Schrödinger’s Bucks!

Schrödinger’s Bucks

 

Chaosmaster

12-10-15

V 0.01

 

Schrödinger’s Cat

If you want more information on the Tail of Schrödinger’s Cat, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger's_cat

For those of you who are completely unfamiliar with the concept, the very high level very over-simplified version is that one way to interpret quantum mechanics says that under certain conditions, a cat can be both alive and dead, at the same time, in a sealed box. But, when you look in the box, it is either alive or dead. This may sound really arcane (because it is!), but it gets more interesting. Read on!

 

Schrödinger’s Bucks

With technology readily available today, it is possible to construct such a “sealed box” for financial assets, but with a twist: you determine the result of what’s in the box not based on some previous random event, but based on who is trying to look in the box. If you are authorized to look, you see the money. If you aren’t, then poof! The money doesn’t exist. At least, not in that box. The scenario assumes the existence of multiple sealed boxes, and the money moves around between them. If an unauthorized user attempts to even look in a box…never mind open it…then the money dies, and isn’t in that box at all. But it’s elsewhere.

Probabilistic money!

 

Trigger Elements

 

There were five things that led me to the concept of Schrödinger’s Bucks:

1)    Cosmology and parallel universes (Through the Wormhole, Science Channel)

2)    A digital universe, separate from, but connected to, the physical (The Matrix)

3)    Secure, reliable cloud back-up storage (various discussions)

4)    Steganography (referenced in a Law & Order episode)

At this point, this just gives a glimpse into my eclectic set of interests. The final piece that made the idea of Schrödinger’s Bucks come together in my head was:

5)    Probabilistic unique identifiers for people (IT Project)

Our society wastes literally hundreds of billions of dollars a year by not facing up to the reality that people need to have a unique identifier for a wide range of computer systems to work well, or to work at all. The SSN would be the obvious choice, but it’s not allowed. So, individual systems make-up their own unique identifiers. But then what do you do when you want to build a data warehouse, and connect information from multiple systems? The traditional approach is some elaborate field mapping, data cleansing, and data integration process, which is always a pain, and frequently turns out badly. I discovered, in the course of a project I was working on in 2011, that there are probabilistic methods for matching individual records across different databases that are simpler, faster, and more accurate than the traditional approach. Not as good as a real unique identifier, but apparently, pretty damned good.

So, the notion occurred to me: If there can be a probabilistic unique identifier for people, why not probabilistic money? Schrödinger’s Bucks!

 

Objective

Very Rich People (VRP) already have plenty of avenues for keeping their financial assets and transactions private, but what about the little guy? “The 99%”, as the current political discussion would have it. This project is oriented toward conceptually designing a system that could extend the options currently available to VRPs to anyone (see Reference Use Case below). I’ve worked on the design, implementation, and integration of information systems of all sizes (less than $100K through approx $0.5B) for over 20 years now. The first stage of this project will be broad and conceptual, identifying issues and problems, and clarifying objectives. The second stage will be to develop an overall reference architecture for a Schrödinger’s Bucks system. The third stage will be to develop a reference high level design for such a system. Obviously, these phases will overlap and interact. When given the choice, I generally use a “rapid prototyping” project management methodology.

Reference Use Case

The reference use case for this project is a poor man living under an oppressive regime, who wants to securely save enough money to move his family somewhere more civilized. He needs to have the money available both when he’s ready to move, and when he reaches his destination. Both the store of money and the transactions to build and use it need to be secure, not traceable to him in any way, and not accessible to anyone other than him (or someone he authorizes). For this purpose, it will be assumed that he has occasional, but not continuous, access to the internet.

Comments & Confidentiality

I maintain no copyright or proprietary interest of any kind in the content of this document. I encourage you to distribute it to anyone you think might find it interesting. If you want to make comments, ask a question, or provide related material (under 1MB!), please send it to me directly at Chaosrider@charter.net , or post it here. As I distribute updates to this document, I will attribute comments and such to the submitter, or not, as the submitter prefers. In the absence of a request for attribution, I will assume anonymity is preferred. If anyone would like to send me something and/or have a discussion that they would like to keep confidential, I will be happy to honor that desire for confidentially. Just make sure you communicate your wishes in that regard clearly and unambiguously. If someone sends me something in confidence, and I later receive or see it “in the open” from another source, I will feel free to use it, although not with attribution to the individual who requested confidentiality.

Think of it as an adventure! I certainly do!

J