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Comment by utunga | Hacker News Reader

a little unfair to tack this response on to this particular post, but it reminds me (again) how much time people spend on the outward appearance of apps around alternative currency without addressing the part that's actually hard.. how do you give an alternative currency real value?

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>how do you give an alternative currency real value?

I'd start by looking at how they implemented the Real in Brazil. They managed to convince an entire country to trust and use an, at the time, completely fictitious currency. There's an excellent article about it, which unfortunately I can't find.

The trick was to get people to start thinking of prices in terms of Reals, while continuing to use the original currency. If you can accomplish that, you've given your currency value.

There's an excellent article about it, which unfortunately I can't find.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/10/04/130329523/how-fake...

HN Discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1757716

>how do you give an alternative currency real value?

That's not your job. People either will, or they won't.

i agree that the value will come from things external to you - i.e. the best you can do is set up the conditions or rules of the interaction in such a way that they are conducive to them creating or assigning that value - but simply ignoring one of the most important factors in determining whether people would actually use your product as 'not your job' .. i dunno.. doesn't sound like a smart strategy

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