Zeek forwarded a message written by Arthur Chandler which appears to have appeared on Future Culture. This reply is going both to the cypherpunks list (worldwide) and also to the austin-cypherpunks list (a locality); some comments may be obvious for one group or the other. There are several small factual details incorrect in this post, most of which I will not try to correct. As he said, "I'm oversimplifying all this." One in particular, though, should be. The EFF is not "backing" a credit union, at least not the national organization. Members of EFF-Austin, a local chapter of the EFF, (well, the only local chapter, but that's another story) are looking to form their own credit union. Their efforts will provide a model for other such efforts. True, it will use the "internet as the monetary highway" (a phrase I delight in), but at least at the outset will neither issue digital money nor deploy internationally distributed secret sharing. I did talk about both of these, but not as specifically regards any particular financial project. Eric