Peer-to-peer money: free currency over the internet

  • Authors:
  • Kenji Saito

  • Affiliations:
  • Graduate School of Media and Governance, Keio University

  • Venue:
  • HSI'03 Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on Human.society@internet
  • Year:
  • 2003

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Abstract

This paper proposes a resilient, alternative monetary system on the Internet called i-WAT, based on WAT System[1] which uses a form of promissory note as the medium of exchanging goods and services. i-WAT uses an electronic version of the note, ownership of which is transferred by exchanging messages signed in OpenPGP[2]. i-WAT can be used as the basis of various interpersonal/corporative transactions in the globally distributed computing environment. Specific applications being investigated include distributed consumer reports, an alternative copyright system and spam-free e-mail exchange. A prototype of an i-WAT checkbook has been developed as a plug-in for a Jabber[3] client. Experiments are ongoing.