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RE: Golbal Econ.
by p.v.mcmahon.rea0803＠oasis.icl.co.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> I would like to help get an internet economny going! For the internet > to become a source of greater revenue I'd like to see a system that > can securely make business transactions that we are all happy with. > The amounts should be small transactions compaired with selling a car, All payment mechanisms require a basis of trust - so that the seller knows s/he will get paid - and hence rely on trusted third parties (governments, banks, charge card company etc), and/or need to be supported by specific explicit seller-buyer contracts. Current (commercial) electronic business transactions are underpinned by contracts, and security mechanisms appropriate to the risks associated with the carrier of the transaction. An "internet economy" needs a basis of trust, as well as security mechanisms appropriate for the current level of IP security. What basis of trust do you envisage? - pvm

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Re: Golbal Econ.
by p.v.mcmahon.rea0803＠oasis.icl.co.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> > All payment mechanisms require a basis of trust - so > > that the seller knows s/he will get paid . > The above bank/vendor/customer/mix scenario seems the > simplest to start out with on the Internet at this time. Indeed. But what I have still not seen in this thread is an articulation of a business case for existing financial institutions to support the putative [on|off]-line payment mechanisms - in particular as an alternative to charge/credit cards for one-off transactions. - pvm

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RE: Golbal Econ.
by p.v.mcmahon.rea0803＠oasis.icl.co.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> >An "internet economy" needs a basis of trust, as well as security > >mechanisms appropriate for the current level of IP security. What basis > >of trust do you envisage? > Secure transactions are here already. ... for parties with established commercial relationships. > Most of this can be done in civil law. It's done all the time in the > securities markets. If you have certificate which is collateralized, by an But the contractual agreements upon which these transactions are based don't scale too well to the [small] vendor / casual purchaser sector, which I guess the term "internet economy" is intended to encompass. The most likely basis of trust for this sector is not going to be achieved through each transient buyer-and-seller pair-instance entering into an explicit contract to enable the seller to believe the buyer's electronic [proxy-]promissory note - but by an extension of the current mechanism for telephone or mail-order payment, with the trusted third parties being VISA, AMEX, etc. While CommerceNet is the most prominent make-the-internet-safe-for-business initiative, it still only expects to have 1 million customers within five years - a goal that is modest enough given today's Internet user base, and growth rates. Even so, industry analysts consider this goal ambitious. Expectations for an internet economy based on techniques above and beyond the ability to securely send one's credit/charge card details are unlikely to be fulfilled in the short/medium term. - pvm

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RE: Golbal Econ.
by rah＠shipwright.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 7:35 PM 8/28/94 +0100, p.v.mcmahon.rea0803(a)oasis.icl.co.uk wrote: >An "internet economy" needs a basis of trust, as well as security >mechanisms appropriate for the current level of IP security. What basis >of trust do you envisage? Most of this can be done in civil law. It's done all the time in the securities markets. If you have certificate which is collateralized, by an agreement between the issuer and the purchaser, and thus the entire transaction chain until the certificate is redeemed, monitored by an independent trustee, then you have a stable exchange mechanism for internet commerce. International trades of securities like this are made in amounts in the trillions of dollars every day. All collateralized bonds have this feature. The extension of this to an offline digital cash issuance agreement is trivial. Secure transactions are here already. They're obtained by using public key crypto to pass transaction information, including the digital certificates and any information or software, or purchase order/invoice, between buyer and seller. Cheers, Bob Hettinga ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) "There is no difference between someone Shipwright Development Corporation who eats too little and sees Heaven and 44 Farquhar Street someone who drinks too much and sees Boston, MA 02331 USA snakes." -- Bertrand Russell (617) 323-7923

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Re: crypto anarchy thoughts
by rah＠shipwright.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 8:17 PM 8/28/94 +0200, nobody(a)ds1.wu-wien.ac.at wrote: >Digital cash never made it off the ground because credit card >companies are now held to stricter laws about disclosing account >information, and banks provide competitive debit cards and live under >the same disclosure laws (i.e. credit/debit cards good enough for >99.99999% of the people). Furthermore, merchants are restricted from >culling purchase records to build dossiers on spending habits (or face >legal action), so manufacturers now rely on voluntarily supplied info, >usually by enticing customers with various benefits of "registering", >such as rebates, discounts, sweepstakes entries, etc. Nobody cares >that digial cash preserves anonimity, because bank and stores aren't >interested, and customers want the extra benefits that stores offer to >add their name to their database. Any argument which uses anonymity as the first cause for implementing a digital cash system deserves to lose. Like sophisticated engraving, intaglio printing, and a zealous anti-counterfeiting effort, strong crypto and zealous anti-double spending efforts are the technologies which enable trust in a digital cash certificate for it's own sake. The trust of that certificate is what lowers costs a transaction using it to the point where vendors don't need security deposits to back up their credit card float, and where direct connection to a trusted third-party aren't necessary for that or a debit card transaction. It also obviates the need of identifying who you get it from. It's money that's the issue here. Same as it ever was. Privacy, and maybe even crypto-anarchy or anarcho-capitalism, is the icing on the cake. > >For this reason, offshore banks don't fare too well since the digital >cash they issue generally isn't spendible. It is convenient however, >if you need to transfer money from one account to another. But you >have to go to a "money broker" who will exchange your digital cash for >spendible cash, and pay a transaction fee. A digital cash issuer (an underwriter) doesn't have to be domiciled in an imaginary foriegn country in order to survive. It can sit in New York, or Boston (I hope...), or (horrors) Washington DC. I expect that maybe someday banks may eventually hold portfolios of outstanding digital cash, and it's easy to see an eventual secondary (derivative) markets for bundles of digital cash, in the same way mortgages are handled. It's also easy to see how it will be easier to leave it the underwriters to handle the stuff in the beginning, and for a bank to get commissions for referring customers to a specific underwriter. In this model, the "money broker" is actually the issuer and the bank simply is an agent, like in traveller's checks. Cheers, Bob Hettinga ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) "There is no difference between someone Shipwright Development Corporation who eats too little and sees Heaven and 44 Farquhar Street someone who drinks too much and sees Boston, MA 02331 USA snakes." -- Bertrand Russell (617) 323-7923

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crypto anarchy thoughts
by nobody＠ds1.wu-wien.ac.at 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Blanc wrote: > list discussions do not altogether convince of the importance of > using encryption as a matter of course or for the re-structuring of > society. True! Encryption and athentication, which is probably all the crypto that CommerceNet and further commercial transactions will use, is just the tip of the crypto-anarchy iceberg. And like an iceberg, most will not see the light of day. > The choice to use crypto is a little different from the sense > of wanting to use it from desperation; I think it is the True again, but then as another pointed out, you draw attention to yourself if you reserve crypto usage for "important" times only. Envelopes don't raise suspicion because nearly everybody uses them. > One of the important issues regarding the use of encryption is not > necessarily whether it is used or not as a matter of course, but > rather the controversy over the source of the permission to use it as > well as the imposed obligation to participate in self-incriminating > applications of it. i.e. do individuals have the sovereign right to I don't understand exactly... for many of the various protocols, full participation is necessary to avoid self-incrimination. For example, digital cash. If you wind up using a credit card or writing checks for everything, you lose any benefits. > But they are not the only ones involved, and it is my understanding > that not all future developments will be determined on this list. Definitely! This list is a clearinghouse of ideas only. People can write in and describe various theoretical concepts which are interesting and fascinating to think about, but whose impact on society will be left for science fiction to describe. I'm not saying this is bad or undesirable. Just that I beleive the future will hold a fairly limited version of crypto anarchy. Here's a scenario: 10 years in the future, PGP is a fully GUI based program at last. It supports drag-n-drop, all sorts of OLE type protocols, and is used just once in a great while by most people, who don't really need the security but once in a great while. Authentication, on the other hand, is pretty big. Companies regularly handle business via networks and thus most have an email address where they take orders, encrypted and signed of course. There are more remailers, a few hundred, but most run in unsecure environments by mostly students who think they're cool. A few commercial remailers were launched, but failed due to lack of interest. The few pay remailers operating are owned by rich hobbyists who can spare a machine and an internet connection and don't care about actually turning a profit. But these don't get much traffic since there are so many free remailers. Digital cash never made it off the ground because credit card companies are now held to stricter laws about disclosing account information, and banks provide competitive debit cards and live under the same disclosure laws (i.e. credit/debit cards good enough for 99.99999% of the people). Furthermore, merchants are restricted from culling purchase records to build dossiers on spending habits (or face legal action), so manufacturers now rely on voluntarily supplied info, usually by enticing customers with various benefits of "registering", such as rebates, discounts, sweepstakes entries, etc. Nobody cares that digial cash preserves anonimity, because bank and stores aren't interested, and customers want the extra benefits that stores offer to add their name to their database. For this reason, offshore banks don't fare too well since the digital cash they issue generally isn't spendible. It is convenient however, if you need to transfer money from one account to another. But you have to go to a "money broker" who will exchange your digital cash for spendible cash, and pay a transaction fee. DC-nets are mostly theoretical, as simple versions are too easy to disrupt, and disruption resistant versions are too complex. Still, a few exist, but don't run continuously - you have to post to alt.dc.net and announce a time you would like to use one, and usually a few people announce willingness to participate. (As it turns out, messages to alt.dc.net account for most of the anonymous mail traffic generated.) Data havens are another failed experiment. Storage costs have plummeted, making it cheap for people to just purchase their own terabyte floptical and encrypt all the data they want to keep. They keep it nearby, making it more convenient to retrieve the data than keeping it at a data haven. A hacked version of PGP which accepts a second plaintext is used to encrypt the data. You specify two passphrases, the real one which decrypts your data, and a second one which decrypts your data to the plaintext you specify. Thus you don't care if you are caught with your data floptical, you can always decrypt the contents to scanned in versions of "War and Peace" and "Alice in Wonderland", etc. How's that sound? -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6 iQCVAgUBLmDUBfFYvlqvuKtBAQHpJwP/ZW++0uQezy4SJvUU0c1idNjnAqTdVaAI nHa1juO0IWwsvNGemspRZRS1UTwYrMBefdnWIF1JP0vZYb1tyGeDEPf2Se9+RGTH aqGsTcbzjRKUJhwQWr61gFGk9TBOsdNbX05eTYNf/DHOdqI+bOmMGM4WO2D/YAt3 TFVTIPDxQd8= =Si8r -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Bootstrapping a free banking economy
by Anonymous User 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Pr0duct Cypher writes: > To those at the Nexus who are using Magic Money: thank you and good luck. Is the Nexus Bank still up? Reference to it seems to have been removed from the c2.org web page. Also, what are the current money supply figures for the various banks? I, for one, would like to develop for digital cash (perl, C, Unix, sockets, etc.) but I'm looking for a bank that is commited to turning their barter tokens into an active economy over the long term, so that I will have some choices about how to spend those wages. > So far you are planning to accept Magic Money as payment, and to pay out > Magic Money to a few people who write some code or otherwise help you out. > This will not get it into widespread use. Instead, [rebate in NexusBucks] I think both service fees and the rebate are a good idea. Two more good ideas might be : - Loans, in NexusBucks, to independent developers of online services who expect a future digital cash flow stream from their service - Consumer loans to developers who expect a future wage stream in NexusBucks What is the best way to bootstrap the information services economic cycle? What is the minimal size of economy needed -- how many online services, how many developers, how many skilled believers willing to invest sweat equity to bring us to that pint? "Cypherpunks write code -- for digital cash"

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Re: DSPs
by jdd＠aiki.demon.co.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In message <199408281656.JAA14318(a)netcom.netcom.com> Norman Hardy writes: > Modular reduction is scarcely worse than the multiplication. If I have a 60 word > multi precision number N to be reduced by a 30 word number M, I compute a guess > by dividing the 32 bit most significant bits N by the most significant 32 > bits of M. On a DSP chip like the Texas C40, 32-bit multiplication takes one clock cycle. Modular reduction will take something on the order of one hundred clocks. Modular reduction is much more expensive than multiplication. > I then multiply this quotient by M and subtract that from N. That reduces N by > some multiple of M leaving N mod M unchanged. The error in the guess might > mean that N is less than 32 bits shorter than it was before the operation but > this method gets nearly 32 bits per pass. The inner loop of the is the same as > in multiplication. > > For all of this using the floating point unit wins on most modern CPUs. Not on DSP chips. On the C40, reals are only 32 bits long, so there is no benefit to using them. They are less precise than integers. -- Jim Dixon

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Golbal Econ.
by Rick H. Wesson 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

With topics like buying a car with digital cash make me think some may be missing my point. I don't want to replace all currencies world wide with some implementation of digital cash, be it an on or off-line system. I would like to help get an internet economny going! For the internet to become a source of greater revenue I'd like to see a system that can securely make business transactions that we are all happy with. The amounts should be small transactions compaired with selling a car, I'd like to know how I can pay for some online information without having to have an account based with the information supplier. For starters how can I pay for some HTML page or purchase a physical product via CURRENT technologies on the internet. Lets first start an internet cash system before you go off and let our ego's make all other forms of hard currency obsolette. -Rick

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Re: DSPs
by norm＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 13:09 1994/08/26 -0700, Phil Karn wrote: .... >But then I hear people say that it's not the multiplication that slows >down modular exponentiation, it's the modular reduction. .... Modular reduction is scarcely worse than the multiplication. If I have a 60 word multi precision number N to be reduced by a 30 word number M, I compute a guess by dividing the 32 bit most significant bits N by the most significant 32 bits of M. I then multiply this quotient by M and subtract that from N. That reduces N by some multiple of M leaving N mod M unchanged. The error in the guess might mean that N is less than 32 bits shorter than it was before the operation but this method gets nearly 32 bits per pass. The inner loop of the is the same as in multiplication. For all of this using the floating point unit wins on most modern CPUs.

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