Cryptoanarchy will have arrived when you can openly _advertise_ these services and still stay in business indefinitely. Most of the things we talk about - even Jim Bell's assassination market - already exist, but they cannot be advertised. You have to go looking for them, at some risk to both buyer and seller. If the seller is visible enough for you to find him, he is visible enough to get caught. For example, there is plenty of 'pirate' material on the net, but it tends to go away as soon as the addresses become well-known. Cryptoanarchy will be here when you can advertise yourself as a distributor of pirate software (or anything else you want to sell), do business with a publicly known contact address, and still not get caught. 'Black markets' exist due to the inability to do this. Currently the techniques of anonymity are limited to two: indirection for source anonymity and broadcast for recipient anonymity. We are more or less where crypto was before the invention of public key. You can gain security by spreading risk among multiple parties (key distributors for crypto, or remailers for anonymity) but you can't 'make your own anonymity' like you can make your own security with public key crypto. A theoretical discovery is needed particularly in the area of recipient anonymity. Good sender anonymity and weak recipient anonymity leads to 'hit and run' behavior such as spamming email and newsgroups, but not to anonymous markets. Mike
Crypto-anarchy benefits the poor more than the rich. The underlings of society are going to love it.
In fact, they basically already practice it. Not with computers, of course, but in terms of not reporting cash income, not reporting tips, engaging in barter work with others, and gambling in various non-sanctioned markets.
(Numbers games and sports betting are huge markets. Interestingly, such markets also validate much of what we say about "reputations." After all, when was the last time you heard about a bookie being sued in court for not paying up? And private justice is administered, as welshers are disposed of directly, without a long, expensive trial. Nearly everything in "crypto anarchy" has direct parallels in "underworld and black markets." Some say they are really the same thing. Perhaps.)
--Tim May