Tokens loaded onto Kong Cash instruments and exchanged ephemerally in person between party A and party B are more anonymous than tokens sent directly from party A to party B electronically which will be recorded for everyone to see forever.
It's programmable money. It's cooler than non-programmable money. We're putting it out there as a toy.
Are we not entertained?
The exit to real currency will always reveal Kong transactions at some point. Real cash is more anonymous because it's seamlessly transacted everywhere.
Then a company like Coinbase shows up and uses their resources to dominate the market as the de-facto app change. Centralised again.
Crypto is just as abstract as the currency we currently use so only functions as legit currency because people are willing to buy and sell it from one side of the world to the other. Bitcoin for example has a single valuation, despite being decentralised.
If you want true decentralisation then you’re looking at the pre-currency barter economy.
Seems more convoluted than connecting a gaming pc to a network (please don’t say bitcoin can’t do that now, you could initially)
I do agree that people can’t picture or visualize in their mind a “bitcoin”, and so this solves that part. But then you’re left with the, how do people print this tangible pretty currency part.
Cryptocurrencies are turning out to be really important but lack a physical cash instrument.
Kong marries the two.
Kong accomplishes that by minimizing trust down to the chip level - as opposed to the firmware or application level - so we can make these things trustlessly and cost effectively. Something like a Trezor is too expensive and dear to be treated like physical cash.
It already has all the benefits of physical crypto with less headache.
Couldn’t you imagine a world where this starts trending cheaper and cheaper and soon becomes a commodity ?
Kong is a toy implementation of this idea, but I think it's a very powerful idea.
Further, I'd suggest you read up on NFC and tokenization, it's not true that the companies in question actually do get access to that information unless they have separate-from-the-technology arrangements with payment processors.
In either case I'd rather be tracked than bankrupt.
Not really. There's a couple northern european economies that are almost entirely cashless.
Both the UK and the Netherlands for instance have issue reports[1][2] to ensure cash does not go away as it serves a vital purpose for protected classes.
[1] https://www.accesstocash.org.uk/media/1087/final-report-fina... - from the UK report "17% of the population would struggle in a cashless society"
[2]https://www.dnb.nl/en/binaries/DNB%20Payments%20Strategy%202... - from the DNB report "While we support the retailers’ and banks’ wish to encourage electronic payments, we do not seek to achieve a cashless society..."
Not that Kong isn’t centralised. It’s just that it’s controlled by unknown nobodies, rather than the most powerful entity in the world.
I just don't see why people would switch to something to ensure 100% real bills and lose all the other benefits of cash. How is there going to be a cambrian explosion with an issue that affects almost no one?
Secondarily, it demonstrates how we can move validation from physical properties of cash instruments (such as fine printing and exotic inks) to cryptographic properties.
We believe the latter to be superior and a path to ratchet down the cost overheads that go into securing cash issuance and payment channels.
Programmable colors.
Programmable taste.
We already do this with genetically modifying food, why not do it with code?!
Maybe kind of a valid point, but... I don't know, maybe that varies from place to place a lot, but fake money doesn't feel like a huge problem around here. I mean, unless I am a tax-paying entity with a cashier machine, I don't even really care if a bill is fake or not: it is not fake, if somebody else accepts it. And I'm pretty sure somebody will, if I accepted it after looking at it. It doesn't only concern how bill was actually printed: it happened more than once that I had to worry about a bill because of its condition (tears, dirt, etc.)
> more anonymous than tokens sent directly
Yeah, as much as dollar bills are. That's why Monero is better than Ethereum, BTW.
> It's cooler
... Oh, come on.
And that right there is the honesty that the rest of this thread is missing.
Sure, it can be used as money (assuming what authors say is correct). Virtually any physical items that are hard to fake can be used as money, as long as people believe it's worth something. And if we are okay with complicated and rather expensive manufacturing process (since Kong isn't something you find in the forest), it really is a non-problem to create a new "government-independent currency", print it and sell it. Nobody really gives a fuck about that, because money is worthless unless you can spend it. And as long as Costco doesn't accept Kong (or any other made-up currency), it would be hard for you to spend it on anything other than unique hand-crafted chairs or cocaine. And it would be hard for them to start accepting Kong notes, while being a government-compliant entity that pays taxes, as every physical bill they get must be accounted for and put into a cashier machine.
And, by the way, since every Kong bill is unique, it isn't any more anonymous than dollar bills: i.e. pretty much anonymous as long as they change hands without touching real cashier machines or ATMs, which, as it happens, is not so long, because people don't generally exchange unique hand-crafted chairs for cocaine, they buy/sell it, then go to Costco to get some more conventional goods or services.