Excerpts from fv: 14-Dec-94 properties of FV eric@remailer.net (3093)
There are two forms of anonymity: counterparty anonymity and issuer anonymity. FV claims the first but not the second. "Far from anonymous" may be a little confusing, but it's certainly far from completely anonymous.
Thanks for introducing the useful terminology. You're right, FV provides counterparty anonymity but not issuer anonymity. A useful clarification.
Wrong again. We explicitly permit seller-based accumulation, [...]
Net clearing of this form requires the creation of an entire billing system for small value which then settles through FV. The very nature of such a net billing system requires linkability of transaction to transaction, or in other words generates identity. So FV is unsuitable for small value anonymous transactions.
No, it doesn't require an entire billing system, because it lives entirely on the seller's machine and does nothing except the pre-billing accumulation for a single seller. It requires a simple database and a nightly cron job. The next time I have a day or two free I will probably build such a thing and add it to the free FV software; I don't expect it will be more than a day or two's work, if that.
We expect to make our money on information products, not on the commerce engine.
At 29 cents plus 4% per settlement transaction, I find this comment disingenuous in the extreme, even after paying Visa for settlement.
Well, at 29+4% it would indeed be disingenious. However, that's not what we're charging -- I'd encourage you to actually read our materials. We're charging 29 cents plus 2%, and this includes all the charges to the credit card networks, the banks, and our financial transaction processors. We are NOT operating on a big margin here.
So if you're planning on removing the cumbersomeness of your current protocol with software, why is it that you don't have an option to turn on crypto, whose cumbersomeness can also be mitigated with software?
As I said in an earlier post this morning, this *is* an option we will probably support eventually, although I don't think it is as easy to make crypto easy-to-use as it is to make checkboxes easy-to-use, at least not without deeply compromising the security of the crypto system. Mostly, however,, we just think that it's a longer-term problem, because we see the widespread deployment of crypto as being a longer-term phenomenon. -- Nathaniel