Welcome to General Chat - GAW Community Area
This General Chat area started off as a place for people to talk about things that are off topic, however it has quickly evolved into a community and has become an integral part of the GAW experience for many of us.
Based on its evolving needs and plenty of user feedback, we are trying to bring some order and institute some rules. Please make sure you read these rules and participate in the spirit of this community.
Rules for General Chat
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Be respectful to each other. This is of utmost importance, and comments may be removed if deemed not respectful.
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Personal anecdotes, puzzles, cute pics/clips - everything welcome
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Feel free to give feedback as these rules are expected to keep evoloving
In short, imagine this thread to be a local community hall where we all gather and chat daily. Please be respectful to others in the same way
I am working on a post about Digital Currency and whether its inevitable for a brave free post awakened world. I expect it to rub a lot of people the wrong ways, but I do believe that we will see a decentralized digitial currency becoming common place and this is entirely different from a CBDC where the name of the game is centralized.
This Octopus card seems to be (purely based on your description) a form of decentralized digital currency. I have experienced the digital currency system in India recently based on their PayTM protocol. Its incredibly amazing. From what I understand after talking with folks who have worked on that platform is that it is indeed decentralized, very low cost, and very low barriers for entry for anyone who wants to use it. So even the street vendors selling vegetables have this scan code that anyone can scan with their phone and pay even a small amount like a few cents instantaneously and without surcharges.
No one carries cash there, and I was alarmed initially but once I understood the system they have I had to start rethinking. I think this is the future - a benign, transparent, decentralzied, low cost, no barrier digital currency that is backed by commodities, metals and resources.
Transactions with the Octopus card complete on average in 0.3 seconds. Do know that this card was designed to be used on fare gates, so it has to do the work fast. Imagine everyone picking up their phones, launch the app, and tap the button to show the QR code, then place the code towards the scanner. It would take forever. Plus, purchasing a card only cost $6.4, which is refundable when you return your card. That is why I am against tying the system to smartphones, even if it is decentralized.
There was a comprehensive guide to using the Octopus card - in a 30-second commercial. You would understand how it works even if you don't understand Cantonese: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIK-aGBgr7M
In addition, because of its anonymous nature, each person can hold more than one card. It was estimated in 2017 that every Hongkonger in average holds 5 of these cards.
There's a guy on substack, under the badlands media banner, named Joe Lange I believe, who has some very insightful analysis.
I think the endgame is a decentralized ledger combined with a central authenticator and redeemer. So basically a known entity that can and will redeem for gold (or whatever, something tangible and known), but decentralized accounting.
Sounds plausible. I do believe the "central authenticator" would be something like Ripple's method, where its not a single entity but multiple large organisations / entities can take part in it - but the number is limited to something like 20-30, so that synchronisation can be achieved in realtime.