At 2:03 PM 10/20/95, Hal wrote: [Bryce's proposal elided]
Unfortunately, in order for a coin to be POTENTIALLY spent in an off-line way, the protocols require that the identity of the withdrawer be embedded, in blinded form, within the coin data. It is this step that Tim and others object to, because among other things it requires participants to securely identify themselves to the bank, hence does not work well in a fully anonymous society. The reason for this requirement is that if the coin is double-spent, this is not found out until afterwards, and so the identity of the cheater has to be available so the bank can go after him.
So letting the payee choose whether to deposit the coin right away or wait until later will not address this basic privacy problem with offline cash.
Indeed. And let me clearly state that I am not proposing an either-or situation. In a real ecology of competing digital cash schemes, unconstrained by the software patent issue we now are facing, there would likely be "online clearing only" systems, "offline clearing only" systems, and various hybrids and variants. The market would then decide, based on transaction costs, convenience, security, anonymity features, etc. As with the "real" economy, where a variety of financial instruments coexist. --Tim May Views here are not the views of my Internet Service Provider or Government. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."