Phil Karn <karn@qualcomm.com>
Anyway, back to cryptography, I do suspect that the government will eventually point to digital cash as justification for controlling all of cryptography. Or they will refuse to back it up in court as legal tender, thus helping undermine it.
Well, credit cards aren't really legal tender either - nobody is required to accept them. People accept them because of convienience, but the government doesn't recoginze it as legal tender (Try telling the IRS you want them to charge it to your MasterCard hahaha...) Digital cash would probably be the same. The government probably wouldn't take it, but that wouldn't stop everyone else from using it. Hmm... if they decalred it not legal tender, does that mean you could take $10,000 in digicash out of the country and not be required to report it? hehehehe... or maybe you could just spend your digicash out of a foreign bank account. (Bank of Oceania? hmm...)