-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Wei Dai probably wrote:
That brings up an interesting question. What is the marginal cost to MarkTwain of such a one-cent ecash transaction? If everyone started sending each other these pennies, will MarkTwain go broke?
Good question. Speaking unofficially and off-the-top-of-my head, I estimate the marginal cost to be "really really small". I mean, if you really want to know the marginal cost of something you have to determine which costs are considered marginal and which aren't. Is Frank O. Trotter's salary a marginal cost? I mean, if everyone in the world started sending each other Mark Twain Bank pennies, MTB might have to hire a second or third banker-type like Frank to keep an eye on things. But disregarding such speculation, what is the marginal cost of a kilobyte or so on Mark Twain Bank's internet connection? Or (snicker) a handful of CPU cycles on bank.marktwain.com? The biggest "marginal cost" is probably the salaries of the employees who keep those two things running. Regards, Bryce -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2i Comment: Auto-signed under Unix with 'BAP' Easy-PGP v1.1b2 iQB1AwUBMZvWn0jbHy8sKZitAQH9FAMAzfjFYSG4jjAhHgAzjf8s9YpG6M9NVCm1 PHqHffGtlEL/q+4grPhsLa/5IZuLGbhIOGfuhvDf4/dMM1GpORz+qpbC4RNR3CVp 4LYh4X23UxImIk5EuYd22vjMr+6Y0P4E =ZJ+m -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----