Jacob Aron, technology reporter
(Image: MANTEL/SIPA/Rex Features)
The Occupy movement rails against the richest 1 per cent and the banks that support them, while supporters of the online currency Bitcoin want to do away with banks all together. So perhaps it's only natural that the two have come together to create Freicoin, a currency controlled by the general public rather than central banks that makes it impossible for the rich to hoard cash.
Bitcoin users run peer-to-peer software that handles transactions and keeps the currency secure, receiving small transaction fees in exchange for their computer time. Freicoin, created by NASA engineers Mark Friedenbach and Matt Everingham and photographer Aaron Blumenshine, uses a version of the Bitcoin software with one key difference - all account balances are charged a 4.4 per cent annual fee, which is distributed to all of those running the software.
The upshot is that it becomes very expensive to store large amounts of cash - $1 million would be eroded to less than $800,000 in just five years. Those who have regular income and expenditures would see little change though, as money enters and leaves their accounts too regularly to be reduced by much. The rich then have a choice - turn your Freicoin into a tangible asset such as gold or real estate and risk theft or other accidents, or loan out your money at low interest rates to the 99 per cent.
Friedenbach and colleagues have been working on a prototype of Freicoin over the past year and are now hoping to crowdfund money - in US dollars - to fund development of the full system.
Charging people to store money is not a new idea though. Economists call it demurrage and it was used locally in both Austria and the US during the 1930s. Of course, convincing the rich to adopt such a system will be difficult, as there is no benefit to them and significant costs.
christmas photo cards ar 15 costco kmart urban meyer ohio state traffic report traffic report
The New England Journal of Medicine has combed through their archives to show how death has changed over the last century. Thanks to treatment of infectious disease, more people are dying of old age (or living long enough to get cancer) than ever before, but with antibiotic resistance and the return of diseases like pertussis (whooping cough), tuberculosis, and super flus (bird, swine?), are the last few decades just a blip on the map?
Today's Google Doodle is a working Turing machine that contains six puzzles. Sophia Foster-Dimino on Google's Doodle team built the app in honor of Alan Turing's 100th birthday. What's a Turing machine? It's not an actual machine, per se, but a thought experiment that allowed for the advent of digital computing.
