Demurrage imposed by an issuer of a credit

[irisli]

The idea of Stellar credits is great since credits since you can track almost anything using the concept of credits. Not only can we send each other currency such as USD but we can also send each other t-shirt credits or rubber ducky credits.

Tracking precious metals as credits

It would be awesome to have precious metals (such as gold and silver) tracked as credits in the Stellar system. Current systems that hold precious metals on the behalf of a customer (like what would happen in a Stellar gateway) currently require a fee that is charged over time for holding the precious metal. In the current system of our world, it costs about 0.5-1% the value of gold per year (source: http://www.bloomberg.com/consumer-spending/2012-05-30/the-real-cost-of-owning-gold.html#slide4)

Demurrage

Because of what was described above, for a gateway to impose fees on ownership of gold credits, demurrage would have to be implemented in the Stellar system.