Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
A debit card is mobile cash; that would require quantum mechanics to ensure it isn't a forgery.
Large amounts of cash on ships
- Thread starter PsiTraveller
- Start date
Condottiere said:
for the average customer, and for routing transactions forgery protection doesn't have to be perfect, only good enough to give people a "sense" of security. For the typical user say, a businessman travelling from one system to the other with a few KCr on a "card" the security features might be fairly mundane( at least mundane at the games level of technology). Now for transactions of a few hundred MCr then you looking at nanoscale tagging. smart encryption, and more exotic forms of counterfeit-proofing.
there might also be built tin delays to allow for couriers to make the trip back to the issuing bank's system, verify the transaction, and return. An interplanetary banking group might be able to afford maintaining a few J-6 couriers though out a subsector to ensure they can verify major transactions in an acceptable timeframe.
and if you manage to scam a bank on a major amount of money you can imagine a briefing with "professionals" going.
"Mister A. Jones has defrauded my client for a rather substantial amount of money. He is currently residing on Jewel enjoying himself on my clients money. My client wishes to have Mister A. Jones brought back to face prosecution."
One or two Hundred thousand credits buys a very high quality bounty hunter/assassin.
Not to mention anyone interfering with a nice stable interstellar banking system by counterfeiting, or other forms of fraud might find the Imperium and other Higher level authorities taking interest in their shenanigans.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
As dear old Dad used to say, if you have to swindle, swindle big and make it worth your while.
Tom Kalbfus
Mongoose
Same as in Dungeons & Dragons, its even possible that some systems use copper, silver, gold, and platinum pieces, it doesn't even have to be primitive. I've looked at the various things you could buy with credits and I looked at the equipment lists for D&D and have come to the conclusion that a D&D silver piece would have the purchasing power of 1 Imperial credit. By the way, a standard coin in D&D is one fiftieth of a pound so 110 silver pieces have 1 kilogram of silver in them. One kilogram of silver is worth Cr110, one kilogram of gold is worth Cr1,100, one kilogram of platinum is worth Cr11,000, and one kilogram of copper is worth Cr11, unless official sources contradict me of course. The availability of these precious metals might be different in a standard Traveller campaign than what it is in D&D.-Daniel- said:I have to agree with PsiTraveller. Given the lack of FTL communications, banking as we know it now on "modern Earth" would just be impractical. There would be lots of cash or cash substitutes like trade bars or gems and precious stones. people would need to learn to transport more than an ATM card.
AnotherDilbert
Emperor Mongoose
Fusion power plants trivially producing GW:s means that gold, diamonds, and other precious matter can easily be synthesised cheaply. Simple metals are unlikely to be a used as currency.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
We can afford to get back on the gold standard.
I don't really think you need to explain exactly how everything works. I sometimes call the Imperial credit, the space bitcoin. They are hard to forge or steal. The x-boat network transfers data which ensures that the space block chain gradually propagates to the entire Imperium and the protocol (constantly updated by legions of space hackers in the Imperial bureaucracy) means that the system is tolerant of the fact that communication across the system is slow.
You can have your credits in an account at a bank, you can have them on your ships computer or personal data device, you can even put them on a chip or a card and hand them to people. How does all this work? Like bitcoins, lots of computing power generates numbers that verify every transaction and unit of currency, the credits are self verifying. Want more details than that? Too bad, just consider them to be magic space bitcoins and move on. Kind of like how I think about real bitcoins.
As far as credit, meaning getting goods with an agreement to pay later, goes I think the main issue is with traders. For most people they just need to pay cash. If you want to buy a car on tick then you have the same problems that anyone else who just arrived in your country with no credit history might have. Extending credit to PCs just leads to stealing, inevitably and very, very quickly. However a trader gets handed money and maybe millions of credits worth of cargo on the assumption that they can be trusted to bring it to the required destination and hand it over. In this instance my assumption is that these transactions are recorded and insured by the Imperial Trade and Shipping Commission. If, as an innocent business person, some PC rips off your cargo then you just file a claim and get made whole by the ITSC. They then go on to issue a warrant for the PCs and whenever one of the branches of the military or some starport finally gets hold of them they investigate and probably impound the starship as restitution.
You can have your credits in an account at a bank, you can have them on your ships computer or personal data device, you can even put them on a chip or a card and hand them to people. How does all this work? Like bitcoins, lots of computing power generates numbers that verify every transaction and unit of currency, the credits are self verifying. Want more details than that? Too bad, just consider them to be magic space bitcoins and move on. Kind of like how I think about real bitcoins.
As far as credit, meaning getting goods with an agreement to pay later, goes I think the main issue is with traders. For most people they just need to pay cash. If you want to buy a car on tick then you have the same problems that anyone else who just arrived in your country with no credit history might have. Extending credit to PCs just leads to stealing, inevitably and very, very quickly. However a trader gets handed money and maybe millions of credits worth of cargo on the assumption that they can be trusted to bring it to the required destination and hand it over. In this instance my assumption is that these transactions are recorded and insured by the Imperial Trade and Shipping Commission. If, as an innocent business person, some PC rips off your cargo then you just file a claim and get made whole by the ITSC. They then go on to issue a warrant for the PCs and whenever one of the branches of the military or some starport finally gets hold of them they investigate and probably impound the starship as restitution.
hivemindx said:
bit coin is a good compression, simple to use but extremely complex under the hood. The fact that there is a significant lag between updates along the x-boat network would add several layers of complexity to the issue.
Ships taking off for parts unknown with someones cargo is one reason to have a ship transmit it's manifest and bills of Lading during an inspection by customs or system security forces.A ship with a few hundred tons of cargo and or valid cargo manifest or bills of lading would be hauled in to be more closely inspected.
PsiTraveller
Cosmic Mongoose
I asked the question up front to get input on whether or not a free trader might have a safe/vault with millions in cash sitting in it. If transferring money between systems is tough to do in electronic format then at some point someone is hauling a suitcase full of bills between starports. This is a target for pirates and thieves. (and creates adventure opportunity with lasers and missiles blazing)
if a bitcoin system allows digital cash to be transferred then the account security becomes the issue shifts to cracking the software on the ship and getting access to the money codes. (and adventure opportunity changes to Hacking software and engineering checks)
The problem of banking between systems has been around for the history of the game. Maybe bitcoin softens that as a problem, or offers another source of adventure.
Could a Free Trader be protected against torture and the release of his passcodes and decryption keys? Can bitcoin be made pirate proof?
if a bitcoin system allows digital cash to be transferred then the account security becomes the issue shifts to cracking the software on the ship and getting access to the money codes. (and adventure opportunity changes to Hacking software and engineering checks)
The problem of banking between systems has been around for the history of the game. Maybe bitcoin softens that as a problem, or offers another source of adventure.
Could a Free Trader be protected against torture and the release of his passcodes and decryption keys? Can bitcoin be made pirate proof?
PsiTraveller
Cosmic Mongoose
Well that the point of my initial question. A Free Trader gets a paying gig, and does well on a Spec freight purchase and ends up with a million in cash at the Starport. The ship gets a full load of Freight to move, and there is nothing in the spec freight market to interest them. So they have a million cash in the captain's safe.
If bank accounts are tough to transfer funds through then the million in cash will stay in cash because cash is king as you said.
So a pirate going after a Free Trader will be looking for the million in cash to grab since it is tough to trace and does not need fencing. Larger or more successful traders may have millions in cash. Think of the profits possible if you managed to get 50 or 60 Tons of Spec Freight and a couple of good purchase and sale rolls.
I am interested in this because across the Sindal sector, where the 2nd edition game is focused, there is little Imperial Presence. There are Starports (a lot of them GeDeCo), there are a few Navy ships. But there will not be a centralized banking infrastructure. So ships may well have cases of cash on them, raising the stakes for theft and piracy. I am trying to figure out a way to reduce the risk for ships and increase a safer type of trading/banking system.
Bitcoin might do the trick, convert everything to encrypted data and banks accept it. The issue that might happen there is a Free Trader depositing 1 million in cash to a bank and getting bitcoin. The Free Trader leaves the system, taking 1 million in bitcoin as data. There are still a million Credits in cash in the bank. Technically the assets have left the system. Does the bank destroy those notes, or is the money magically doubled and lent out as cash again to another Trader?
If bank accounts are tough to transfer funds through then the million in cash will stay in cash because cash is king as you said.
So a pirate going after a Free Trader will be looking for the million in cash to grab since it is tough to trace and does not need fencing. Larger or more successful traders may have millions in cash. Think of the profits possible if you managed to get 50 or 60 Tons of Spec Freight and a couple of good purchase and sale rolls.
I am interested in this because across the Sindal sector, where the 2nd edition game is focused, there is little Imperial Presence. There are Starports (a lot of them GeDeCo), there are a few Navy ships. But there will not be a centralized banking infrastructure. So ships may well have cases of cash on them, raising the stakes for theft and piracy. I am trying to figure out a way to reduce the risk for ships and increase a safer type of trading/banking system.
Bitcoin might do the trick, convert everything to encrypted data and banks accept it. The issue that might happen there is a Free Trader depositing 1 million in cash to a bank and getting bitcoin. The Free Trader leaves the system, taking 1 million in bitcoin as data. There are still a million Credits in cash in the bank. Technically the assets have left the system. Does the bank destroy those notes, or is the money magically doubled and lent out as cash again to another Trader?
PsiTraveller said:
Having cash on hand would be unavoidable at times, and occasionally advantageous. And yep that bankroll will be a tempting target.
I'd imagine that any cash coonverted to "virtual coin" would be held in reserve for when someone came in and trades in virtual coin for hard currency.
PsiTraveller said:
I'm pretty sure some traders might be carrying cash like that:
Itierant free traders don't have a fixed route and wander about an entire subsector's worth of routes irregularly, going where the work takes them. They're likely to visit lower-tech worlds where fancy electronic credit is not accepted so are likely to have a fair amount of cash and valuables on board from trade jobs.
Any trader with a ship with a Jump rating over 2 is likely to have cash on board simply because time is money and any system involving credit updates sent by "secure courier" would be slow. If you have a two system example (System A and System B), "secure courier update" systems seem pretty useful, with couriers which launch every day carrying financial updates to the other world (requiring as few as seven ships to make work, though I think the realities of maintenance and so on would make it require many more). However, it quickly gets unworkable once you have more than two systems, I think. For instance, we'll say there's three systems, A, B, and C. They're all in a column of hexes on the map (A-B-C). A and C are two hexes apart and requires a Jump-2 ship for a single jump. B is in the middle so is Jump-1 away from A and C. So now A and B need to use Jump-2 starships to exchange data and at the same time the same copy of data needs to go to B on Jump-1 starships. Eventually, you're able to outrun the speed of this system's updates, meaning you'll be stuck in port for at least a week waiting for credit updates to arrive. It's easier to carry a certain amount of ready cash; you can deposit them in local banks if you think you'll return to that area one day, but a lot of ships are going to be carrying at least the cash from their last job, maybe two jobs in a case like this.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
You can always use your spaceship as collateral to secure a loan.
Or one of your friends.
Or one of your friends.
Tom Kalbfus
Mongoose
Which means your creditor gets to hold onto that starship until you pay it back! Otherwise you can go to one system and use your starship as collateral on a loan, then you go to another star system and use the same starship as collateral on another loan and so on as you travel through the galaxy! With all those loans, you could buy multiple starships and use them as collateral on more loans.Condottiere said:
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
They'll probably boot your ship.
Tom Kalbfus said:
Um, no. That's not how collateralized loans work. Today we have people trying to pull the same scam, getting multiple loans using the same property or item as collateral. It does work on occasion. And it might work on occasion in the future too.
But banking houses aren't stupid. They aren't going to just give money to anyone e who just pops into a system. There is such a thing called comments on sense that says don't lend money to strangers. Why would a bank on Regina lend 10 or 20% of the value of a starship to someone who has no local established roots? The answer is they wouldn't. Just like that same free trader isn't going to be able to pick up multi million credit cargoes for delivery elsewhere without establish a history of being trustworthy.
-Daniel-
Emperor Mongoose
This is why in MTU I have some small merchant consortiums that one can join to prove their value. Once approved they are added to the "Trusted Member rolls and you then gain some additional benefit when trying to be trusted to carry a cargo or do a deal. The consortium in a sense becomes a co-signer. :mrgreen:phavoc said:
