Crowdsourcing

Meet the Genius Behind the Trillion-Dollar Coin and the Plot to Breach the Debt Ceiling

RYAN TATE 01.10.13

modified:

“It was really a pointless conversation” 

...underlines how ad-hoc online communities, like an anonymous international band of commenters, are increasingly able to move their ideas from the fringes into the middle of political debate.

Goliard Figures, in Umberto Eco, The Infinity of Lists, 2008. p. 263.

in Crowdsourcing Reform, 2010

It may have started as a game, but Beowulf and his pals are poised to inject an important new tactic into oversight of the government’s monetary institutions.

The coin hack even surprised and impressed former U.S. Mint director Philip Diehl, who co-authored the law that enabled the platinum loophole in the first place.

“When I first heard about the idea to mint a trillion-dollar coin, I was very surprised,” says Diehl. “But because I know that law backwards and forwards, I knew immediately that the guy who came up with the idea was right."

http://www.wired.com/business/2013/01/trillion-dollar-coin-inventor

But it wasn't 'a guy' who 'came up with' the idea, it was many.