At 6:26 AM -0400 7/18/97, Ryan Lackey wrote:
It would be kind of impressive in a way if Mondex were lame about allowing other currencies to proliferate free of state influences, yet managed to get the basic technology employed around the world, then some cypherpunkish group came up with their own cards, a little bit of software, etc. and then issued currency with more behind it than Mondex franchisees, had higher profits than Mondex, and then were to be the only currencies anyone would trust after the collapse of a few state-backed currencies. Also, I'd trust the cypherpunkish crowd to do a better job of hardware and software design for the cards and system, so they're likely to be more secure in that fashion as well.
Am I being utterly out of touch with reality, or only tangential to it?
Actually Doug Barnes, C2, gave a brief but excellent rump session talk at FC '97 pointing out that Mondex could be a near ideal way to pay for fully anonymous e$, since settlement can be offline, immediate, and non-repudiatable. --Steve