December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

one more thing.
by Matt Thomlinson 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

You might need this: (the banks' key): -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: 2.3a mQBPAi3HKO0AAAECAMvQjLjmYqiYg2gR3LiAOTWoSbcnMQsZZtzGLDy/tx3B2dwi BwB8GHbBYv43CrFVGEsaiYm1nw9Z7R2oJiKr3fEAEQEAAbQUVGhlIFBoYW50b20g RXhjaGFuZ2U= =znO6 -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Matt Thomlinson University of Washington, Seattle, Washington. phone: (206) 548-9804 Check my home page -- ftp://ftp.u.washington.edu/public/phantom/home.html PGP 2.2 key available via email, or finger phantom(a)hardy.u.washington.edu

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The Value of Money
by Blanc Weber 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

One bill makes you larger, two bills make you small, and the ones that Uncle gives you aren't worth anything utall....... I thank everyone for the explanations I read; they were all quite interesting, informative, and enlightening. I think that asking about the origins of the concept of money supply is a bit like asking about the origin of God or the Universe: it's just there. My question is still unanswered in my mind, and I think the best thing will be to do some further research in the library: Where did Alice get her money initially which she deposited in a bank for its safe-keeping and interim use. It was printed by the government. How did the gov. decide how much to "create" (print) and then assign a "value" to, from their gold reserve (back when it meant something). Too much or too little currency in circulation, and you have either inflation or deflation; I know it's arbitrary, but how was an acceptably correct proportion established initially, beginning from when the US was established as a legitimate nation; how was the process started, based on what sort of relationship between the abstract units and the available "stuff" used as reference to base it upon. The act of assigning abstract numbers to a concrete substance like gold: someone made the initial associations and established an understanding among the intended users. The procedure of using an exchange medium was familiar from centuries before. The medium changed, but the system of exchange remained and has been expanded upon, until now it is very complex. Really, now all that we mostly see are "money-numbers" attached to checks, credit cards, bank account statements, receipts, shares, etc. I don't ever see the gold and if I exchanged all of my checking account for it, I would probably find resistance to its use from the inconvenience and danger of actually handling it. This is now pretty well just an act of assessing value/worth based upon knowledge gained from the past relative to what everybody else has been doing, in terms of assigning any worth to any thing in terms of some number. It all makes sense, now. I understand this much: there is some gold and other actual metal located in a vault, sitting there as a symbolic standard of wealth, worth, value. Everyone stakes a claim to it, and they exchange that claim to others in substitution for something else (dog, rifle, gas in the car, baby-sitting). These claims can circulate as fast as a computer can calcualte & transfer them, and that is all that circulates while the standard continues to sit in the vault, not being used for anything by anybody. As long as you hold a claim to this lump of stuff, you're Somebody - a force to contend with in the Market Place. All you have to figure out is how to *get* some of that Claim in your hands so that you, too, can be involved in the Circulation Business. Something which can be converted from a solid to a liquid so it can be re-converted back to a solid or something similar. But you always want to maintain some Claim, some attachment, to that symbolic reference from which all money numbers derive their assigned worth. It's easy, when you know how. :>) Oh, and. . . uh.. .what this has to do with cypherpunks is... uh . ..uh. . .anarcho-capitalistic control of my destiny based upon fundamental comprehension of currency denomination & free market methodology with future potential within an encrypted digi-cash system? Blanc

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Detweiler's Back--comments in talk.politics.crypto
by tcmay＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Cyphertentacles, I apologize for mentioning the name "Detweiler" here, but I just spent a fair amount of time composing this attached article for talk.politics.crypto, and thought it relevant enough to Cypherpunks to forward here. Many of you apparently missed Detweiler's harassment of our list (with fantasies that several list members were actually "Tentacles" of myself and Eric Hughes and others, etc.), for which you should consider yourself blessed. He has a nasty habit of popping up, though. Tonight, shortly after reading his post where he asked "have you fixed the cypherpunks remailers yet?," I saw that huge list of numbers appear from an anonymous site....and of course I thought "He's baaaaack!" --Tim Newsgroups: alt.security.pgp,talk.politics.crypto Path: netcom.com!tcmay From: tcmay(a)netcom.com (Timothy C. May) Subject: Re: RSA Data Security Inc. and Pretty Good Privacy...some comments Message-ID: <tcmayCp9qJ9.7r3(a)netcom.com> Followup-To: alt.security.pgp,talk.politics.crypto Date: Wed, 4 May 1994 08:06:45 GMT L. Detweiler (tmp(a)netcom.com) wrote: (commenting on a post of mine) : actually, something I have observed is that you never respond to : ad hominem attacks the way e.g. Sternlight does. If someone calls : you a slimy cryptoanarchist, you don't bother to defend yourself. That's right. I see no point in answering such nonsense, as it wastes my time and wastes the group's time. I'm only commenting here because you've made an accurate observation here...ad hominem arguments are rarely persuasive. : Which is something of a pity, because IMHO all the fun of Usenet : is namecalling. What else is it good for? any medium that does not : reward excellence in posting (the good and the bad scroll off : in the same pace) is asking for mediocrity. Talk.politics.crypto should be, in my opinion, concerning itself with the vital and fascinating questions about crypto policy, the laws of other countries besides the U.S., Clipper, Digital Telephony, and so forth, not with endless acrimony about who said what, who called whom a liar, and who's sleazier. If someone calls me a fool, or a dupe, or a Nazi babykiller, I take satisfaction in letting their words speak to their own reputation. Further, anyone _taken in_ by such idle charges almost certainly _deserves_ to be taken in! A kind of filter, as it were. Most people are pretty reasonable, and learn quickly enough to separate out casual charges and idle assertions from the truth. This is why free speech "works." (When Detweiler begain to attach my name and (non-digital) sig block to his posts, and then to post pro-Nazi rants in soc.culture.jewish and soc.culture.german, with my name at the bottom, then I took the step of letting his site admin know I was pissed off. Eventually, after LD mailbombed more than a hundred newsgroups--before it was stopped at his site--his account was yanked. He's now posting as "tmp.netcom.com," out of the Denver site.) : also, it appears that you are loathe to post any insult under your : True Name but feel free to do so under all the `others' <g>. It appears Yes, I dislike posting insults....even for people I disagree with. (I'm not perfect...I've lost my temper on the Net more than once...) And a lot of times I just see no point in refuting an obviously flawed argument someone makes. The Clipper arguments have gone around and around and most people in this group, not to mention 80% of Americans, dislike the Clipper concept. (As I've said so many times, beginning 5 months _before_ Clipper was announced, my real concern is that the groundwork is being laid for some kind of ban on unapproved crypto use. This has always been the focus of my efforts, including the technical and public relations efforts now underway to undermine key escrow, not the relatively trivial issue of what kind of secure phones the government buys for itself and tells its contractors to buy. Too many issues here to discuss now.) However, as I told you beginning last summer when you started to pester me about my "Tentacles" and my "Pseudopods," I don't post to this or any other group under any name or account name other than my own name, tcmay(a)netcom.com. And I haven't used a reamiler or anonymous posting service for many months (and then it was mostly for experiments, with posts going to the Cypherpunks mailing list). The same cannot be said of yourself, you having posted under the various names of S. Boxx, The Executioner, Pablo Escobar, Jim Riverman, T.C. Hughes, Eric May, Adolf Hitler, etc., via the anon.penet.fi remailer site. And you've even posted with _my name_ attached to your posts. (A good argument for digital signatures, save that I run RSA's MailSafe and MacPGP on my home machine, and uploading to Netcom is an extra set of steps I don't relish.) : that the cryptoanarchist ideology that `true names' are meaningless : is itself meaningless. Well, I think you should consider that you : are really missing out on something. A world where there is no : strong condemnation of evil is an invitation to moral relativism : and fascism (or, maybe that is your point). Condemnation of evil doesn't happen by ad hominem arguments, by anonymous posts, by prattle about the "spawn of Satan" and "sodomites." Nothing to be gained by mindlessly demonizing David Sternlight, Grady Ward, Dorothy Denning, or any other such folks. If there is a developing collision between "privacy" and the putative need for the government to inspect the insides of ones computer files, filing cabinets, business receipts, housekeeper interview logs, etc. (all of these inspections are ostensibly needed for small businesses--and many of us are becoming small businessmen, courtesy of at home consulting, businesses--to allow taxation, detection of money-laundering, etc.), then this collision needs to be discussed. I don't impute evil to the NSA or NIST, or to folks like Dorothy Denning and David Sternlight. I just disagree with them and think the new technologies favor (and "empower") the individual over any particular nation and its band of tax collectors, censors, and authority figures. There are good aspects and bad aspects to this kind of "crypto anarchy" (my term since 1988), but the genie's already out of the bottle. Instead of arguing pointlessly here, in this group, over 700 mostly like-minded (though I don't speak for others) folks are racing to get strong crypto and its related technologies deployed as quickly and as widely as we can. Just to get the genie even _further_ out of the bottle. (Our band of folks, and others, may lack the sheer power of the Agency, but it is _ever so much easier_ to encrypt strongly, to provide untraceable message routing, than it is to break ciphers and track all messages. The old saw, repeated recently by Philip Elmer-Dewitt in an otherwise fine McNeil-Lehrer piece, that the NSA "has never met a code it couldn't crack," is actually almost completely bogus. In fact, most modern ciphers have been uncrackable, for reasons of computational complexity, and there have been few major cipher or code crackings in the last 20 years...the Walker spy case was so serious because key material was being supplied to the Soviets, the kind of black-bag cryptanalysis which works where brute-force methods fail. Fortunately for us, public key cryptosystems have much less key material to protect, and the Agency can't do a black-bag job on very many of us. This is why they're understandably worried, and why Clipper, Capstone, and Digital Telephony are their attempts at solutions. : the delight of Usenet is the back-and-forth. That's why Sternlight : is famous and T.C.May is just a lurking shadow. The latter has mastered : the thrust but not the parry. And? So? In the big scheme of things, it doesn't matter much to me that David Sternlight is much better known than I am. Or that you, L. Detweiler, rate your very own section in the "Legends" guide in alt.usenet.kooks. : hee, hee, T.C.May apologizes to Dorothy Denning. Mr. May, it is clear : that you can't decide whether you want to be a guerilla cryptoanarchist : or the sweet, nice boy next door who brings cookies for the neighbor : Aunt Dorothy. : I'll stop now. Thanks. That's my cue to stop as well. : pseudonymously yours, : tmp(a)netcom.com --Tim May -- .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Support cocaine dealers' privacy rights!
by rishab＠dxm.ernet.in 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Whatever we may think about tyrannical attacks by prosecutors on innocent cocaine kings based on wiretaps totally violating their rights of privacy, it is precisely these events that create support for Clipper, from TLAs and the public alike. PMARKS(a)VAX1.UMKC.EDU: > Concerning the following, Duncan Frissell makes an excellent point we should > all consider seriously: > > **************************************************************************** > One of the city's largest bookies was busted when the Feds intercepted the > daily fax transmissions summarizing business results sent from his NY > office to his Florida home. > > A major cocaine dealer is facing prosecution based on written transaction > records seized at his office. His simple code was broken by a "known > plaintext attack" when investigators were able to match his written > notations with transaction information derived from wiretaps. > > Can't anyone help these people? Maybe 178th Street needs PGP and Secure > Drive more than the PC Expo. > **************************************************************************** > > You are absolutely correct! For too long, licensed Attourneys and Certified > Public Accountants have been making comfortable careers representing clients > from the, shall we say, "underworld." It is time for cryptographic experts > to be recognized as the true professionals they are and proudly join the > ranks of other professionals who represent thieves, extortionists, junkies, > drug dealers, embezzelers, etc. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rishab Aiyer Ghosh rishab(a)dxm.ernet.in Voicemail +91 11 3760335; Vox/Fax/Data 6853410 H-34C Saket New Delhi 110017 INDIA The National Short-Sleeved Shirt Association says: Support your right to bare arms! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Mien Beinkpff
by Bill Garland 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Subj: Why Digital Cash is Not Being Used >Hal Finney asks us to think about and comment on the important issue of why >digital cash, in its myriad forms, is not in wider use. Especially on this >list, where the Magic Money/Tacky Tokens experiment has not (yet at least) >produced widespread use. I believe these things will come into use fairly quickly - perhaps not as fast as Tim, Hal, others, myself included, want, but. Especially if the new momentum here in Cypherpunks keeps up. Allow me to inject some of my own momentum here. I was going to make a suggestion that this discussion move from Cypherpunks to IMP-Interest, which seems to be a dead list. Cypherpunks who object to the non-crypto aspect of the Money_Threads could just not bother with IMP-Interest, and Cypherpunks could take over IMP-Interest and work at actually establishing an IMP. (Internet Mercantile Protocol). [I might have more to say about protocols later - but already I sense a long post coming up...] [[ I don't know if I should apologize in advance for verbosity, since there is soooo much mail to read and tend to...but I have been holding back for various reasons much related to the answer to the Subject: Why Digital Cash is not being used.]] Or is there something official about the name "IMP" - I notice the host is on bellcore, do they own the name? Can anyone own a name such as IMP ? Anything else that needs to be said, in case of newbies re IMP? Nick Szabo was the one who originally recommended it, Nick - are you still there? However, I could be satisfied leaving it on Cypherpunks...actually, I bet a poll of active C'punk posters and interested lurkers would approve of the digital cash conversations and the value of money threads. We'll just have to get Hawk's Ray's ExI Mailing List new software purchased or donated to Cypherpunks...tax decuctable... Meanwhile, back to replying to Tim's message and Hal's rallying of the troops and answering This Question : >This question also goes to the heart of several related questions: >1. Why aren't crypto protocols other than simple encryption, digital >signatures (both implemented in PGP as the de facto standard in our >community), and remailings (implemented in Julf's anon.penet.fi remailer >and in the various Cypherpunks remailers) being *used*? Why no DC-Nets, no >data havens, no digital timestamping, etc.? Answer Number One to 1. HOMEWORK. Sorry for shouting. There is sooo much homework to do. We've got code to write, borrow, use... Personally, I have had PGP for many months, almost a year, I suppose, and am only now just getting a round tuit. This Cypherpunks "posting" will be my first public use of PGP to sign a message. I did send a private PGP message to one friend, just for practice. I don't have time to read alt.security.pgp enough to not have some messages expire on me, so I couldn't answer the simple question of Why does PGP stick an extra "- " in front of the "-----Begin Public Key Block -----" when you include the ascii public key block in the text of your letter. Must be a recursion type of thing, PGP rejecting this particular insance of text as anything significant to do with PGP signing with cleartxt=on. Anyway, that is perhaps a faq so I'll recheck that later, .... So, I've finally got my PGP homework done, at least enough to get past the basics. But now to get into the PGP Tools and really start writing code...more homework. Fortunately for you, Tim, you don't have a Boss to worry about - your dues are all paid in this regard. Anyway, I'll stick my virgin public key in here, but beware it has not been signed. I have already volunteered to spring for a phone call to Stuart Card to check public key sigs, and I'll volunteer to phone one or two others who reply directly to me to get my key signed by Known Cypherpunks and/or Extropians. Anyway, later on that. I'll probably even PAY someone in digital cash to sign my key... - -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: 2.3a mQCNAiynHCkAAAEEANbd5hw0IR+keK2U2DoGnAPdcctWxipdXbJ2Qr83ScX7d7K1 uP1bkRkGOCYJpQTksgtHf/ulUsZwq4TEFb7QUyvHnoRJcO4q0RX7CnH9fhXQ1F+k LeuU4NSCYIzrvI6kdoMR1nTN3N8zm793CafB/SI0ZoJs2b5p1UqYjDfdkCPxAAUR tCxCaWxsIEdhcmxhbmQgKFdtLlIuKSAgPGJpbGxAa2Vhbi51Y3MubXVuLmNhPg== =Z9Sb - -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Now, I hope I used the right key! Something else to check. So what else is on the homework list? 1. Read Chaum papers. Re-read all Hal Finney articles in Extropy. Really understand Alice to Bob to me and back again. Straighforward study, but a few time units involved. Reread Mark Ringuette mail. 2. Read Schneier. Heavy into the technical cryptography stuff, to be sure, but definitely required reading. Many time units. 2. a. Buy the book. Not in our library. I am broke and cannot afford hefty tome right now. However, I have entered a contest which pays $150 first prize and $75 second in credits at my favourite bookstore. Unfortunately they will not issue digital cash certificates with which to redeem said prize at the Internet Bookstore, which doesn't yet take digital cash, because there is not yet a true internet bank - wait - what's that I hear about INFO_Banque ??? Anyway, Win contest, order book. Will take at least two weeks for contest, then a week to get the money, then two weeks order from bookstore. With luck, I'll have a copy within six weeks. And if I don't win the writing contest, with The Great Newfoundland Novel, Page 1, then it's off to a farther payday...probably September at current rate of progress. 2. b. Do the Errata list. 2. c. Get the Diskette. Pay BS in digital cash for diskette. Get licence from BS to resell software to my Customers. 2. d. Get a box of the books and sell them to my Customers. 3. Get my own machine to do all this on. Certain perqs apply to my use of my employer's facilities, to be sure, but they do not extend indefinitely and in all directions. More code to write. More paydays down the road... Send me real cash money. 4. Start a BBS. Well, maybe I can make some money at it, once I get a machine and some phone lines...but I'm way out in the boonies here. I'll need a satellite dish internet feed, because I can't get a commercial one except through academic routes, and I don't want to go through academic routes and would not be allowed, anyway. 5. Get a Netcom account? Is this possible for a Canadian? I'd still have to telnet from some supplier here. I'll go for my own service with my own satellite dish. Investors, anyone? Ripe market! Send for Prospect-Us. 6. Learn Unix. Maybe I'll get a shell account on Sameer's machine. I've been a DEC RSTS/VMS Basic-Plus/VAX BASIC V2 programmer for too long, and I've not yet become unixificated. I don't even know if I could read a C++ program. I'm obsolete...again. 7. Reactive HEx - opps, premature - see below for rest of this point. 8. Become a security expert. Definitely need SecureDrive/Dev/Other. More ftp'ing to do. I really appreciate all the Cyperpunks keeping ourselves posted on the latest and greatest and the news regarding these products, as well as the pearls of wisdom from DCF. I expect most of us could, after homework, become successful security consultants. And there are a lot of anarchists about! But, isn't Unix full of security holes? When I set up my own Netcom company, won't I be hacked? Ray? HELP? Oh yes, I've got to get into Pr0duct Cypher's product. What's a firewall? 9. Start up INFO_Banque. I am almost ready to do this, but not quite. Something I said about homework... so Cypherpunks, Extropians, (no, please do not forward this post to Extropians. I am refering to Extropians who are Cypherpunks...), friends, go easy on my new .sig. However, there ain't no time like the present, neither, hey! Speaking of time... >2. What *incentives* are there for creative programmers to devise and/or >implement new crypto protocols if essentially everything for the past year >and a half (since the fall of 1992, which is when PGP 2.0 and remailers >became widely available) has languished? There's gold in them thar hills. I will be willing to put money into it, when I get some money. This process of emerging from bankruptcy and becoming judgement proof is interesting, but it takes time, and money. Also, discipline. Having proven myself incompetent at my financial affairs, how dare I speculate upon starting a bank? Well, there it is. Fuck 'em. Feed em fishheads. I'm going to do it anyway. I'll even go out on a limb and say that I'm going to tell you all how I'm going to do it, except don't expect an answer Real Soon Now. I've still got to figure out the solution to the duplicate spending problem. >3. What are the "killer apps" of crypto? Cypherpunks want to know. Cypherpunks are writing them... And please, Tim, We Really Do Need The FAQ. I have heard you toss out tidbits about the Cyperpunks FAQ. More, please. We really do value your postings and ideas and caveats and reputation - nobody else could do it...Tim... >4. What platforms and user environments should would-be developers target? >What machines? What networks? What languages? (An ongoing interest of mine. >Objects, scripts, Visual Basic (!) VBX tools, TCL, perl, many platforms, >etc. A tower of Babel of confusion is upon us.) Yes, I cannot even attempt an answer here yet. It matters, of course, but I would speculate that it will be done, perhaps in EACH of these ways on all the platforms that there are for sale to our Customers. However, we've got to nail down the protocol. Maybe the Magic Money Model will take off. Pr0duct Cypher, do I need to become anonymous? >Here is my first-cut analysis of the digital cash situation. >I. Why is Magic Money/Tack Tokens, in particular, not being more widely used? >- Nothing of significance on the List to buy, hence no incentive to learn >how MM works. (Just because someone announces that their new article is >available for 10 Tacky Tokens doesn't a demand make!) Yeah, I've noticed this, too. But I want to buy books, and I want to sell stuff to my Customers, and I want them to use my cash from my bank to pay for this stuff. And I want cooperating banks all using the same INFO_Banque Protocol (TM WmRG right now) to use my cash and I'll use theirs, and we'll have 700 Cypherpunks and 300 Extropians start up 1000 new banks all using our own developed and pgp-like-available software, for a small fee. Within a little while, I am going to offer my own INFO_Banque digital cash for sale to Cypherpunks and Extropians, and eventually everyone in the world, and keep a US Dollar Trust account in a secret "real" offshore bank somewhere in the Cayman Islands or El Salvador. But before I can do that, well, you know...homework... Still, if you want to get the ball rolling, send me $10 and I'll deposit it in trust, sticking my own reputation on the line ... Actually, I don't know if there are any legal implications to that, because my private company Macronic Systems, Inc. is incorporated specifically NOT as a bank, because different rules apply to a bank, but my INFO_Banque is not incorporated anywhere. It is a virtual entity of mine that nobody can get at just yet. Hell, Tim, I'll give you all the Thornes you want for $10 - if you still want them! Be the first one on your block. Just to keep myself honest, my home address is 28 Warren Place, St. John's, Nfld. Canada A1A 2A1. Now, wouldn't you trust someone with a postal code like that! I hesitated at putting that here in a Cypherpunks message, but what the hell... just tell Detweiller I am armed and dangerous... >- Semantic gap. I confess to not having the foggiest ideas of how to go >about acquiring Tacky Tokens, how to send them to other people, how to >redeem them (and for what), etc. Having nothing to buy (no need), and >plenty of things to occupy my time, I've had no interest in looking at MM. This will change. Maybe you don't need stuff and can always buy it conventionally anyway. But with the rapidity with which Mosaic and WWW applications are growing around the world, there will soon be many on-line stores. I want to open one myself...just get me my new alpha-sun-mips-cray box with a few gigs raid cryptofied... and a satellite dish network feed and notebook and four wheel drive with a cellular phone and ... Any comments on the newly announced secure mosaic? >When I buy items like t-shirts from people on this list, I simply write >them a check and send it. Very simple. The banks handle the complexities. >And writing a check is a "prototype" (or script) that is learned early by >most of us. Not so with any of the various digital cash schemes. In 10 or >20 years, sure, but not now. Yes, this is fine. But we are talking anonymous money, untraceable transactions, cryptoanarchy, stuff like that. We know about cheques. (I wish you yanks could get your spelling right!) >This is not to take away from the excellent work--I gather from comments by >others--that ProductCypher put into MM. His greatest achievement may turn >out to bring this issue to the fore, to wit, what will cause people to >bridge this semantic gap (understanding) and actually begin to *use* these >new constructs? Yes, I gotta add this to my homework list. >- as others have noted recently (and this is a well-known issue), >alternative currencies must offer some advantage over existing currencies, >or at least be roughly on a par with them. Agreed - of course. We've got to beat VISA/MC/AMEX/Travellers Cheques in transaction costs, and we've got to pay with Digital Postage. I love that term! It explains it all. Quote from the upcoming INFO_Banque Catechism (R) : Digital Cash pays for itself. - --- "frequent flier miles," ---- elided. >(The proposal recently that vendors of products, like t-shirts, give a >discount for MM payments is of course unworkable. This is asking real >people to give up real dollars for an ideological cause of marginally >little significance to them. The advantages of MM must be real, not phony.) Of course. >II. Other Experiences with Digital Cash in Some Form >- On the Extropians list a while back (I've since left that list), there >was an interesting experiment involving reputations of posters and "shares" >in their reputations. Brian Hawthorne introduced is "Hawthorne Exchange," >HeX, with eventually a few hundred or so reputations trading. The unit of >exchange was the "Thorne," with each new list member given 10,000 Thornes >to trade with. >Trading was very sparse, ... elide ... >But I think the system was ultimately a failure. Nothing interesting was >for sale, and Thornes had a ridiculously low value (reflecting of course >their "toy" nature...my $20 bought 20,000 Thornes, as I recall). By "low >value" I mean that the number of Thornes given to each participant (Hint: >"given" is the important word) was worth nominally $100 (by Brian's sales >price--probably none were ever sold at this price), worth $10 to me and >others (by my offer of $1 per 1000 Thornes), and probably worth much _less_ >as the HeX market languished and, probably, ultimately folded. (Does >anybody on the Extropians list know if it is still operating? And what >happened to by shares when I left the list?) Well, yes I know, sort of. Brian Hawthorne couldn't handle the Extropians volume because of work commitments. I don't know if he was on Cypherpunks or not. So he auctioned off HEx, and I bought it for a small fee. It was announced, but, of course, you missed it... HEx is now dormant and will be for a little while yet. I am expecting to be able to find a place from which to run it real soon now. Meanwhile, it is in limbo. There has been no crying demand from Extropians to get it back on line. When I do get some of my homework done, I will take the purchased software system, complete with all the current state of reputations, accounts, and so on, and figure out what to do with it. The reason I bought it was not so much to run a market for the reputations of Extropians, but because reputation markets are going to be valuable commodities in the near future, as internet commerce ramps up. I want to expand upon the concepts and write some code and start marketing HEx in a way that can make me and my Business Partners some money. My INFO_Banque will register reputations for digital postage fees, and receive and arbitrate contributed information about reputations, from other reputation holders, for some small transaction fees. I have been wanting for months to expound upon these ideas and seek feedback from Extropians and Cypherpunks regarding what to do with this reputation market. I will accept any ideas any of you want to donate... if they are earthshattering and they make some money for me and my Business Partners/Investors in the long run, I may even repay with digital cash royalties. Other uses include digital timestamping - when I can get a machine and ups and raid box and backup site and security and all that other stuff I want - I will start offering services like this. What with all the other ambitions I have mentioned here in this Mein Beinkpff message/posting, I could easily spend a few hundred grand getting this together - if I didn't have a full-time job to do to feed my family, etc etc.... It's funny, too, because despite ponderings on these matters over the past year or more, I never asked myself the question that came up in the digital cash/value of money threads today - Who is going to Trust Me? I know I can trust me, and in theory a mix chain will be reliable if you can trust one of the links, so if I become one of these mix chain links through _my_ INFO_Banque, then _I_ know the chain will be reliable. Similarly, _you_ will trust yourself, and soon there will be 700 Cypherpunks and 300 Extropians and all 4 IMP-Interest people all having anonymous remailers and mixes operating, so any sub-chain of eight INFO_Banque Protocol banks will virtually HAVE to be reliable for our commerce... But nobody can trust me not to run off with the cash - good point. How do we solve this one? I guess I'll have to start from the beginning and build a reputation for it... When I _do_ get my homework done, and start offering services for real, when etc etc happens, then you can be sure that if you send me real US Dollars to deposit on account for INFO_Banque digital cash transactions, they will be deposited in a Trust account. Maybe it will at first turn out to be merely digital cheques, but maybe if Perry lets me in on his secrets and some of the stuff he has learned from these six-figure guys at Citibank who are out trying to figure out how to capture this market, well maybe then we can get somewhere... ====== I've gone on too long now...to wrap this up...snip ====== >III. What Markets Might Make Use of Digital Cash I repeat, there's gold in them thar hills. >- illegal markets, for transferring wealth in fairly large amounts. Not at >all clear how this will happen, and it sure won't happen with some >fly-by-night hackers and/or students offering a new service. Yes, it is now the middle of the night. 4:34 am, NST, actually. [Real timestamping update - geez, its now 2 hours 10 minutes later.] >(I didn't mention that one of the persistent concerns about learning new >crypto protocols here on this list is the epiphenomenality (transience) of >it all...remailers appear and then vanish when the students go away or lose >their accounts, features added make past learning useless, and so on. Life >is too short to spend it learning crufty details that will go away in a >matter of months. I'd hate to buy $300 worth of TackyTokens and then find >that their value went away when J.Random User graduated!) Yes, this stuff has to be professionalized. Capitalized. Done. >- betting markets, the "Internet Casino in Cyberspace," etc. Nick Szabo was >once championing this, and I think it could be an interesting, and very >real, market. Lots of issues here. More, please. If a few more Cypherpunks could break that PRNG in Montreal...$600,000 he got! And they paid him! Well, they _had_ to, just for letting them in on the hole...well, if I could just break it _once_ ... >- Digital Postage. This remains my favorite. There's a _need_ for >untraceable payments (else why use a remailer?). I've written about this >extensively, as have others. Yup. I like this. Do include your previous writings in the FAQ... >If remailers offered robust (see above point about crufty, flaky, hobby >remailers) services that they operated as _businesses_, with reasonable >attention to reliability, interconnectivity to other remailers, overall >robustness, and carefully articulated policies about logging, privacy, >etc., then MM or something similar could have a real value. MM or whatever, we've got to nail down the protocol. In spite of my "out of the mouths of babes" approach here and now, I do intend to do this stuff as a business, to make profits, once a few problems are ironed out regarding eating, drinking, playing darts, living forever, etc. >IV. Is there Any Hope for Cypherpunks Software Use? >The remailers (of Hughes and Finney, with other contributions) came in the >first few _weeks_ of existence of the Cypherpunks group. Julf's system >already existed. I'll run one, too, as part of the integrated INFO_Banque services. >Remailers were the "low-hanging fruit" that got plucked fairly easily (not >taking anything away from Eric, but he himself says he learned enough Perl >in one day to write the first, crude remailer the _next_ day!). Well, I guess things are looking up. It can't be all that difficult. If I could master paper tape fortran on a PDP-8/L, what with the RIM loader and the BIN loader and 110 baud, surely I can get into unix in a few days. Sigh. I must be getting old if I can remember flip chip modules that had transistors on them, doing transistor- to-transistor logic, building gates,... Tim, you must have been one of the ones that made this old stuff obsolete! Well done yourself. >Later protocols have not fared as well. Why this is so is of great > importance. >That's a topic unto itself, and one which I hope to write about soon. Lots >of important questions and interesting issues. You said it, boy. I think I'll copyright and publish my INFO_Banque Catechism as part of my Ideas for Sale programme. Hey, you did say we needed _something_ for sale on the net, didn't you? But please, sir, can we have more? Please write about Protocol. Soon. Like, forget the line-by-line response you were going to make to _this_ message... heh heh. (Opps, I almost said ... no, I can't repeat it...) >--Tim May Bill Garland, whose new .sig might become this : /----------------------------------------------------------------------\ | I am an Extropian. | Macronic Systems, Inc. offers Ideas for Sale ! | | BEST: DO_IT_SO ! | Go for it : Pledge a Digital US Dollar now. | | CryptoAnarchist. | Send PGP key for more information. | | Cypherpunk. | Get in on the ground floor. Invest Now. Trust me! | | Owner : MSInc., |---------------------------------------------------| | HEx, INFO_Banque | Day Job : Bill Garland = bill(a)kean.ucs.mun.ca | \__________________________________o o_________________________________/ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3a iQCVAgUBLcduQkqYjDfdkCPxAQF3tQQAoMiOUrwezCp5vs8odOR2ff2l85JXGj7P q+lb3GwCOAKHuULL4G2hoS9jLHrYj+9WQqT2Gu99Jmc2Ut/iFnG/5lfKQfwJwudm aB7FDaq9n0KExJRmW83sK/pKvK7pcvMbOrjL/oA/bqO6yVCXWNZGTic+o778oITH 5IRenEbtGp8= =ryU1 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Why Digital Cash is Not Being Used
by Richard Johnson 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From the keyboard of: "Michael V. Caprio Jr." <mikecap(a)WPI.EDU> > BTW, what is fungible? I've seen this term used several times, but have no > idea what it means. When I don't know what a word means, I grab for a dictionary. :-) If we're going to implement digital cash, we need to understand at least the basics of monetary systems, and the terms involved. Accordingly, the American Heritage Dictionary brings you: fungible (fun-jih-bull) adj. 1. Law. Returnable or negotiable in kind or by substitution, as a quantity of grain for an equal amount of the same kind of grain. 2. Interchangeable. fungible (fun-jih-bull) n. Something that is exchangeable or substitutable. Often used in the plural. [Medieval Latin fungibilis, from Latin fungh (vice), to perform (in place of).] - fungibility n. Richard

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Re: remail 1.9
by snyderra＠dunx1.ocs.drexel.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:51 AM 5/4/94 +0200, Patrick wrote: >Please let me know if you have any suggestions. Errr, yeah. How about setting up an ftp site with this software, or an email address that will automatically send this to those interested, rather than mailing it out to cypherpunks every time? Bob -- Bob Snyder N2KGO MIME, RIPEM mail accepted snyderra(a)dunx1.ocs.drexel.edu finger for RIPEM public key When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl.

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Re: The ITARs
by Carl_Ellison＠vos.stratus.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>> This is sick. According to this, I cannot teach foreigners about >> cryptography in the U.S. >does that also mean that an american cannot use his/her knowledge overseas? That's what Stratus' export control lawyers tell us. However, this whole thing is totally screwy. I know at least one American who consults as a cryptanalyst for foreign companies and governments -- with no mention of export licenses.

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(Fwd) local talk by Nelson Bolyard on cryptography
by whitaker＠dpair.csd.sgi.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- Forwarded mail You're Invited to the Next General Meeting of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility Admission Free/Open to the Public Wednesday, May 4, 1994, 7:30 P.M. First Presbyterian Church 1140 Cowper Street, Palo Alto (3 Blocks North of Embarcadero) Wire Taps and Cryptography in Your Future with Nelson Bolyard Everyone is talking about the Clipper Chip, and lots of people are wondering about the FBI's digital telephony initiative. This talk will discuss both of those things and provide some historical perspective on the battle between Congress and the Administration over control of standards for civilian cryptography, and CPSR's role in that debate. Nelson Bolyard is an engineer for a major computer manufacturer in the Silicon Valley. He has background in cryptography and highly secure systems, and is presently working in high-speed networking. Sponsored By: Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility CPSR\Palo Alto: P.O. Box 717, Palo Alto, CA 94302 -- ------ Steve Dever Steve.Dever(a)Eng.Sun.Com SunPro Donna Derby Yobs CSD - Silicon Graphics yobs(a)csd.sgi.com Customer Support Engineering --- End of forwarded mail from yobs@eol (Donna Derby Yobs) -- Russell Earl Whitaker whitaker(a)sgi.com Silicon Graphics Inc. Technical Assistance Center / Centre D'Assistance Technique Mountain View CA (415) 390-2250 ================================================================ #include <std_disclaimer.h>

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list access
by Brian D Williams 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Fellow cypherpunks, I am still not receiving the list. I thank those who have replied to my requests for assistance. I sent a message to owner- cypherpunks, and hope things are resolved soon. In the meantime, beware of cheap imitations...... Brian Williams Extropian Cypherpatriot "Cryptocosmology: Sufficently advanced comunication is indistinguishable from noise." --Steve Witham "Have you ever had your phones tapped by the government? YOU WILL and the company that'll bring it to you.... AT&T" --James Speth -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3a iQCVAgUBLce0wdCcBnAsu2t1AQGIhQP/Vf/B28ghcaHhbCwsAERnmsxR7ar96vxv Sf2MIX7BR8jfYIJt1DxZgXfvr8MHO7fNp4CvFWE+8sggev4oyKH0x75uQIY9f8kO tOIn0gOwAGdHM2YVM+NJP3pxCrw/dwDGYFZuod/DdgJ8Sbi94pXRPtlRsKu8gEZ9 m0wce8qm4kM= =b2y2 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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