"That's a good question. We want - we want a stably-valued object everyone can use for trade. Its value according to the debt system will be in between what you claim to be willing to trade it for, and what the debt system considers its intrinsic value. So if I'm willing to trade for it at its debt-system value, and so are most other people, because inconvenience is making up for the rest of the difference -

- or if you have a flock of humans willing to trade for it at its debt-system value, making trading at that value far more straightforward than trading at its declared-value-to-you -

- then it seems like in some sense we'd have a coin with an agreed-upon value that the debt system agrees on too. But that's not - it's not doing that much more than just having fancy coins with high intrinsic value, not if that's all we do with it."

"- sorry, what's the humanity of the humans doing in this instance, can't we get faeries to also be willing to do that -"

"They have to get the goods and services they're predictably willing to trade for the coins from you, and if this involves entangling them with you then it doesn't work as well."

"Doesn't anyone have enough stuff lying around without me helping?"

"I assume lots of people will be willing to use the coins once lots of other people are using them, so hopefully eventually we enable better trading among those people, but they've got no reason to start."

"Yeah, fair enough, I can operate as a sort of bank to kick it off. What's missing, hmmmm..."

"I want to - I don't know. Award extra value for doing things that are valuable beyond what the debt system considers them. If there's a way to pull that off."

"I mean, you can award everyone a sticker for making positive-sum transactions instead of kicking people - heck, you can't lie, you could even get a good idea of exactly how positive-sum - but then the debt system probably just thinks the stickers are stickers -"

"Unless we're willing to trade people something valuable for them."

"...okay, if I'm willing to trade for certificates of positive sum, where's that get us? It doesn't get us face value of the certificates accruing to them, but does it get us there in combination with the bread line thing?"

"It'd be worth about half what you're willing to trade for it.

If you are announcedly willing to take them at double face value but extremely inconvenient to get a hold of, then they should be worth their face value."

Wagwagwagwagwag!

"We can just make anything worth whatever we want."

"I mean, not to the point where it's worth finding me even if I'm on the Moon."

"We should probably test how inconvenient you can be before it stops mattering what you would offer in principle if found."

"And probably not by sending me to the Moon, I imagine someone's done forensics ever on the first person to land on the moon instead of specifying who they expect that to be."

"We can just pass the coins around with you having announced - and having privately decided but not announced - some different decision rules."

"Decision rules for my accessibility or for the value of the tokens?"

"Your accessibility. I think I know how the values work now."

"Does the passphrase idea work?"

"Let's find out."

"All right, I have one."

"Awwww. Passphrase doesn't count as willing to trade."

"It might be too complicated. I am thinking of a number between one and ten?"

He holds the coin and concentrates. "...seven. Uh, the debt doesn't move until I contemplate saying possible numbers to you, and then it moved if I contemplated giving it to you and saying seven."