I'll bite. I think that practically the only thing holding digital cash back at this point is pure and simple hucksterism. It certainly needs that, but I don't think it's sufficient. Having heard what Eric has said about potential regulatory problems, I think that most of them are inadvertant obstacles, because they certainly weren't put there to obstruct e$, which didn't exist when they were written. The obstacles are certainly not for electronic money, which the Fed's been using for some time now, but rather for electronic cash, which includes anonymity. The USA provides a fair amount of financial privacy to everyone but the government, particularly law enforcement. So the _business_ case for privacy is largely felt to be already satisfied by the regulators. I think if a reasonable (i.e. not illegal) business case were put to the regulators, they would (as usual) conform to whatever business interests want. The Treasury department, among others, really _doesn't_ want non-recorded transactions. Unless the banking community as a united front _does_, I don't think it will happen domestically (USA) before other deployments. If there's not a united front, it'll be divide and conquer. Eric