[notahacker]

> Except that isn't how trade or currencies work. This is overly simplistic.

Well no, the way that trade and currencies work is that currencies are made legal tender and backed by mountains of debt and taxes repayable in that currency and as a result are extremely widely accepted, rather than being arbitrarily issued tokens redeemable for nothing with the added disadvantage of demurrage.

But we're not talking about currency, we're talking about tokens that Neal issues to anyone that wants them, and why anyone would want to trade their time or goods for them instead of currency which is much easier to spend and actually possible to hold onto. (You can't just imagine that it has better price stability than the local currency or that it is fungible; these are functions of people having incentives to trade goods or time for them) If my point that this incentive doesn't exist is "overly simplistic" and the incentives instead all point in the opposite direction, it's odd that you don't have a simple answer to the question of how to convince a critical mass of people to overcome this problem.

Local currencies like the now defunct Bristol Pound[1] and the little-used Chiemgauer were guaranteed to be easily redeemable for Euros and Sterling respectively at near parity and supported by lots of local marketing so they basically function(ed) as glorified voucher schemes. Cryptocurrencies are hyped to attract exactly the HODLers demurrage is intended to avoid so can be traded to people who think they will be worth more in future (and still most shitcoins fail) . This proposal has none of those upsides, and more conspicuous downsides. And if I want some Metric just for fun, I don't have to start accepting it, I just open an account and 10,000 of them every month for free...

[1]What they plan to do with Bristol Pay might be interesting, especially to Neal