QUOTE (Ancient History @ Jul 25 2010, 08:59 PM)
Trust me, if I'd been writing that part of SR4, it would have been more.
Personally I'd like them if they were more expensive, but less likely to be found. As they stand, they actually fail very quickly if ever checked, but they can be replaced quite easily. *shrug*
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What makes a dollar bill? The paper, the ink, the specific pattern the ink is put in, the little magnetic strip, the serial number on it, and last and most importantly the value of the bill, the promise of what it is worth, when it was issue, who issued it, and who will redeem it. A nuyen is just data. No paper, no ink. All the rest is just data, one big number. Ultimately, that's all you need, so that's all you ave.
Right, but a dollar bill is difficult to alter because it is a physical thing, and is easy to give to another person because it is a physical thing. With nuyen though, it is more complicated. If every nuyen chunk is just a serial number that is a reference to a value of how much it is worth, then that means there is one central database that contains all those references, and can make the necessary changes to say that nuyen chunk A335 is now worth 500 nuyen instead of 600 nuyen, and chunk A445 is now worth 1000 nuyen instead of 900 nuyen. If this was the case, it would be constantly under attack by hackers, and likely hit quite often by DOS attacks just to mess with people. And if this isn't the case, then nuyen cannot exist as you're putting it forth. I'm willing to believe that nuyen are like dollars and that we simple exchange the theoretical ownership of them by one bank account going down, and another going up, but I don't see how a nuyen can be an actual electronic thing that keeps track of who owns it, and how much it is worth, and that who owns it and how much it is worth can be easily changed, and yet impossible to change in a way that benefits you.
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Mostly. Any actual nuyen transfer would also see the nuyen pass through different nodes, though you wouldn't see it - just part of the dataflow.
My understanding of a nuyen transfer to another person was that your bank deducted nuyen from your account (which is simply a number, it isn't 'real' nuyen) and was added to another account (once again, just a number) and if done between different banks, then those banks would transfer the 'real' nuyen.
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You could hack a bank and alter the registry so that a certain amount of nuyen now belonged to a new account. Still doesn't create money, just moves it around.
But there is no way a bank could exist if all nuyen must be assigned ownership to someone and couldn't simply be an amount owed, because it would be impossible to loan people money or otherwise invest it to turn a profit. If for example I have 1000 nuyen in my account, and that is 'real' nuyen sitting on a server somewhere that is always actually there, then that means that the nuyen can't be loaned to another person, because the ownership couldn't be transferred.
I mean a real bank works because you deposit $100, and they write down that they owe you $100, and then they hand that $100 to someone else, and write down that they own the bank $110. You're saying that that doesn't happen though, because when you hand them the 100 nuyen, that nuyen is still registered as belonging to you, which means they can't loan it to someone else.
If they do it like a real bank, then the nuyen would be registered to the bank, and the bank would simply have a record that they owe you 100 nuyen. That means that if you hacked into a bank and set up an account, you could set it to say they owed you 200 nuyen, and you wouldn't have to adjust the ownership of any 'real' nuyen. It is exactly like it would work in modern days. If you hack into a real bank and create a fake account that says it has $100 in it, then the bank thinks it owes you $100. You don't have to go into the bank and write on the $100 bill "Property of Haxor".