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<fergalslack> Morning just joining for the community chat later on today. Think I'm a bit early :)
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<vu980> I'm going to setting up Horizon server in Ubuntu server but don't know the way. I see a document but it only guides for Max OS. Anyone setup Horizon in a Ubuntu? Please help me.
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<yaseenhamdulay> Not sure if this is the correct place to mention it but the "find out more" button on the manage currencies page 404's on http://stellar.org|stellar.org
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<irisli> @yaseenhamdulay: thanks for letting us know about the links
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<vanessa> Hey crew, welcome!
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<vanessa> See some familiar faces @charles @dzham @donovan
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<vanessa> And welcome to new folks @davehopton and @fergalslack @pierre @bk_pk @stunthawk
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<vanessa> We're going to get started in just a sec
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<davehopton> hi all!
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<eva> hey all!
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<eva> really excited to see you all turn out for the community chat :)
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<joyce> hello everyone!
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<vanessa> OK...ready...set...
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<eva> :racehorse:
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<vanessa> *What is one thing you wish people knew about digital currency?*
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<vanessa> We know it's hard
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<vanessa> We know it's complicated
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<vanessa> but what's the one salient concept, idea, figure, or definition
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<vanessa> that really resonates with you
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<eva> hahah kind of a big question, we know
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<johnicholas> I don't know much about digital currency
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<vanessa> OMG then 100% welcome
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<vanessa> what brings you by?
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<johnicholas> as I understand it, the big concept is "we're not already using it"
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<vanessa> Interesting--what do you mean by that?
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<johnicholas> I'm a programmer, following zooko and bitcoin a little - seems like stellar takes the learnings from bitcoin and avoids the hype and speculation
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<garth> All currency is digital currency now. 97% of US dollars Tr digital.
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<johnicholas> also I trust David Mazières
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<vanessa> He's an excellent brain that David
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<vanessa> @garth: I read that in this awesome payments book
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<vanessa> that most, almost all, USD is already digital
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<davehopton> I think that's probably not commonly known though
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<davehopton> I think your point is a great one - that there's a huge difference between digital currencies and digital USD
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<vanessa> @garth: just to be clear
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<davehopton> but I don't think many people realise that
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<vanessa> But there's a difference bw USD in digital form
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<garth> The advancement is in alternative rail systems. Yes?
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<vanessa> and a representation of currency digitally
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<johnicholas> what's a rail system?
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<garth> The rail system is how digital money (information) gets moved. USD use Swift I believe. Stellar is an alternative option to move dollars or any contained information. No?
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<eva> they're orgs, yes, but you can also refer to the rails that they use by those proper names
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<eva> ex: "x bank sends money to y bank using SWIFT"
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<eva> Yeah, Stellar is absolutely an alternative to that - or rather, it's a way to link all of these disparate rails together
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<eva> I don't see Stellar as necessarily a replacement. It could be - but it could also be the backbone that connects everything, if that distinction makes sense
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<davehopton> sorry - I'm pretty new to Stellar too, so can I just clarify whether Stellar is connection for those rails or a replacement of them>
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<vanessa> Hey @davehopton
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<davehopton> i.e. where does it differ from the Blockchain / Dwolla
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<vanessa> So I have a slide deck walking through a few of those bits
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<davehopton> (don't want to derail this convo tho so point me to the best place to read up :) )
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<davehopton> (also couldnt' resist the pun, sorry)
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<vanessa> oh no, no derailing :) your Qs are awesome
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<vanessa> @davehopton: have you seen our graphic novel?
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<vanessa> it describes how consensus is the awesome when it is fast and super distributed
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<eva> so @johnicholas, as someone who's fairly new to digital currency, I'd like to ask you a slightly different question - what's been the most confusing part of digital currency? What do you want to know, or what do you wish someone had explained better?
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<davehopton> I haven't no, but I'm reasonably familiar with the distribution + consensus angles
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<davehopton> would love to read tho
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<johnicholas> I read the whitepaper and the graphic novel
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<eva> hey Jesse, welcome :)
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<vanessa> And @jonathanmckay hellloooooo!
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<davehopton> thanks @eva
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<vanessa> @johnicholas: how was your experience with the whitepaper?
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<johnicholas> and it seems reasonable, but of course it has to be trusted slowly
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<vanessa> what did you take away/wish to understand deeper
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<johnicholas> there's politics and hype around these topics
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<johnicholas> I'm not sure how much to expect can be solved
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<johnicholas> some people are really against "fiat currency", and some people (at least at one time) push "money multipliers"
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<johnicholas> that's what I mean by politics and hype
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<eva> *nods*
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<johnicholas> can I use stellar as a distributed consensus algorithm among internet-of-things devices, talking about, say, the shape of the room they are in, or the wireless noise conditions?
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<vanessa> say more about that @johnicholas
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<vanessa> So the objects would agree on the size/shape of the room?
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<vanessa> Eeeeeek!
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<garth> One thing I wish people knew about digital currency is that the technology of moving the information is only one side of the equation. There is a money system side that is important too. Who creates it? How is the quantity controlled? And how is it injected into the economy?
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<eva> yes yes yes
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<eva> +1000 to that, @garth
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<vanessa> @garth: I always appreciate how you reflect about power
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<eva> the wider context is so important to understanding digital money
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<vanessa> the power to name a currency, distribute it
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<vanessa> very important vis-a-vis both to identity and citizens
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<johnicholas> the size and shape of the room is the idea of "localizers", such as described in Vernor Vinge's "A Deepness in the Sky"
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<johnicholas> commercial banks make profits by making money, yes?
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<johnicholas> but do they need a brick and mortar address in order for the government to effectively regulate them?
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<scott> @johnicholas: you probably wouldn’t want to use stellar _the network_ specifically for that use case, but you certainly could use the stellar consensus protocol to drive some of that coordination
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<vanessa> *high fives*
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<davehopton> thinking more on power - there are obvious problems with the fiat model but actually, having leadership (even if you disagree with it) is an important thing
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<johnicholas> @scott: this kind of thing - distributed wireless information sharing among medical devices in an ICU https://www.openice.info/
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<davehopton> so it's a good point - the anarchist model of distributed systems doesn't solve every problem
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<davehopton> just shifts them
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<vanessa> The anthropologists say that we'll never really give up that localized identity we get through money
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<vanessa> There's this great social scientist who studies this stuff, Bill Maurer
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<davehopton> but what if you believe that the concept of nation states is slowly ending?
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<davehopton> ie. people are building up connections with other similar people around the world because of the internet, and feel more attached to those groups than anything related to their actual geography
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<vanessa> I can't wait to hear what folks in the channel have to say on this topic
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<davehopton> could those groups form currencies?
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<vanessa> I'm super interested in local community currencies
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<davehopton> in that scenario, you retain the identity of 'money' but it's nothing to do with location or jurisdiction
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<vanessa> in Philly we've got "Philabucks" for community service
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<vanessa> *nods* @davehopton
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<davehopton> there's the Bristol Pound near me - not sure how much it's used though
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<garth> The power to create money is like the ring in the lord of the rings. I don't think there is anyone who resist the temptations it presents. Holding responsibility of holding that power is challenging I would think.
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<vanessa> ++++ @garth
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<johnicholas> @vanessa: do you allow or prohibit or tariff exchanging Philabucks for other currencies such as the dollar?
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<eva> I think that's why people are so into the distributed aspect
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<eva> diluted power
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<vanessa> @johnicholas: there is no exchange to fiat
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<johnicholas> @vanessa: how do you enforce that?
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<vanessa> its an internal system to recognize community contributions
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<davehopton> I find that funny though @eva
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<vanessa> (btw they don't have anything to do with Stellar, but a community org I quite like)
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<eva> @davehopton: what do you mean?
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<davehopton> we have people who revere figures like Zuck, in part because he pushed for founder control
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<davehopton> so it's fine in a company setting - it's actually proving more and more popular
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<davehopton> but not in others?
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<eva> well, think of it this way
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<eva> what if a single company owned the internet?
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<davehopton> i.e. I find it an interesting dichotomy between the fact that 1.4bn people are happy to use Facebook, which is ultimately controlled by one man, but revile fiat currencies which are usually managed within some sort of democratic system (flaws and all)
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<eva> that would be a different scenario than a company leading the social media space
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<johnicholas> they would probably be wildly profitable, and hated - this is almost the same situation Microsoft is in
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<eva> (not saying that I'm for or against companies like that, but trying to illustrate the difference)
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<eva> the internet is almost like ... air,or water, at this point
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<eva> it's a common thing that needs to be accessible
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<davehopton> yep, I get that
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<eva> so I think that might be part of the dichotomy, maybe?
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<davehopton> I guess I'm trying to articulate (poorly) that a part of me is slightly sad that we're rushing to build systems that are founded on the principal of zero trust
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<davehopton> when good leadership can be a wonderful thing
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<eva> do you see the Stellar network as founded on zero trust...?
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<davehopton> hmm :P
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<davehopton> good question
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<davehopton> yes and no
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<eva> :)
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<eva> at a protocol level, it's entirely based on trust - flexible, grouped trust, but still
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<vanessa> And we want to share our favorite "trust-based" emoji as well
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<davehopton> how do you mean, sorry? Afraid my lack of knowledge of Stellar here doesn't help
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<vanessa> :quorum:
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<vanessa> that's a quorum
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<davehopton> haha
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<vanessa> and the trust has to do with your quorum slice
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<vanessa> :quorum_intersection:
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<vanessa> those are intersecting quora
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<eva> it's dense, though, so you may want to read it in a less-rushed context
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<davehopton> will do
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<graydon> I think there are basically two dimensions to trust problems "on computers" (vs. in the real world)
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<graydon> the first is whether or not the trust is explicitly _represented_ anywhere: if it's isolated in a single, easily changed "value" or "set of values" in a larger system, then you have some options about changing it to some other value without abandoning the whole system. some systems embed their trust judgments all through the technology so they're impossible to change or adjust to match your "real" trust feelin
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<eva> precisely
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<johnicholas> e.g. a system of transmitting information on postcards might encode trust-all-mail-carriers all through the technology, yes?
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<graydon> the second is the extent to which that representation (or structural embedding) is more centralizing than it needs to be. whether it forces you to trust one person when trusting 2, 3, 100, or "anyone in my vicinity" would also do. the key point here is _necessary_. the necessity varies with the problem. for something like a CDN, you ought to be able to fetch a value from "anyone with a copy"; any further centr
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problem like double-entry accounting, the thing you're trusting is the capability to reconcile account disagreements -- double spends etc. -- so you're implicitly trusting not just some party but also the consensus algorithm they're using and several layers of background technology (how well their operations are, backups, communication links, computers, etc.)
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<vanessa> Graydon, what's a CDN?
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<johnicholas> content distribution network
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<graydon> content distribution/delivery network, like akamai or google edge caches or whatever
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<graydon> or say bittorrent. nobody cares who you get a copy of a bittorrent file from because the content is self-identifying.
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<vanessa> Ah, great example
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<vanessa> Self-identifying is a strange phrase though
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<graydon> (well, assuming you found a reliable hash; but then the question of locating interesting hashes is brought to the foreground. naming!)
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<vanessa> naming!
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<graydon> content in those networks is literally self-identifying. the network has no idea about the names, just the hashes. you have the content, you have its hash.
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<vanessa> Ah, got it.
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<johnicholas> does the availability of stellar reduce the barrier to entry of competitors to existing payments systems?
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<graydon> git is a great case study in this. the content is self-identifying and the naming is linked to identities that control DNS pointers (and/or github accounts), and so we give up a little bit of trust to the people operating those name:hash mapping devices (DNS servers and github) in exchange for relatively flat "content soup" in the actual space of revisions.
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<eva> @johnicholas Stellar aims to make it easy for devs everywhere to build financial solutions for their own communities - so, essentially, yes
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<vanessa> For example, @josh has built reveal using stellar
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<graydon> johnicholas: it's an attempt at establishing a trust structure a bit more "internet like", in the sense that decision-making authority ought to drift outwards over time due to the distribution of trust judgments. consider the email system for example. gmail can decide one day to stop accepting email from yahoo; if it does so, the email system as a whole keeps working, and emails forwarded from accounts on hotm
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emails are dropped or delayed due to a missing trust relationship.
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<johnicholas> nod
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<graydon> on the other hand, it is not "content soup" in the same way bittorrent, git, or (say) bitcoin is. one can actually express such trust judgments, and one is not forced to engineer directly against sybil attacks (drowning the system in fake participants) so the system is easier to engineer, scale, protect.
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<eva> so @graydon, very curious as to your thoughts on this: what do you wish people knew about digital currency?
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<johnicholas> stupid question: is it easy to have multiple currencies in the same scp network?
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<eva> not a stupid question at all - and the answer is that the Stellar network is designed intentionally to support multiple currencies.
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<graydon> the values being accounted-for aren't exactly currencies, they denote credit-for-currency, credit held with a particular counterparty. but yes, any account in the network can issue such credits against any currency they like.
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<vanessa> Anyone else have suggestions about what they wish people knew?
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<graydon> this is a bit crude but: I wish people were aware of the economic history surrounding the gold standard
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<davehopton> haha
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<johnicholas> so if vanessa was trusted by the people of philly to operate in their best group interest, could vanessa become a "fed" for her own currency?
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<graydon> it's extremely frustrating to have to walk people through the harm it does over and over :(
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<vanessa> @graydon: do you have a resource you point people to?
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<vanessa> Dry dry dry
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<davehopton> NPR's Planet Money did an episode on the Gold Standard
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<johnicholas> I have to go. Thank you very much for hosting this, and for developing Stellar!
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<davehopton> I listened to it a while ago but I remember it being quite an interesting and accessible primer on the pitfalls of the gold standard
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<eva> bye @johnicholas and thanks very much for joining in!
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<eva> pleasure to chat with you
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<eva> and hope to see you around here
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<vanessa> @johnicholas: sorry I had to run but will try to get to your q in short order!
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<vanessa> Thanks @davehopton
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<eva> [community chat round 1 is officially done, but obviously folks are more than welcome to stick around and chat]
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<graydon> johnicholas: more or less. again, it's not a "currency" per se, in any sense people use the term outside the network. just credit-for-currency with a particular counterparty. the counterparty name is attached to the unit of account. the network doesn't consider one counterparty's credits equivalent to another just because they're denominated in the same currency.
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<vanessa> We'll be doing it again at 5pm PDT!
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<fergalslack> Hi all just reading all the comments, all very interesting indeed , thank you
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<davehopton> @eva @vanessa a thing I'd like to know is the difference between bitcoin + stellar
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<davehopton> again, if this is well covered elsewhere, point me to it :)
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<graydon> vanessa: generally gold standards cause governments to lose sovereignty in fiscal and trade policy, which makes them extremely vulnerable to economic shocks and being dragged/pushed around by countries outside their borders. it removes a policy instrument from their kit. an instrument that's been essential in stabilizing the post-19th-century capitalist world.
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<eva> @davehopton: glad it helped :)
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<eva> @graydon: interesting ...
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<eva> so for you, you wish people knew more about the broader context of currencies in general (specifically how the gold standard is the worst)?
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<davehopton> I'm sure @graydon will add to this, but personally I find that a slightly weird goal @eva considering that we moved off the gold standard a while ago
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<davehopton> but if you take it as a proxy for people believing that currencies have to be backed by something, then it would be helpful if people understood that better
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<graydon> yes, and like more generally how the different levels of the money supply work, what M0 vs. M1 money is, narrow moneys, broad moneys, money-like instruments. why and how a person buys one money with another money, why moneys become "cheap" or "valuable" or "stable" or "unstable"
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<davehopton> don't set the bar too low there @graydon !
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<eva> *nods*
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<eva> hahahah
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<eva> yeah, it's definitely a lot to wrap your mind around
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<eva> but it really does help it all click into place to understand how money *currently* works
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<eva> hard to reimagine the future of it when you don't know the present reality
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<davehopton> ^^^
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<graydon> davehopton: well, it's a thing I wish people knew because a lot of people in the cryptocurrency space have a political view towards depriving governments of the right to monetary policy, want to "take money out of the government's hands", often implicitly tying the money supply to a fixed quantity (determined by cryptocurrency experts, of course)
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<eva> that's the trouble though - these are such hard, layered, and frankly sometimes bland issues. It's hard to get people through all the learning
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<davehopton> I agree @graydon - as I said earlier, I think it's a bit of a myth that you can move to a completely decentralised system
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<eva> *nods*
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<davehopton> it's inevitable that there will be power imbalances of some variety
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<graydon> I think "taking money out of the government's hands" is a bad goal and I wish people were aware of some of the reasons they might not want to do so. it's a bit like saying "let's take the legal system out of the government's hands" (and replace it with private contracts, private armies and such). it's probably not a great idea!
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<davehopton> 100% agree
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<xekoukou> Hello all, well the problem is not the government, but the absense of democracy by the governmemt
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<graydon> quite a different problem :)
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<davehopton> indeed
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<davehopton> and one that cryptocurrencies are unlikely to solve
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<xekoukou> so taking money out of the government would need to find democratic ways to implement monetary policies.
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<xekoukou> in a cryptocurrency
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<eva> welcome @qlb :)
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<graydon> I think that's a bit of a tall order. for now I'm happy with people treating "cryptocurrency" as an engineering problem for speed, transparency, interoperability, machine-operability, competition and resiliency goals.
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<davehopton> perhaps that's an interesting question then: how far do people believe Stellar's consensus model works with democracy?
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<graydon> not a political problem at all
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<eva> +1
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<davehopton> but if it's successful @graydon, will it not become a political problem?
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<eva> how so/
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<garth> The USD is not in the governments hands. Dollars are created by private banks when they make loans. If it was in the governments hands there would be no national debt. There would probably be a much bigger military too.
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<graydon> I don't think so. I think capital and existing governments will be happy to have an avenue for faster, more reliable global transactions. a handful of middlemen who are currently extracting unfair rents from the existing financial system might get cut out, or they might just shift business models to other places in the system. I'd prefer they not take such money out of the poorest members of society simply try
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<graydon> garth: different levels of the money supply. banks don't mint money, don't insure money, and they don't pick their own balance with the federal reserve. their vault cash and reserve amounts are part of the monetary base. the deposit accounts they operate are M1 money.
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<xekoukou> Can you explain it a bit more? @graydon I am sure that they only have only a small percentage of their money reserved. The other given as loans.
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<graydon> yes but what is the nature of those loans? for example, if they call the loan in and the debtor declared bankruptcy, they money is erased from existence, right? by an act of a court, not a bank or the fed.
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<graydon> and conversely, if the debtor goes to a second bank and says "I would like a new, second and even larger loan, and I will secure it only with the money I have taken from this first loan", the second bank will look at them funny and say no, right?
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<graydon> so it's, in some way, "different stuff" than monetary-base money. it's a unit of account but it accounts for a different relationship than the relationship the bank itself has with the federal reserve, in a central-bank account.
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<graydon> what's happening in fractional-reserve banking is that the bank is issuing broader-moneys at some multiple rate of its retained amounts of narrower-moneys; but under the hood those different moneys are accounted for differently, not considered equivalent.
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<xekoukou> The results are the same though.
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<xekoukou> An increase in the money supply at a specific moment.
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<graydon> not at all. if the moneys were considered equivalent a bank could make up as much money as it wanted by replacing its reserve with its lendings.
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<graydon> different parts of the money supply increase at different rates, and incurring different risks, depending on different policies by different actors. I'm not sure what you're getting at. banks can fail, despite their efforts to remain solvent.
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<xekoukou> No, I do not consider the lendings as money from the point of view of the bank, but from the point of view of the economy. At a certain time, the money that are in circulation can be increased because of banks.
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<graydon> bad investment, bank run, etc.
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<graydon> the "money in circulation" at which level? they can't mint money.
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<graydon> they can make loans or take deposits and denote those values in accounts. but then if someone comes to withdraw that money, they might fail. because it's only insured to a point, and most banks can't survive a run.
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<garth> Where did the money base come from? Money is not erased when someone goes bankrupt. The bank is on the hook for it at that point. Money is erased when loans are paid back. US dollars are based on debt so if all debts were paid the money supply would disappear. The fed is a clearing house for US banks. It does have ties to the government but ultimately it is a private company too. They like us to think they are
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most people believe this.
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<graydon> it's a private company with a very special capability.
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<graydon> (I don't even know if it's a private company; I'm canadian and the central bank here is definitely not private, but even if it were, it's the instrument through which adjustments to monetary policy are exercised, so..)
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<graydon> when someone goes bankrupt, their debts are discharged. what was owing is no longer owing. so if you considered that debt as a form of money, it's destroyed, an asset written off the books at the bank.
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<xekoukou> There is a very big problem when the control of the money supply is controled by few private corporations/banks supported by the central bank when at the same time the economy we live in is a debt based economy (draw capital, make investment, start production).
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<xekoukou> That leads to a non-democratic control of the economy.
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<graydon> (this is ... all getting a bit far from discussing the network and its protocols, y'know. we're not in the business of making monetary policy!)
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<graydon> I think it's quite a long story to discuss which institutions properly articulate the democratic will vs. which instruments diffuse or subvert it.
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<graydon> saying that a bank (publicly traded, publicly regulated, drawing funds from publicly administered federal reserves) is "undemocratic" is a pretty blunt statement. you could consider it democratic or undemocratic to varying degrees.
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<graydon> I should emphasize, these are all just my own opinions. I am not trying to make a statement on behalf of SDF, beyond the simple fact that I work here, our business is not really about this level of policy. we're just making protocols for communication and consensus, not public policy.
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<xekoukou> Certainly, there could be a form of control by the government, which is theoretically controlled by the people through elections. Judging though from experience, that doesn't happen.
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<graydon> democracy is a long and highly varied experiment. I do not feel qualified to judge its success, but I am also unlikely to concur with others' quick judgments about it.
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<xekoukou> So, in this big pipe of transfer of power, from the people, to the government, to the central bank, to the banks, somehow we lose a lot of things.
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<eva> hey all, just going to nip in here and say that it'd be great if we could focus in more on money/finance etc. rather than politics more broadly - those discussions are fine, but not really what this channel is for :)
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<graydon> yeah, I think we're getting pretty far afield. this isn't really something I feel like digging into, sorry :(
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<umbrel> @eva sorry, I read your last message as “Let’s keep our mouths shut about possible implications to politics until cryptocurrencies succeed” :)
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<xekoukou> yea, we talk about something else. It's graydon fault, though. He started it and he ha very interesting ideas too.
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<graydon> I think it's both premature and outside of our scope to define political outcomes. I mentioned my displeasure with people drawing hopeful (and imo misguided) analogies between cryptocurrency and the gold standard specifically because I wish people _didn't_ try to use this problem space as a vehicle for their politics.
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<umbrel> I’m curious what’s gonna happen, but yeah, it’s completely different topic
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<donovan> Not going to jump in to this chat, but worth considering that the amount of money that a bank can lend or put at "risk" compared to how much it holds in ready cash or capital is set by international agreement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basel_III Most recent problems with banks have stemmed from this liquidity ratio being too low, and the fact that “voters” money was held at these ratios in risk-taking
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government problems.
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<xekoukou> But what you pointed about it is not political at all. It can be made political though. The question was whether a fixed money base could allow for a stable economy.
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<xekoukou> This is a technical problem in my opinion.
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<graydon> and in response to vanessa's initial question -- what I wish people knew about cryptocurrency -- I wish people knew the monetary history of attempts in that space enough to leave that problem well enough alone
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<donovan> Money supply is mostly a blunt instrument for trying to control inflation.
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<graydon> don't forget "keeping your credit markets liquid while you're running a trade deficit". fixed money supplies are disastrous.
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<graydon> anyway, let's please leave it alone. it was a small point, I wasn't trying to provoke a big political debate.
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<graydon> (actually I have a doctor's appointment shortly, gotta head out for a bit)
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<donovan> Well, it is all kind of related to the rails question. Banks want systems that mean they don’t have too many of their assets held by other banks that might go bust and they can run models that calculate their exposure in many differnt scenarios, and this what all the compliance and Basel and national regulators require. The interesting question is whether distributed ledgers and cryptocurrencies help this p
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<xekoukou> The original implementation of ripple by Ryan Fugger was trying to solve the liquidity problem. I think that a decentralized stellar, that allowed the issuance of credit by the traders/merchants etc. could solve that problem.
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<garth> Gold is not entirely outside of the topic of crypto currency. Bitcoin uses the same money system as gold. The quantity is controlled by people finding it and it is injected into the economy when miners sell it or spend it. I am Canadian too by the way and yes the Canadian central bank is run by the government.
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<graydon> stellar supports that behavior. the only partial sense of centralization is that recordkeeping of the ledger itself happens through consensus between network operators with an explicit trust topology. the issuance of credit and willingness to trust is completely in the hands of the parties at the edges of the network.
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<donovan> Is there a central bank that isn’t run by a government? :)
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<xekoukou> Exactly
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<graydon> again with the email example: one can think of gmail as centralizing email to some extent, but it's not actually deciding how many email accounts in the world exist to send or receive email. and it's *certainly* not deciding what people choose to say in their emails. if they don't want to carry your email, very likely someone else will (unless perhaps you're a spammer, but even they they find a way).
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<donovan> The big question I’ve heard raised before is why banks would want to use a distributed system that everyone has access to. What’s to stop them just starting their own private ledger using Ripple/Stellar/HyperLedger/Eris or even a fresh Bitcoin/Litecoin blockchain and avoiding all of the politics of using an existing ledger that is the topic of such heated debate?
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<graydon> ISPs are a bit of a centralizing force in network transit too, in the sense that things funnel into and out of them, but they also save us from having to literally run wires from every household to every other. aggregation and volume operation, hub-and-spoke models, can be essential to scaling well.
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<xekoukou> There is an incentive of interoperability for the banks
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<xekoukou> They want to be able to communicate with the stellar network.
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<donovan> For consumer-facing banks maybe.
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<alexsingh> I am late to the party.
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<graydon> donovan: I'd imagine tx volume will be the main incentive, and it'll be a chicken-and-egg problem like with email or internet traffic. remember when there were multiple email systems, and multiple packet-switched networks? I do :)
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<donovan> @graydon: True, I’d like it to be that way too. But militaries have their own private networks, and SWIFT is currently a private network. The idea that punters like you or I might be able to provide liquidity to huge transfers of foreign currency exchange sounds great. But is that what banks want? To share profit potential with the masses? :)
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<donovan> _puts tongue in cheek_ :)
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<graydon> fair point. I think there'll always be private networks. it's a question of whether there's a viable public one at all, and whether there are enough interconnects to make it useful to the general public.
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<graydon> currently there's really not a viable public network that works like stellar ought to. we'd like there to be one.
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<graydon> bitcoin kinda sorta half drifts in the right direction. it got people's attention. but it's pretty hard to work with in any units other than XBT, and it's pretty slow and clunky due to the trust model (imo).
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<xekoukou> Do you think stellar will be able to scale in the future for that amount of transactions necessary to become the main money transfer network?
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<donovan> My original interest in Ripple stemmed from the hope that it would help the average person from getting ripped of by the endless fees imposed by banks and existing currency exchanges. Why should someone in the UK being paid for work by someone in another country pay $40 per payment for the privilege? I was greatly dismayed when the focus switched to encouraging banks rather than independent gateways occurred.
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and AML regulations supposedly gives banks an advantage in the sense they already have the required proof and documentation. Which is a shame….
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<graydon> our target for the reengineering effort was ... high volume, yes. thousands of tx / sec. it's currently not able to sustain that but we've also not subjected it to extensive tuning yet. single node service at hundreds of tx/sec is fine currently, and we just replaced much of the SCP implementation and are starting re-measuring perf.
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<graydon> ok, doctor's appt. for real now
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<graydon> nice chatting!
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<xekoukou> Thank for your time, nice chatting to you too.
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<vanessa> Hey crew, just a reminder that in 30 minutes we're going to start the community chat
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<vanessa> And so happy to see you @emilyhorsman!
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<emilyhorsman> hey @vanessa :)
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<eva> oh hai!
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<emilyhorsman> @eva!
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<eva> how's life/
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<emilyhorsman> not too shabby, short of trying to find work lol
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<emilyhorsman> how about you?
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<eva> that part is never very fun
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<eva> good :) We had a Stellar meetup last night, so a little sleepy (I'm one of those old ladies who likes to go to bed at 10:30). But it was really great to see people in person.
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<emilyhorsman> My life is always more on track when I go to bed consistently around that time >_<
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<eva> right?
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<eva> sadly, I'm also most creative around 2 in the morning
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<eva> (though I think @joyce is the same way :) )
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<vanessa> You folks astound me
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<vanessa> 10pm and im :zzz:
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<eva> heheh
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<vanessa> @emilyhorsman: full disclosure, @eva is helping me with my emoji game
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<vanessa> She is super-good at the internet
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<emilyhorsman> LOL
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<emilyhorsman> yus, I rather enjoy her twitter
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<emilyhorsman> @eva: The sparkling artisan water irked me so much -_-
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<eva> hahah
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<eva> I'm not going to lie though - I drank it, and it was really good
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<emilyhorsman> I do like sparkling water though
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<eva> SF is a weird place - you'll have fantastic conversations about financial inclusion, but in a space with $5 coffees.
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<emilyhorsman> baha
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<eva> oh for sure - the bottles were glass/reusable (of course)
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<emilyhorsman> Us privileged folk need to feel good about activism of course
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<emilyhorsman> why else would we do it other than brownie points
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<eva> obviously
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<eva> but yeah, SF is an interesting place in that sense. It's like ... so many people here want to make positive change in the world, but it's hard to get outside our bubble
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<emilyhorsman> People in that comment thread are actually trying to say that water isn’t a human right
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<eva> oh dear
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<emilyhorsman> Yeah :s
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<eva> are you familiar with http://Water.org|Water.org?
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<emilyhorsman> yus indeed
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<eva> I'm sure you'd love it :)
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<emilyhorsman> I’ve heard mixed feelings on them though?
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<eva> oh?
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<emilyhorsman> Are they the ones where you can start your own campaign etc?
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<eva> I think so, yes
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<eva> like you can become a fundraiser/campaign leader
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<emilyhorsman> Yeah
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<emilyhorsman> Apparently they’re not the best charity
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<emilyhorsman> but I haven’t read too much myself/formed my own opinion
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<eva> I wonder if they're referring to the overhead/direct give ratio
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<emilyhorsman> Both that and politics
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<emilyhorsman> but mostly that
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<eva> I don't know much about them myself, just that their stories are heartbreaking and manage to reach through the dispassionate wall of the internet and actually move people
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<emilyhorsman> that is pretty darn good then
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<eva> yeah
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<vanessa> @emily refresh my memory--you said you were technical, yes? (you referred to a local meetup in TO)
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<emilyhorsman> Sure am
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<emilyhorsman> Although not like, math crypto technical haha :)
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<eva> heheh
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<eva> crypto is a whole other ballgame
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<vanessa> Hey @charles @zealord @dzham nice to see you
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<vanessa> And @judytuna I don't think we've met--welcome!