-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 11:06 PM -0500 on 12/15/98, Lucky Green wrote:
This is one of the many reasons our group has the support of several of the larger banks in the world, banking software/EDI vendors, credit card clearing houses, personal financial/cryptography software vendors, global media corporations, and other players that are required to make eCash and other DigiCash IP derived technologies ubiquitous.
Kewl! So... Lucky? Who do you have? I mean, it looks like you're announcing that you have the only people of any financial substance who really care about *using* this technology, much less investing in it, and they're all lined up for you to pull the trigger and bag DigiCash. - From here on out, it's simple, yes? Just announce who they are, publically, and make your tender offer. You do that, Scott sees the writing on the wall that he can't sell to anyone else who's not already on your list of investors, and surrenders, Dorothy. Gotta know when to fold 'em, and all that. So, again, Lucky, care to tell us who's backing you up? After all, *that's* how they do hostile takeovers in *real* life. Just like secret crypto protocols, there are no anonymous investors on the street. That stuff's for financial fairy tales. Well, okay, to be fair, there *is* another way to do this, too, since DigiCash is a private company currently in the lap of a bankruptcy trustee. It's pretty simple, really. Just buy up the outstanding debt that caused DigiCash to file Chapter 11 in the first place and hold out until Scott & Co. forks over the company. I'm sure that it's less than $10 million. Maybe it's way less, and, I bet the number's completely knowable, or will be soon, since the legal documents on the DigiCash bankrupcy are completely public information. Whatever the amount of the nut is, it's easily chump change to a bunch players as august as yours must be. Presto-chango, you get the same result without making the headlines. Nonetheless, your investors would still have to be public, yes? That's the consequence of buying assets out of Chapter 11. But, like the sign says, "If you lived here you'd be home now." If you *could* do one or the other of the above, you'd have done it already. Shades of Enrico Fermi, who noted that if there were extraterrestrials within geologically-attainable timescales of us, they'd *be* here already. To be honest, I don't really give a hoot *who* owns the blind signature patent as long as they license the damn thing so the rest of the world can get on with using it. However, DigiCash, at the moment, has a nut to crack in the millions of dollars. The people holding those um, nuts, don't care who pays them as long as they get their money back. After that's taken care of, all of us can go play moneypunks to our hearts' content. I'm pretty sure that Scott Loftesness, after being a permanent fixture on all of the lists I've ever started :-), knows *exactly* what to do with the patents once the bills are paid. Or at least what *I* think he should do. :-). Frankly, Lucky, just promising us, "HAL"-like, that "something wonderful's gonna happen", that you have, like Nixon, "a secret plan to end the war" just doesn't cut it anymore. Been there, done that, that dog don't hunt, etc. Just about every time I turn around, I get private mail from some cypherpunk or other with a secret plan to take over DigiCash and free the blind signature patent for us all, that they're really just a stalking horse for some really huge and famous investor, but they can't tell me who, just now. It's getting tiring, frankly, and, like always, money talks, and so forth. The cost of anything is the foregone alternative, including reputation capital. So, I guess it's time I anted up some of what little I have myself, :-), and called your hand, here, Lucky. First, *my* cards... After my recent trip to London, I have enough actual cash, promised from about 3 sources, and maybe from one or two more, to form a small syndicate which can pay the present value, at 15% and an 8 year remaining life on the blind signature patent, on about $1-2 million in equivalent patent income. I think I can get more people and money signed on over the next few months, but if you do the math, the amount I'm talking about is not much actual cash, paid up front. Enough for a nice house in some places, but that's about it. However it may be that it is, quite literally, a cash bird in the hand vs. two future revenue birds in the bush, frankly, Scott hasn't gotten that close to the end of his rope, just yet. He's already turned down a cash offer for more than that that I know of, whether you and I are talking about the same rejected offer or not. But the amount I'm calculating above is still pretty much fair market on what's left of the residual financial cryptography *research* value on the blind signature patent, and that much money could, just barely, keep the patents from being buried with DigiCash if it ever came to that. That is, nobody knows how to actually *make* money on these patents. (Or DigiCash would have done it already and/or somebody would have coughed up the money to buy DigiCash out of hock by now otherwise.) But a lot of us have research *ideas* which *might* make money, and which need to be tested in the marketplace to see if they actually work, the payments business being what it is. So, a million or two is about what I would guess the *entire* market is willing to pay for the privilege of *experimenting* with blind signatures over the remaning 8-year life of the patent. That comes to up-front, present value, "bird in the hand", cash in the low to mid six figures, depending on how much you think the patents can earn out in research payments. I haven't announced the folks who've verbally committed to fund this syndicate yet. But, I'm changing that. I'm asking the person who's volunteering to floor-manage the legal part of the syndicate to draw up an offering memorandum, or whatever, and when these people who have made verbal offers have actually signed something legally binding, I'll announce who they are publically on the Philodox website. So, that's what I have, Lucky. My game plan is to form a small syndicate to buy the blind signature patent, and a few patents, from DigiCash, or what's left of it, for the estimated research revenue they may bring, but, only *after* Scott has exhausted any ability he has to get any revenue from other sources. Now for *your* cards: It sounds like you're promising your investors something significantly more than the present value of the returns on research royalties, and I wish you luck. But it seems to me that you don't have to be so skulduggerous, if you've really got what you claim you have in your quote above. And, so, Lucky, whatcha got, and, more to the point, who do ya have? Have they signed memoranda of understanding, if not actual legal committments of capital? Have you formed a corporation to transfer the patents to, or are you going to purchase DigiCash, Inc., with all it's potential domestic and foriegn liability? And so on. Details, please. Cheers, Robert Hettinga -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP for Personal Privacy 5.5.5 iQEVAwUBNnfeJcUCGwxmWcHhAQFmqgf9EyLxZ7o5THZk24sycXIHRG8Rpf39A1ax PGpqbxphoxKfPqr/35J1Ei8Y7bXkodv+SKX5s9957rgtLtgSENOfREwG7OlcxJxj G1IOsIKf1umNZ5rUWRrlOwYVx8eEAIViW0U3h4Tj0zdyjUy0hSyPrbWjColmY/Wc mzZSMKTz5ajmThTkdszUM13EDhadZ09RRf3su7yzquIHOEx5WNKDrPq4CvCzM8ii 60WgZnVhsGyBYuPHujpe1Z6suimuJsUuLZHL0JN6nM94+KXqPSKLXpT+PNN45wqf OFKTsmtZxcXqbivD9OMQUO3kufJkpsVv+3WG93LgLSb6nM5gB5e0Gw== =vHGx -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ----------------- 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'