the order and/or a maximum time for completion, after which the hold is released an you get control over the funds back.
This way, your bank gets all the transaction fees (including when the supplier calls to verify the hold is in place) nothing for that greedy escrow agent.
UNFORTUNATELY although the above fits the description given in the article and could actually be a useful addition to banking services, the actual whitepaper starts by prattling on about digital currencies and stablecoin, so it isn't going to be anything sensible and will probably end up with overly-complicated smart-contracts that are coded in Javascript and can be gamed in all sorts of fun ways. Hmm, if I can cause *this* "contract" to trigger now, which will trigger Fred's contract, but mine is so badly code (oops) that it garbage collects, meanwhile Fred's has completed and my other contract has swept in, got the funds, raised some interest, released it back to my first contract which is now ready to continue...
The whitepaper includes some interesting statements, examples include (annoyingly, can't copy'n'paste direct quotes from the PDF on this device to give the full effect):
Pointing out that there will have to be a way to verify the logic in the code of a "smart contract"; this can not possibly make the system expensive to use, as we all know that automated code proofs are easily available and, if not, human programmers can do code checks for barely over the minimum wage. (/s - superfluous, but may help if someone really is holding up the "will review code for food" cardboard sign).
They point out that credit cards exist, but apparently they will only protect the supplier of the goods, not the consumer. Um, I know making a chargeback can be a pain, but a CC giving *no* protections to the consumer when used for distance shopping? Clearly, the banks authoring the whitepaper know more than I, but... yikes?
PS
Haven't spotted any mention or reference to *how* the "smart" bit will be coded (if you have, please correct me) so looks like Javascript is still on the cards (well, it does make eating JSON data easier, what could possibly go wrong with an eval(readfile())?)
To;dr: it isn’t your money. Someone else controls it after you receive it.
No you plebs, you can’t buy a car. “Your” money can’t do that. Live in the pod and eat bugs. Only worthy people can have cars.
Have you used up your heating allowance? It will be a cold winter for you!
Airports need to deal with preventing disastrous conflicts over runway usage. On very rare occasions, they fail to do so. The results are grim.
"Flying cars" will presumably be VTOL (the V is "Vertical") if they plan to be of much use. Nowhere near the groundspace needs of conventional aircraft. A more important question is who controls airspace usage for zillions of vehicles and how do they do it? On top of that there is the problem that we haven't even produced one vehicle capable of Level 5 autonomous driving in 2 dimensions. Exactly who is going to safely navigate these creations in 3 dimensions? To get an idea of what "drivers" -- human or computer -- will be up against, watch The Fifth Element. Does anyone seriously think that most of us could safely "drive" a flying car in that sort of environment?
So basically an escrow payment system, oddly such a system can already be implemented using the boring old credit card payment system as funds can be taken held, and then released or returned. The only real issue is that no country has written laws that express the transaction and who is liable for what when it comes to consumer product laws. As and when such laws exist all the current payment systems (cc, Paypay, Amazon, etc) will be able to operate such a payment system without the need for yet more Cryptocurrencies.
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