It is important to remember that Nat Borenstein is a principal in a company that very much does not want to see anonymous e-cash succeed. Their extremely backwards technology cannot compete in the long term with cryptography-based methods, and therefore they are compelled to run around the country and on the Internet, bad- mouthing cryptography and anonymity at every turn, while pointing to some charity work for Phil Z. as a fig leaf to cover their actions in this regard (sort of like Exxon building an artificial reef and claiming to be friends of the environment.) I have, on several occasions, refuted his "infinite liability" rant, but it keeps on resurfacing. A few months ago, I wrote a short tech note on why this claim doesn't hold water. I thought I might stretch it into something longer, but other things have more urgently grabbed my attention. It's available at: http://www.communities.com/foo/noninf.txt Also, I haven't had time to confirm it, but based on conversations with and hints from Digicash people online, I'm pretty sure they are doing something similar to this (possibly better) that they are hoping to patent. --doug