Ryan Fugger is starting Ripple, a decentralized payment system. It aims at allowing people to transfer money to each other by breaking transfers into steps where both peers trust each other.
http://www.practicalmetaphors.com/decentralizedcurrency.pdf
- finding paths
- what happens if a step fails, how do you roll back? more people involved = more chances of transaction to fail
- ID on the internet. you can be dis-honored in real life, but on the internet, just get a new nick.
- comparison with hawala. Read a lot about hawala over the week-end. Hawala is combined/backed with real-life business.
Hawala presentation:
http://www.cbuae.gov.ae/Hawala/Hawala1Presentations.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala
http://www.interpol.int/Public/FinancialCrime/MoneyLaundering/hawala/default.asp