I realise it may be a bit early in development to be considering this, but would counterparty users be interested in custom assets backed by quantities of fiat (to allow DEX of fiat vs btc, etc, at some counterparty risk of course). My company is in a position to do this for CAD if there is interest and the implementation stabilizes a bit.
Yes, there will be good demand for such a type of service.
However, the key is in establishing trust. For example if you issue 100,000 DIGITALUSD OR CAD. How will this be backed?
[quote author=singpolyma link=topic=193.msg1400#msg1400 date=1395277301]
I realise it may be a bit early in development to be considering this, but would counterparty users be interested in custom assets backed by quantities of fiat (to allow DEX of fiat vs btc, etc, at some counterparty risk of course). My company is in a position to do this for CAD if there is interest and the implementation stabilizes a bit.
[/quote]
That sounds great. The code is actually being audited right now by Sergio Lerner.
Insurance and/or collateral would probably be the two ways (along with options for legal recourse/representation). Look at how some of the BTC cold storage companies are operating.
Its not like our current bank accounts aren’t just IOU’s anyway 
I was thinking of backing fiat by big existing exchange fiat like btc-e code, user trust btc-e and the guy who convert btc-e code to xusd, once we have that trading is done in dex with tiny trading fee – only counterpartyd tx fee
[quote author=kdrop20 link=topic=193.msg1405#msg1405 date=1395279023]
However, the key is in establishing trust. For example if you issue 100,000 DIGITALUSD OR CAD. How will this be backed?
[/quote]
You’re right. Establishing trust is of course the biggest hurdle to all such business. When we started (we currently issue on Ripple, since I have personally been a ripple user since about 2005 and it was a good place to start for this sort of business) we used our own personal social capital as founders and rep on other systems (such as http://bitcoin-otc.com/viewratingdetail.php?nick=singpolyma&sign=ANY&type=RECV) to establish initial trust in the community.
We back all our issue with CAD in accounts at major Canadian banks.
[quote author=etherbroker link=topic=193.msg1510#msg1510 date=1395453825]
Its not like our current bank accounts aren’t just IOU’s anyway
[/quote]
Indeed. Or, more to the point, our balances with BTC exchanges.