Robert Hettinga, <rah@shipwright.com>, writes:
Again, it's using the right business model, and not necessarily cryptography, which makes a market happen. Blind signatures and hash collisions are necessary, but not sufficient, for the market to exist.
Bob, if I understand you correctly, you've suggested that digital bearer instruments will in the long run actually be more efficient than conventional book entry based transaction models. Anonymity will be cheaper than identified transactions. But, if digital bearer certificates of all kinds are, as you suggest, cheaper and more efficient than conventional ones, why can't we just use ordinary non-blinded digital instruments and ignore the identifying information? For example, XYZ Co. could issue a signed note saying "Serial number 12345, worth 100 shares of XYZ Co.". A bank could issue a signed note saying "Serial number 54321, worth $100 at DigiBank". These can be done with ordinary digital signatures. No blinding or patent issues arise (by the end of this year, when the patents expire!). These are not blinded, so they are in principle traceable. They have to have unique serial numbers to solve the double spending problem, and those could be used to track them. This makes them less attractive from the privacy perspective, but what about from the point of view of the financial markets? Can they just ignore the serial numbers and treat them as the bearer certificates you have been talking about? (Don't real bearer certificates often have serial numbers on them?) Maybe this geodesic market you're talking about (which I don't understand at all) could work with current technology? Hal