December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: e$ seigniorage (and is this the cost of untracability?)
by JonWienke＠aol.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Wei Dai writes: >One possible way to get around this is to have ecash issuers pay interest >on ecash. However it requires ecash to be timestamped and therefore >compromises its untraceability. (Think of the timestamp as a serial >number.) Interest-bearing accounts cannot legally be anonymous--the IRS requires records of interest payments for tax purposes. Even if the e$ issuer is collecting interest on my ecash, I don't care as long as they don't charge me any fees,. As far as I am concerned, if the issuer can make anonymous e$ worth his while to issue, the loss in potential interest income is more than outweighed by the advantages of being able to use such a system. Jonathan Wienke

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Re: "Contempt" charges likely to increase
by jamesd＠echeque.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 01:00 PM 4/6/96 -0500, Black Unicorn wrote: > To me this entire thread has threatened to suggest to people that they > need only thumb their noses at the authorities, be it by cryptographic > protocol or otherwise, and sit back in their easy chair and smile to > themselves. [...] > > I understand that direct confrontation with government is appealing to > the authority hater. (I happen to be one). Overt resistance, however, > of the character suggested by Mr. Bell and others, is going to cause > problems in two ways. Firstly, its going to cause the individual > resister a good deal of headaches. Secondly, its going to make bad law > eventually. On this you are simply wrong: As Jim Bell pointed out, the current level of repression would have been unthinkable thirty years ago, and it has occurred with very little actual violence. 99% pure bluff. The authorities are generally reluctant to risk their reputation capital by direct confrontation. Government projects an image of being all powerful, but in fact they are in the same position as the lion tamer bullying his lions or the Mahout commanding the elephant to drag logs. Somebody complained that the image I put in by CDA protest was not obscene, mererly indecent (due perhaps due to the lousy dithering which obscured certain crucial features of the image) -- so I amended it to one which is definitely obscene. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd(a)echeque.com

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Re: [NOISE] Unicorn of Color
by erc＠dal1820.computek.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

No, it's "womyn", you Fascist male oppressor pretending to be in sympathy with the cause ;) ______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________ Subject: [NOISE] Unicorn of Color Sent To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com Author: pjm(a)spe.com Reply To: pjm(a)spe.com Date: 4/7/96 1:36:53 AM The spelling is "wymmyn", you neanderthal oppressor.

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LSD|CFP
by Dave Del Torto 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

All constructive comments, corrections & suggestions are greatly appreciated... <http://www.well.com/user/ddt/crypto/crypto.html> dave ___________________________________________________________________ Cryptography is the entertainment branch of the computing industry.

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Re: e$ seigniorage (and is this the cost of untracability?)
by Gary Howland 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Wei Dai wrote: > > On Sat, 6 Apr 1996, Gary Howland wrote: > > > - What will be the typical time between the withdrawal of ecash > > and it being deposited? > > I think this will depend on how easy it is to withdraw ecash. If the > client software includes an option of automaticly withdrawing ecash from > the bank when you don't have enough ecash to pay for the current purchase > (thereby reducing the time between withdrawal and deposit to zero), then I > suspect most people will use it, even though (anticipating your next > question) this compromises their untraceability. Interesting note - I think that if the time between withdrawal and deposit ever reaches zero, then we have a e-cheque system (which is fully traceable).

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my apologies
by Perry E. Metzger 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

My apologies about getting drawn into an argument about conspiracy theory and whether the fed is "privately owned" or some such bull. It isn't cypherpunks material. We all forget on occassion. Perry

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Re: e$ Signorage
by Perry E. Metzger 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I misdirected this yesterday. Yes, its relevant: it answers the contention that ecash somehow lowers government seignorage income. ------- Forwarded Message To: James Gleick <gleick(a)around.com> cc: cypherpunk(a)toad.com Subject: Re: e$ Signorage From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry(a)jekyll.piermont.com> James Gleick writes: > >> It's not obvious, but it's true, that the Fed collects the "float" > >> on dollar bills you carry in your pocket, > > > >Oh, really? From whom? First I've heard of this. > > Then you're learning something new. Oh, really? Don't teach grampaw to suck eggs. > On the contrary. The Federal Reserve holds Government securities > corresponding to the dollar value of currency in circulation. Ah, no. Sorry. The Fed does indeed monetize debt, but 1) that isn't related to seignorage, and 2) all new money is monetized debt, and it makes no difference whether it is held in paper or bank accounts or anything else. > It earns interest income on this amount, and returns this income to > the Treasury. This is called seigniorage. It amounts this year to > something over $20 billion. This is a very real issue. To the > extent that electronic money replaces currency (reduces the amount > in circulation), it will cost the Treasury seigniorage- -and the > Government is acutely aware of this. Whether the beneficiaries are > consumers, banks, or other issuers of digital cash will depend on > the system. Again, you really don't know what you are talking about. The vast bulk of the money in the field is not currency. Most of it is in the form of bank deposits and is circulated through bank mechanisms like checks and such. When the Fed wants to expand the money supply, it buys government debt on the open market, paying for it with nothing at all other than changing numbers in the Fed's computers. This is how debt is monetized. The bulk of that money never becomes dollar bills, and whether it is circulated via checks or ecash or direct deposit or whatever makes no difference to the amount of fake interest earned. I say "fake interest" because it isn't real income to the government at all. The amount of currency in circulation is dependant purely on demand by consumers, via banks, for currency. When banks want dollar bills, they ask the Fed -- they hand the fed electronic money and the fed gives them back dollar bills. The amount of currency, however, has nothing to do with the amount of bonds being held -- whether the monetized debt is held in bank accounts, in dollar bills, or in ecash makes absolutely no difference. Again, you just don't know what you are talking about. E-Cash has no impact on the fake interest earned by the fed, which is not seignorage to begin with. Perry ------- End of Forwarded Message

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Re: Unicorn of Color
by tallpaul＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Apr 06, 1996 11:57:33, 'tcmay(a)got.net (Timothy C. May)' wrote: > >Also, I am hesitant to call you "Black Unicorn," as applying the adjective >"black" to a person is illegal in some jurisdictions, and "Unicorn of >Color" does not ring true. (But I grew up calling blacks "colored people," >and gladly switched to the more noble-sounding "black" in the 1960s, and >now I almost vomit everytime I hear some radfem lesbian claim "All wimmin >are people of color!!!!" Yeah, colored people. My, how the worm has >turned....) > Don't go Grubor on us now Tim. Slip over the border and get some downers to handle the delusion of "some jurisdictions" that make it "illegal" to call someone "black." Your gorge is also a lot more steady than you think, so I wouldn't worry about it. If you can choke down nuclear bombings of civilians, surely you can handle the new "private dictionaries" of a few radical feminists who spell "adult female" w-i-m-m-i-n. --tallpaul PS: I identify with that section of the women's liberation movement who spell a different word b-y-t-c-h.

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Re: the cost of untracability?
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 05:30 AM 4/7/96 -0700, Wei Dai wrote: >I think you're right. There is no need for the issuer to pay explicit >interest. The easiest way to eliminate signorage would be to steadily >increase the value of each denomination of ecash. It would be kind of >like a mutual fund that doesn't pay dividends. In fact, if the ecash is >backed by a portfolio of investment securities and its value floats with >the value of the portfolio, then it would be almost exactly like a mutual >fund. > >Of course, as Jonathan Wienke pointed out, the IRS would not be very happy >about this. Then again, the IRS would not be happy with a lot of the >technology discussed on this list. Some more than others, huh? B^) FWIW, I think that there is no capital-gains-type tax on currency conversions. In other words, if I take dollars and buy yen today, and the interconvert rate changes and I convert back and make a "profit," that is not considered income. If that's the case, then ecash has an excellent precedent behind it to avoid any taxes on interest, especially if that interest is, in effect, paid by increasing the inherent value of the currency. And most of the "interest" will simply be the avoided inflation loss that would have otherwise occurred. Buying ecash may be equivalent to buying an absolutely non-inflating currency that the government can't manipulate. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: Australia's New South Wales tries net-censorship
by Robert A. Rosenberg 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 9:01 4/8/96, Mike Duvos wrote: >I'd be interested to know if the courts have ever had a case in >which a person has been declared to have been in "possession" of >illegal material merely by virtue of its momentary presence in >their cache, screen buffer, or usenet spool. If you want a real world analogy, there are cases where overeager USPS Inspectors who want to "get" someone have sent them porno as a Return Receipt Requested Item and then raided before the person had had a chance to open the package. That is possession under the Law.

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