Blockchain: Blueprint for a New Economy

special-use currency, like Healthcoin,

and would exist in the context of a

Hayekian complementary or

multicurrency society. This is the idea of

having multiple currencies (not just

multiple asset classes), but different

currencies for different purposes. The

Freicoin Cashcoin might be like a debit

card for short-term consumable basic

living expenditures. Spending could be

in one coin and savings in another.

Different classes of coins could have

features adapted to specific contexts for

savings, investment, and real estate

transactions, and so on. The concept of

GBIcoin or Freicoin is essentially a

Spendcoin, Cashcoin, or Debitcoin that

could be denominated in the basic

national currency (Nationcoin) like

UScoin or Americoin for supporting

basic day-to-day living expenses, or

perhaps more administratively efficient

at the state level in Statecoin, like

NYcoin.

More broadly, complementary currency

systems and multicurrency systems are

just the application of the same

phenomenon that has been used to

reinvent many other areas of modern

life. Multicurrency systems are the

granularification of currency, finance,

and money; the seemingly infinite

explosion of long-tail power-law

personalization and choice making that

has come to coffee (Starbucks), books

and movies (Amazon, Netflix),

information (blogs, Twitter), learning

(YouTube, MOOCs), and relationships

(polyamory). Now is merely the advent

of these various systems of personalized

multiplicity coming to money and

finance.

Healthcoin could be similarly

conceived as a demurrage currency.

Health-services spending could be

denominated in Healthcoin. In the United

States, many health plans such as Health

Savings Accounts (HSAs) and Cafeteria

Plans are already demurrage currencies

in that they are set up to expire each

year. The system resets, so strange

bubbles and artificialities are not

introduced. All national health services

could be denominated and paid in

Healthcoin.

In addition to the potential value loss

and therefore “incentive to spend”

aspect of a demurrage currency, another

feature of a demurrage currency, which

could be a feature of any cryptocurrency,

is the possibility of periodic

redistribution across network nodes.

This also incentivizes currency holders

to spend out the currency. At the more

extreme end, and as an indication of

connecting currency operations to policy

objectives, this feature could provide the

means for a society to periodically

redistribute income across the populace.

An obvious limitation of managed

demurrage currency systems is that

because enterprising human agents are

the constituents, it is likely, if incentives

were not aligned, that they would find

all manner of clever mechanisms and

loopholes to circumvent the system—for

example, to get around the antihoarding

property of a demurrage currency if

there were some benefit or perceived

benefit to hoarding. However, the goal

would be to appropriately align

incentives, and really to move into a

world in which circumvention incentives

would be irrelevant because the

currency distribution system would be

able to meet the panoply of personalized

needs a society has with money for basic

expenditure. The certainty of GBIcoin,

Freicoin, or Cashcoin reissuance in

subsequent time periods, assuming not

inconsequentially that the system is

stable and that there is trust in the

system, could create a mindset of

abundance, which together with the

demurrage or value-losing aspect of the

currency obviates the need for hoarding

and antiscarcity measures. This would

be a conceptualization of money and the

means of meeting basic survival needs

that is unprecedented in human history—

a trustable source of having basic needs

met such that individuals do not even

have to think about this. The great

potential benefit of having basic survival

needs met could be that it might usher in

not just an era of abundance, but also

free up human cognitive surplus to work

on other higher-order interests,

challenges, and concerns, thus

architecting a new era of human society,

collaboration, and productivity.177

Extensibility of Demurrage

Concept and Features

The action-incitory and dynamic

redistribution features of a demurrage

currency are not just useful for

developing special-purpose currencies

in a multicurrency society, but, like many

blockchain concepts, potentially

extensible on a much broader basis

beyond the context of currency,

economics, and financial systems. The

presupposition is that many things are in

some way a currency, an economy, or a

network, and that we are living in an

increasingly multicurrency society,

literally for monetary systems and also

in the sense of currency, reputation,

intention, attention, and ideas as

currency.

In this framework, we can see that Fitbit

and smartwatch are demurrage health

currencies. A demurrage currency is an

action-inciting currency, a stimulatory

currency, because it gets you to do

something. Fitbit is a demurrage (action-

inciting) health currency, a currency that

prompts you to take action. The

demurrage (incitory) mechanism is that

perhaps in the evening, you see a