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True. On the other hand, many of these other companies are actually doing commerce Right This Minute. As a vendor, my primary interest is availability.
I understand what you mean, although *my* primary interest is techno-enthusiasm and near-future sociological speculation. :-)
Digicash stands to lose out in the marketplace. Why? Because you can't actually buy and sell real goods for real cash right now. One day, sure, but not now. By the time they deploy their system, consumers who aren't as concerned, or knowledgeable, as cypherpunks will have made some other system the market leader.
I'm afraid these words will turn out to be prophetic. On the other hand, the nature of this market is such that the industry leadership can turn-over quickly. I expect that the factor which has the most inertia in this game is consumer mind-share. The other factors-- capital, technology, skilled labor, publicity-- can all be quickly gained by any aggressive new start-up that wants them.
Chilling thought. I hope DC can get a backing bank sometime soon.
According to Steven Levy (in his Wired mag story on David Chaum), Chaum refuses to make deals with companies that would cut corners on his privacy provisions. I don't know how accurate that story is, but if it is true it would explain why DigiCash is the technological leader and the marketplace dark horse. (Hm. "DC" -- "DigiCash" -- "David Chaum". I just noticed that...) Bryce signatures follow: + public key on keyservers /. island Life in a chaos sea or via finger 0x617c6db9 / bryce.wilcox@colorado.edu ---* -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Auto-signed with Bryce's Auto-PGP v1.0beta iQCVAwUBMC+3wvWZSllhfG25AQGjQgP/dhMWwEEPasttIs/RvkNFA6qRUS9A/7F2 96QvWhA9vetBq97LmwWZxluxw8VgPUoJyltX+eVOHt+JCeDy36rxOhcMe2hH1Z8B qGZUcwpZ8IUIxkq43SQ0M+MqWyEWRn/0c9vNxu39o7CnOQWIZPfjdSp0CtRdjmu2 E0ypPAFV73c= =uynK -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----