Security Notes: Where Money Goes, Attention Flows

Money is traditionally defined as a medium of exchange, unit of measurement, and store of value, which is true. But this definition hides the underlying attribute of currency. Money, currency, is the riverbed that guides where the river flows. Where money goes, attention flows.

Society moves forward by paying attention to positive and constructive matters, and by avoiding the pitfalls of paying attention to negative and destructive matters. It is the primary aim of human society to direct societal attention to serve its interests. Alas, attention is abstract and unmeasurable. Attention, like water, spreads and spills in all directions, some good, some bad. If you want water to flow in a given path, you dig a riverbed, and there the water goes. It’s the same with attention, based on the underlying attribute of money: where money goes, attention flows.

Society will direct its attention to the positive and away from the negative by throwing money into positive aims and away from negative ones. Yes, attention is abstract. But money is specific. And, indeed, attention is hard to measure. But money is plainly countable. To direct societal attention towards the good and worthy, society needs to direct money to the same.

“You don’t solve problems by throwing money at them,” a wise man said. True, money per se does not solve problems. But money attracts attention, and attention solves problems.

When President Kennedy charted a vision for going to the moon, he budgeted NASA for that aim. Attention followed, and the moon was conquered. When Covid-19 massacred humanity, the U.S. government gave the pharmaceutical industry an open check—and Covid was harnessed.

The best way to stop war and violence is to defund the war machines. It always works!

When politicians shouted in the streets, “Defund the police!” they meant defund the abusive element in police work. They had not read my book, Tethered Money, which shows how to surgically defund an operation.

Can a society put money where its mouth is? That is the big story behind the digital-money revolution. Digital money is tetherable to well-defined causes and objectives. With nondigital money, once you pass it to the payee, you, the payor, lose control over it. The payee decides, regardless of prior promises. You can sue a non-compliant payee, but the money is gone any way.

You need a means to stop misdirection of money before it is misdirected. Only digital money offers this option. Digital money has a cyber identity. A cyber identity can be cryptographically managed. A required cryptographic key is left in the hands of the payor long after the payment takes place. The technology and the particulars are explained in Tethered Money.

What is important to realize is that this principle is universal, no matter what the societal problem you are dealing with is. The way to solve it is to direct human attention to the challenge. And the way to marshal human attention towards a large or small societal issue is to allocate funds for the purpose. The promise of the new form of payment—digital payment—is that society can cyber-move money to better manage its challenges, a capability that pre-digital money lacks.

Central banks and parliaments around the world, the U.S. government included, are now wrestling with the question of how to design a CBDC (central bank digital currency). It’s tempting to build a CBDC as a surveillance tool. But no, the guiding principle should be to build digital-money operations as a means to direct attention towards society’s most important challenges. Always remember, where money goes, attention follows!

—Gideon Samid gideon@bitmint.com