At 10:52 PM 7/20/94 -0400, Duncan Frissell wrote:
"Don't bother. Take out the check you were going to send me, read me the routing code and check number on the bottom. Give me your name and address and the bank's name and address as they appear on the check, the amount you will pay and the date. I'll collect that check electronically without you having to bother to send it."
This is exactly the problem we're having with identifying a market for digital cash. There's no unique selling proposition besides privacy. There are too many real good substitutes, like this one for checks. E-mail with the above information in it can be encrypted and signed, and would be secure enough to make a real good check in its own right. This is like my favorite quote (in InforWorld) about Macs: "It seems that 85% of the market will settle for 75% of a Macintosh." By no means take this to mean that digital cash isn't going to make it. I figure all e$ now, including the encrypted check above, is kind of like aviation was in the beginning. It's really cool that that it works, we can make some pretty good guesses as to its possible uses, but nobody's built the "DC-3" which proves once and for all its commercial necessity. I expect that the only way to find out whether digital cash is gonna make it on it's own is when someone risks a small pile and implements it. Let the devil take the hindmost, more guts than brains, and all that. It looks like maybe that's what Chaum and Co. is going to try to do, with this test of theirs. Has anyone out there been contacted about it yet? Cheers, Bob ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com) "There is no difference between someone Shipwright Development Corporation who eats too little and sees Heaven and 44 Farquhar Street someone who drinks too much and sees Boston, MA 02331 USA snakes." -- Bertrand Russell (617) 323-7923