Protocols/Money

17 Oct 2025 - 17 Oct 2025

I supposed money is a protocol. Probably the most obvious and canonical one, but it doesn't get discussed explicitly as much as you would think. It's too omnipresent. Of course the origins of Protocol Studies are in cryptocurrency.

Yet the interesting protocols, certainly the high-status human protocols, do not involve money. Money is vulgar, ignoble. Higher things are supposed to not involve cash transactions. A real science of protocols has to encompass both money-protocols (whose engine is greed) and anti-money-protocols (whose engine is generosity, or if you are cynical, social status).

The anti-money protocols might not be protocols, exactly. They aren't so much anti-money as anti-transactional, which is close to being anti-protocol. Yet falling in love and giving to charity are pretty institutionalized features of society. They do have their protocols

I'm interested in how institutions deal with having to exist in both the monetary and non-monetary spheres. Eg, Buddhist teachers need to get paid, but they can't charge, so they are paid with voluntary gifts (dana). Burning Man tries hard to exclude the cash economy but despite their efforts it sort of infiltrates and ruins the culture.

Continued with Claude

Weirdly not sure if I should paste it here or just link. Like, who cares? Better not to duplicate things, to treat the web they way it is supposed to work.

"A major lesson of cryptocurrency protocols is that when you design something with a trust-minimized architecture, people approach it with a mercenary perspective."

Such a weird way to think about it. That is the whole point of cryptocurrency, isn't it? It's got greedy scammer built into it. But OK, sure, it's a lesson.

"I recognize that universal money protocols optimize for certain forms of coordination while systematically undervaluing others. What protocols would better track and reward the things I think actually matter?"

The foundation of cash transactions is greed, the foundation of gift giving is the opposite: generosity, and it is anti-transactional even if there are underlying selfish motives related to social status.