-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Re the attempts to get a practical DigiCash system moving with the unofficial exchanges at the two exchanges: http://www.c2.org/~mark/ecash/ecash.html http://www.firecloud.com/eshop/eshop.htm plus people participating on the ecm mailing list http://www.ai.mit.edu/people/lethin/ecm/ one of the major problems which crops up in discussion is that there is no guaranteed future for the current issue of Digicash, ie it relies on the digicash trial, and DigiCash's continuation in running this server. ... One solution would be for some one, a group of cypherpunks, or individual cypherpunk, a startup company, to actually license the technology from Chaum. It has always puzzled me as to why Chaum hadn't taken this approach himself. - From what I've read in previous discussions, the price is $150k, plus 10% of profits. Other than that what is required is presumably a dealership in the major credit cards (VISA/mastercard, etc), a secure WWW server (to allow on-line purchase of c$), or simply PGP signed, encrypted emailed purchase instructions, and a good internet connection. Also some legal consultations to check if setting up such a system - payee anonymous, would be ok in the US. Or perhaps another jurisdiction if this was a sticking point. Work out anonymous gateways to things like MSN electronic cheques later :-) It strikes me that none of these things are insurmountable, and that the resulting system could become very popular, as well as furthering the cypherpunks cause - in the sense of having good cryptographic system in place, which would hopefully attain wide use. All that would be needed would be the internet connect (which some folks have already?), VISA/mastercard (same folks might have already?) $200k ($50k to honour existing digicash currency, at 5c$ to 100 US$ + $150k for license), a well secured host, and lots of work. Start small, that's my moto, no need to go investing more than that until the things started, and bringing money. As, and if, it brings in money, use that to buy better net connect, server hardware, etc. I'd have thought the way to do it would be for the bank to link the currency directly to a physical currency, US$ say, and to keep the interest on the c$ currency in circulation, as profits. Maybe not the way to make the most money, but then that's the advantage the civilian sector has over big banks :-) 100% real-currency backed, so that it would be impossible to have a run on the bank. Also a nice way to run it, as there are no apparent charges for using the cash, or licensing clients (aka you hand out clients willy nilly for free, like the netscape model which seems to work so well). I'm serious, and would want to invest in it. So what say? 1st digicash bank, *run*, and owned by a group of cypherpunks? Adam - -- #!/bin/perl -s-- -export-a-crypto-system-sig -RSA-3-lines-PERL $m=unpack(H.$w,$m."\0"x$w),$_=`echo "16do$w 2+4Oi0$d*-^1[d2%Sa 2/d0<X+d*La1=z\U$n%0]SX$k"[$m*]\EszlXx++p|dc`,s/^.|\W//g,print pack('H*',$_)while read(STDIN,$m,($w=2*$d-1+length($n)&~1)/2) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2i Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt 3.3, an Emacs/PGP interface iQCVAwUBMHa4dynIuJ1VakpnAQHaTwQAkgxtQKc1gzTmN8+bZGRk4sgB1pkGBLlh HJqgE8VqLLmkWy5LufLsvZt0GybylyEqt1fNxK7P0FPpJ6S5+n8F+I43t3U3RpJe yQAJdKbQtmKzdEWsoogYQRo4b6ZxJG2o6O0I3u+oBC/TVco5WypHlO40ge59MI/f BSGh9R2mQQA= =pdta -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----