In the never-ending search for legal bases for digital cash, I thought of promissory notes. A promissory note is basically an unsecured promise to pay back a loan, generally by a specified time with a specified interest rate. My wife's college loan was based on such a note. I think these can be transferred from person to person, with the bearer being eligible to redeem the note. I recall old stories where a person's note was passed from hand to hand, ending up in the hands of the villain. Perhaps a digital cash system like Magic Money could serve as the basis for digital promissory notes. You send me money, I'll send you a certain amount of digital cash. That particular denomination and issue date (determined by the exponent) will be redeemable in one year for X+delta dollars. You can hold the note and redeem it in a year, collecting the interest, or you can pass it on or even sell it. This might make people willing to accept the digital cash as valuable, since they would know that it would actually be worth something in a while. And I don't think there are a lot of laws relating to promissory notes, since I've heard of them being used in very informal situations (scribbled on scraps of paper and such). I will try to look into the legalities in a few days. Hal