At 2:19 PM -0400 on 7/7/98, John R Levine wrote:
CyberCash's entire business model for e-cash is wrong. They ask for a 4% slice of each transaction, which is absurd. How much do issuers of real cash ask per transaction? Zero, of course.
As I've mentioned before, the way you make money with money is seignorage, that is you print it and make your profit on the float and on coins that are never redeemed. Works great for travellers checks. I suspect that Bob H. would agree.
Pretty much. Actually, the model I like is one where transactions on the net are free, but putting money *on* the net costs some smidge of money, just like buying traveller's checks cost money, something like one or two percent, I think. You can't get any network effects, oddly enough, if you charge to take it *off* the net, because merchants have to *pay* to participate. It would be as if you had to pay to redeem a traveller's check. If that were the case nobody would accept them. Pretty serious seignorage loss that would cause. :-). Again, I've a white paper on this. If anyone's interested, I'll send it to them offline. And, again, the dbs list folks have already seen it. :-). Speaking of gratuitous plugs ;-), there are only two more days until I close the subscription book on the symposium, and I still have some room. See <http://www.philodox.com/symposiuminfo.html> and register now, if you want to go. Cheers, Bob ----------------- Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@philodox.com> Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' The Philodox Symposium on Digital Bearer Transaction Settlement July 23-24, 1998: <http://www.philodox.com/symposiuminfo.html>