Hal wrote: [parts elided]

BTW since apparently both deposit and payment messages are not encrypted, coins made out to "@" are in danger of being stolen both while en route from customer to shop and from shop to bank. This is significant from the point of view of payee anonymous systems, which will need to use such coins. More encryption will be necessary when such coins are passed around.

Absolutely. Wildcard coins are stealable in transit. However, one might safely assume that transactions conducted using such coins be encrypted by other methods.

Well, I would think identification of the payer's bank will be necessary for any coin based system so you know where to cash in the coins, so I don't think this is going to go away. Of course as of now everyone has the same bank so it is not an issue.

Your analysis is correct. The good news, for the free marketers on this list :-), is that there will be other banks issuing Ecash in the near future. However, they are unlikely to offer the flexibility you have with Mark Twain Bank.

There is no such thing! This is one of the most common misconceptions. This version of ecash does not trace double spenders. It prevents double spending by checking each coin to make sure it has not already been spent. Tracing of double spending is only necessary in offline systems where coins are not checked right away, but that is not present here.

True.

Very good comments. I'm sure the next version will be much better if they are careful to clear up the kinds of issues you have raised.

Will do. <insert standard disclaimer here> -- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred.