Peer-to-peer money: Free currency over the Internet

This paper proposes a resilient, alternative monetary system on the Internet called i-WAT, based on WAT System[l] which uses a form of promissory note as the medium of exchanging goods and services. i-WAT uses an electronic version of the note, ownership of which is transferred by exchanging messages signed in OpenPGP[2]. i-WAT can be used as the basis of various interpersonal/corporative transactions in the globally distributed computing environment. Specific applications being investigated include distributed consumer reports, an alternative copyright system and spam-free e-mail exchange. A prototype of an i-WAT checkbook has been developed as a plug-in for a Jabber[3] client. Experiments are ongoing.