Venmo Transaction Money Trail

Update 23 Feb 2017:  I continue my interest in Venmo:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-22/big-banks-declare-war-on-venmo

Update 19 April 2016:
https://www.inverse.com/article/13700-i-wrote-isis-beer-funds-in-a-venmo-memo-and-the-government-detained-my-42
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Oct. 10, 2015 blog entry:

Follow the Money is a meme.  Actually it is following the trail evidence of transaction history audit.  The tracks left by money functioning as a medium of exchange called a transaction.  Currency transactions, those using any form and system of digital dollar representations, all have a precise numerical value greater than Zero but not Zero.  The number is whole plus fractional to the hundred place.  That number is the numerical value of money in the exchange.

Venmo is a digital money system.

Transactions in the Venmo system may be public.  As public transactions can be tracked by anyone and there are apps to do it this link tells all about it.  Tracing transactions produces a volume of information about a person and their relationship to other persons and things.  Like a Spokeo but the lines of connection are money instead of social.

The relationship in Venmo is traditional:
 UserAccount(Paying)////Transaction(Value)////UserAccount(Receiving)

Transaction (Value) = Number of units called Money associated with the transaction

Tracing the transaction can be done by knowing either or both of the User Accounts or the identification of the transaction itself if the transaction is identified by an index number other than the transaction value.

Note here that as I have said in a prior blog entry that Bitcoin does not directly and specifically spend Money as a medium of exchange in the traditional form of given standard money units of value.  It spends Transactions.  Transactions that were identified by a numerical indexing scheme with a variable value equal to the amount of the specific transaction.  The transaction and its specific related monetary value is in the Bitcoin Wallet as well as on a public ledger.  When a transaction in a user wallet is spent it is transferred in total to the receiver's wallet and it must be either a single transaction or a total of transactions necessary to equal or exceed the agreed on value price of the transaction being made between payer and receiver. When it is greater, (usually is) "change" is made by the receiver equal to the amount over the agreed upon price.  Change is given in the form of a new transaction with an associate change numerical value back to the payer's wallet.

In the Bitcoin system transactions are literally the medium of exchange.  Historical transactions that are verified to be true by the block chain and can be spent in future monetary transactions as money.  The transaction and its associated value is the money.  The transaction itself is a public ledger.  It does not tell who the user is.

Bitcoin traces its "Money" Money being the transaction by association of the variable value of a Payer/Receiver exchange, even if that monetary exchange is the "Small Change to be returned to the payer to accomplish the agreed upon transaction price.

Bitcoin traces a different form of money from account to account the same as Venmo.  The public ledger of Bitcoin is designed to keep it honest.   Users are anonymous.  The public ledger of Venmo  by default (until changed by the designer or user) includes user identification.  In either case tracing point of entry is by account.  Venmo adds a point of entry by Actual User Identification.  Bitcoin adds a point of entry of Anonymous User Identification.

Bitcoin exclusively adds a point of entry of Transaction identification with the associated value of the transaction.  Look at the public ledger.

Neither system nor any other system has a point of entry for tracing based on the actual discrete units of "Money" involved in the transactions because there is no system to identify Money as a unit object thing at its lowest single unit of a thing value level with each unit of Money having a uniquely different validating identity.

Hey, that is the old school one dollar  bill with a picture of a dead white guy on it and a serial number plus some physical features that unique to all dollar bills.  They came in different denominations for convenience.  In a digital world that is not necessary, they can all be One unit of value.  Old school hardbacks could self identify but there was no history of transactions associated to them as a point of entry to do tracing other than fingerprints on them or some kind of powder or the confession of where and or who the possessor of the bill obtained it.

That was old school money.  Two things happened.  It lost a unique identity of a greenback in its transition to the digital age because the transfer was done on the basis of its existence in a numbered  account.  The Alter Ego of its existence as a Greenback Dollar.  Its existence in an account was only the sum total of units of numerical measurement.  A number in an account.

Tracing Money itself as a discrete uniquely identified unit as a point of entry to tracing and data mining for system management and control is not possible today because there is no identification scheme implemented in the digital system to do that.  A scheme that would select any one single unit of money value called One Single Dollar in any given account and ask that dollar to tell its total life history of transfer as a single unit from all past specific Accounts that had ever claimed ownership of it and by virtue of that ownership had the authority to transfer it as a Medium of Exchange to another account.  It is a chain thing that tells a whole story of history.

That is the crux of the Monetary System I propose.  A system where Money does not "move' from account to account ownership but just sits still and forever static as a unique digital unit of one accumulating independent object knowledge of its transfer of ownership from account to account by always knowing the current owner of its single unit value.

The kicker is that each single digit dollar involved in the total of a new transaction between two accounts transferring ownership of a given number of dollars has as a unique traceable history at the granular level, if chosen at random from all single unit value dollars in the account.

The information potential of what prior account each single unit of value in a two party account transaction came from and when in its past two party account in which it was a single unit tells a much more detailed and broader scope of story than simply tracing the total value of any given two party transaction.

That information is orders of magnitude greater and necessary for system design and performance management to serve the public benefit of creating and controlling a Monetary Currency system as a decision making tool to allocate resources.

Without a system like this to tell us what money is doing at the micro and macro level then Economics is simply a black magic WAG at what money is doing.  We have to know what it is at each granular unit level beyond its simple numeric value in an account.  Otherwise we never got to where we want to go using money as a tool to get there.

There is an asymmetrical level of information in the current system created by design of an Account based and driven fundamental design focused on the spending of money to the exclusion of a Currency driven counterpart defining what money is beyond a numerical value in an account.  We really don't know what Money "Is" by design of those to whom the asymmetrical design of the debt money system gives the advantage.

A riff on "what is our oil doing under their sand?"

"What is our Money doing in their Accounting System?"

Money must be able to account for itself independently and tell the story of everywhere in the account universe it has been. 

It cannot do that if it is continually being fundamentally created by loans from nothing and going back to nothing when the debt is settled.  That is ultimate money laundering.

Only rocks live forever.

Money must be as solid as a rock.  It is a conceptual rock in our society that becomes a truth as solid as a rock when we give it solid unique conceptual identity at the granular level that it carries through life as long as rocks live.  What we define what that identity as and attribute of the thing then what it does is a measurable manageable matter of how we use it.