The middle class avoids current offshore banking because it is user-hostile and puts their life savings at high risk. An offshore bank often takes a week or more to service requests for statements sent by snail-mail. Offshore banks are notorious for obsconding with customers' money. Reputation information on these banks is hard to find to nonexistant. The typical offshore bank customer spends $1,000's on legal fees to obtain information on reputable banks, the legality of what they are doing in both the local and offshore jurisdictions, and to set up obscure, sophisticated legal entities. There aren't any good statistics, but I'd guess that most of the money saved by going offshore is lost to legal fees and fraud. A good on-line bank will tackle user friendliness by providing rapid, detailed feedback, either instant (IP connection) or slightly delayed (e-mail). This also indirectly tackles trust. You sleep better when you can instantly obtain the status of your account, withdraw your funds in case of emergency, distribute funds across several different banks with low overhead, and easily get detailed information about the variety of banks and accounts available. Trust could be more directly tackled by the following: * Private deposit insurance, with risk spread across several offshore banks * Offshore bank rating service, also available online * Sponsorship by major banks, with a longer-term reputation and larger capital base Nick Szabo szabo@netcom.com