From: "James M. Ray" <jray@omnipay.net>

At 10:46 AM -0400 4/24/03, Patrick Chkoreff wrote: ...

...

With these cards you would have a true off-network solution. I wonder if it's feasible to do the crypto and hardware for this?

While crypto-hardware is cool stuff, and I'm all-for-it, I think that ubiquitous bandwidth is much more likely to happen. We have to remember, we're INTO this stuff. Most people would not see the benefits of a $100 cryptocard nearly as quickly ...

I can see your point, but let me think about it a bit. Alice is at a craft fair with digital coins loaded into a PDA that costs at least $100. So she's already somewhat of a geek to begin with. But she is glad that her general-purpose PDA is capable of handling coins in addition to her date and address book. No need to pony up more money for a specialized crypto-wallet. But for every geeky Alice, there are at least one hundred non-geeky Alyssas out there. Alyssa is not likely to purchase a relatively expensive and difficult to use general purpose device. She might, however, pony up for an inexpensive, easy to use, specialized crypto-wallet. She would not consider anything that has icons and a stylus, but she would readily adopt a sleek little black-box crypto-wallet. Maybe it even comes in her favorite colors. So even if the network is as reliable and ubiquitous as the atmosphere itself, in this new digital coin economy both Alice and Alyssa are going to be carrying around SOMETHING. Which is easier, persuading geeky Alice to purchase a cheap specialized device, or persuading non-geeky Alyssa to purchase an expensive clunky general purpose device? Of course, the network will NOT be as reliable as the atmosphere itself, and there is at least one alternative. Physical cash is the obvious choice -- after all, these digital coins are ultimately redeemable for valuable physical objects like gold and silver coins or notes for same, so I expect people to carry around a combination of valuable atoms and valuable bits as they shop. But in the case of inexpensive crypto-cards, there is a second option. Direct offline beaming of digital coins from one device to another. Assuming it can be done simply, inexpensively, and securely. So when the network is inaccessible and Alyssa is out of cash, she's still in luck. Whip out the candy-red colored crypto-wallet and snag the sweater.

... Or Joris may be right, there's something to be said for physical cash...

Definitely. At the very least, the issuer stores that in the vault to back up the digital coins. :-) But seriously, people are going to want to hold and trade valuable physical stuff because it is a form of wealth independent of the server, ubiquitous networks, or even crypto-wallets. It's the real deal, the final deliverable upon which all bit-bashing is based.

I'm also curious about how all this is going to be profitable. How (aside from a small e-gold donation, if he tells me his account number!) will Lucrative-Patrick get paid? Thanks. JMR

This is a very good question. Obviously if you are an ISSUER I can see how it might be profitable -- you simply charge transaction fees whenever coins are swapped, split, merged, etc. at the server. You can assess storage fees to cover your base costs or even try to nick a small profit there. All of this would be implemented as tunable parameters in the server software, perhaps even DYNAMICALLY self-tuning based on market conditions, changing constraints on bandwidth and disk usage, etc. If you are a mere CODER like Lucrative-Patrick and Fexl-Patrick, well sorry, we're just slaves in it for the fun. :-) Work for tips, become an issuer, hold a day job, whatever it takes to get your next fix. -- Patrick http://fexl.com