Already scriptable

I enjoy reading Protos accounts of the bitcoin swindlers. Protos started as a pro-bitcoin advocate, then gradually wised up and turned into a more objective reporter. Nice to see a company DIverging instead of CONverging into a crime. Stories about Craig Wright are especially entertaining because nobody takes him seriously by now. There’s no risk or threat that his efforts will cause more crime.

This story mentions that Craig was claiming at one point to invent “scriptable money”, which was meant to imply bitcoin.

It’s an interesting idea no matter who said it, but it’s not new. Tokens of various sorts were often “scripted”, narrowly defined to serve specific purposes or cause specific actions or trigger a specific mechanism. A token was only usable to pay bus fare, or only usable in downtown stores.

Scrip was almost always “scripted” and non-fungible, though the name is merely coincidental. Scrip was created by one town or one company, and spendable only within the confines of the town or company. Company scrip was sometimes limited to employees and their families, giving them an added benefit over outsiders. Some scrip types were meant specifically to pay down a company’s bonds.

So there was no need for a new NSA-centered “scriptable” money and there was no need for a new NSA-centered “decentralized” money. Both concepts were already possible long before NSA’s web, and could have been brought back without any connection to NSA’s web.