[FoRK] $30B a bargain for what it looks set to achieve?

[Jeffrey Winter]

"On the other hand, even the oligopoly only works through  
regulation in the form of semi-transparency requirements, depository  
requirements, and so on.  If the system went totally peer-to-peer, it  
would probably require even more burdensome regulation in order to  
maintain even the current risk profile, much less reduce it."

You may be interested in:

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/MIHNAT.html

The U.S. more or less had such a system in the 1830s: no central
bank; hundreds of banks printing money; hunreds of counterfieters
printing money; and hundreds of services offered to help tell
the good from the bad.