Board Thread:Micronations/@comment-15776551-20140924022044

While I personally abhor the idea of currency, especially in an electronic/digital form, I can't help but ponder the idea of a national currency solely managed through such means. Fiat money is basically as good as monopoly money, however for technologically minded micronations, I may have come up with a neat idea.

Anyone who owns or has seen an Xbox 360 slim model has likely also seen the removable hard drive that pops into the side of it. It's a nifty little device about the size of the average wallet that can store hundreds of gigabytes of data. Imagine now if you will, the average user of bitcoin, litecoin, or what have you. All of their coins are 100% digital and all of their moneys are managed electronically. Unfortunately, since the entire system is networked, only people who are cautious enough to back up their wallets offline are safe from hackers smart enough to work through the systems and cryptographies. Now take the hard drive, use it to act as a wallet, and give the people of a micronation their own national digital currency to use it with. The cost of physical paper money manufacture and coin minting will constantly be hanging over the head of a nation that uses those systems. A country with this system implemented will only need to produce a few wallets per citizen and manage the computer systems in the banks.

The wallets would be inserted into terminals on cash registers, ATM's, and personal fund trading devices. The wallets would have data on them with the current balance on it, displayed on the outside on a small LCD screen. At stores and banks and such, the funds would be transferred to the company's master wallet, more aptly called their vault, and cyber officers would regulate the networking of the funds when necessary as well as thwarting hacking attacks.

In conclusion, the hardware is practically already in existence. The first major step would be to develop the money softwares for management of funds, transfer of funds, and regulation of fund networking, as well as the credits themselves. I think it would be an interesting idea and could work well in micronational economic systems. It differs itself from credit and debit cards by effectively replacing easily lost or damaged plastic cards with durable boxes the size of already comfortably-sized wallets, and by keeping the funds actually on your person instead of simply a data strip that could be easily copied, stolen, or your account it links to hacked. It also takes away the hassle of a bank account in the traditional sense and the associated service and overdraft fees and interest charges. 