Sat, 11 May 1996, Jon Moore wrote:
Bert-Jan said:
=B7 Monetary value: it must be backed by either cash (currency), bank authorized credit, or a bank-certified cashier's check, so that it is easily accepted by others.
The banks/cash-issuing corporations are likely to support anything that is secure enough, and looks like a runner, because any e-money scheme is profitable to them (they earn interest on the corresponding real cash while the e-money is in circulation).
This is one question why the central bank in Estonia (I am not sure about other countries) does not allow issuing e-cash here in Estonia. While the banks issue e-cash to people, they get some real cash from people. This leads to actually doubleing the money in circulation, each monetary unit, either dollar or kroon, can at the same time be used by owner of e-cash and at the same time by the bank. The central banks are afraid that when the amount of e-cash in circulation gets big, this could lead to devalvation of money, especially a small country like Estonia is afraid of such development. Anonymity of monetary transactions is another thing that Bank of Estonia has declared illegal. Juri Kaljundi jk@stallion.ee AS Stallion