Guillaume’s blog

What a personal data currency may look like

I was challenged tonight in an email to explore where VRM and Open Money concepts may intersect.

Here are my notes:

To make personal data a currency, you would have to issue redeemable promises to deliver personal data to anyone “holding” the promise, say your location.
You may want to assign circulation rules to your currency so that it has no value outside of your social network (and you don’t end up being stalked by strangers).
Until redeemed by you the issuer, the currency could be exchanged for goods/services.
After redeeming the promise i.e. obtaining the data from the currency issuer, the promise would no longer have any value.
To have significant value, the currency would have to be issued by you (and ideally, certified by other parties).
You may want to provide foreign exchange services.

Of course, I haven’t answered the key question yet: why anyone would want to make their personal data a currency.