At 2:11 PM -0700 4/15/01, Ray Dillinger wrote:
Tim;
One thing to consider is the role of "credit histories", or virtually any other identity-linked information, in a milieu where the people have access to the necessary techniques and programs to do those deals.
You sell Alice a credit history on Bob; Bob takes a new identity; Alice is back to square one. Why would Alice buy credit histories?
For that matter, why would anyone loan money in the first place? What credit histories could there possibly be?
As Declan pointed out in his follow-up, you assume nyms will be adopted and abandoned freely. Some will, some won't. "A Melon" doesn't have much reputation capital, but "Pr0duct Cypher" does. The former will vanish and reappear like quantum foam, the latter will not. This is not a zero friction system. In any case, "credit histories" are nothing more than assertions. Some assertions are true, some are false, some are of little value, some are of great value. Historically, some assertions about credit history are valuable to others. The issue of Alice and Bob being pseudonymous is close to be orhtogonal to this point. In any case, caveat emptor works pretty well. If such assertions are of zero value, as you imply, then this is what the market will show. If not... --Tim May -- Timothy C. May tcmay@got.net Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns