Trading department
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This is a department in the OrganicDesign system which is common by default to all Platforms by being included in the platform specification. The Trading department maintains tools such as payment methods, invoicing and subscriptions management for its Platform which allow it to trade products and services with untrusted customers in other Platforms or outside the network. This department also handles the financial reporting, invoicing and notifications, budgeting, cash-flow and stock management.
Exchange of value
Trading is basically the exchange of different kinds of resource between two parties which are of equivalent value to both. A medium of exchange such as money is then used to make these exchanges possible without requiring a coincidence of needs amongst the people in the local region. Trading becomes complex when exchange needs to occur between untrusted parties.
If only trusted parties were involved (i.e. members of a trust group), then it could all be handled by any kind of medium such as sea-shells or IOU's written on post-it notes, because people who trust each other wouldn't take advantage of the fact that they could adjust the figures on their IOU's or fill their shell-bags with shells they didn't receive in payment for their resource.
For a medium of exchange to be able to work for exchanging value between untrusted parties, a third party is used that both original parties agree is trustworthy when it comes to issuing the medium or maintaining account balances. But in the informational age another option is available. Instead of relying of a trusted third party to back the medium (and good luck finding any kind of money backed by a trusted third party in this day and age!), we now have the option to use a trustworthy algorithm to back information money such as the decentralised encrypted Bitcoin currency.
