Re: In Search of Genuine DigiCash
At 9:25 PM 8/22/94 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote:
Anonymity is what gives digital cash it's raison d'etre, it's technological advantages over conventional schemes.
I'll try to to come at this from another tack. Cryptography gives anonymity. Anononymity reduces the overhead. The reduced overhead should make digital cash more economically efficient than on-line systems like NetBank, or credit-cards or much of anything else, at the moment. The economic efficiency is what may make digitial cash economical as a way to provide liquidity for internet commerce. The major selling point is *not* privacy. The major selling point is economic efficiency.
If anonymity, untraceability, and other "Chaumian" notions are only seen as peripheral side effects, then we already _have_ "digital cash" in the encrypted credit card systems some folks are already offering.
They are peripheral side effects. They also are the very things that make digital cash a more efficient medium of exchange. They are not necessary and sufficient conditions for the adoption of digital cash for the very same reasons you outlined above. Privacy is like flight. It's cool. It's literally marvelous. But flight also gives you speed, and speed is what sells flight as a usable technology to most people. Is that a better explaination?
Without the technological approach to untraceability and anonymity, all we have is the usual "trust". Granted, credit card numbers ought not to be sent over unsecured channels, but fixing that is easy (with end-to-end encryption). Trust-based systems are not the foundation for a free society most of us are seeking.
Printing is a faster way to transcribe information than copying a book by hand. A secondary benefit of printing is that improves information flow through a culture. A consequence is increased education, which gives you an enlightment ethic and eventually Jeffersonian democacy. I think we're looking at the elephant from opposite ends here, Tim. You seem to be holding the trunk, I believe...
"Digidollar" was one of the many names coined by folks on this list, along with Cypherbucks, Digimarks, etc.
Ah. How grateful I am not to be burdened with its parentage... Cheers, Bob Hettinga ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com) "There is no difference between someone Shipwright Development Corporation who eats too little and sees Heaven and 44 Farquhar Street someone who drinks too much and sees Boston, MA 02331 USA snakes." -- Bertrand Russell (617) 323-7923
Bob sez:
At 9:25 PM 8/22/94 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote:
Anonymity is what gives digital cash it's raison d'etre, it's technological advantages over conventional schemes.
Well I don't buy the idea that people will shell out cash for this (i.e. I think the only way we'll wind up with annonymous digicash is if the people who put together the best system insist on anonymity) but I can't claim to have data to refute this.
I'll try to to come at this from another tack. Cryptography gives anonymity. Anononymity reduces the overhead. The reduced overhead should make digital cash more economically efficient than on-line systems like NetBank, or credit-cards or much of anything else, at the moment. The economic efficiency is what may make digitial cash economical as a way to provide liquidity for internet commerce. The major selling point is *not* privacy. The major selling point is economic efficiency.
Well we agree that the selling point is economic efficiency. But "anonymity reduces overhead" ? All that you save is the space required for the recording of names. Since whichever digicash system wins will almost certainly include software automating double entry accounting, I have real trouble buying this. How much overhead do you really save? Is it enough to offset the costs of implementing the double spender identification system? I don't think it is. [Although it seems to me that the costs of both are absolutely trivial and not worth considering when speaking of the overhead in a digicash system. Far more important are the investment of capital and the pragmatics of the exchange mechanism]
If anonymity, untraceability, and other "Chaumian" notions are only seen as peripheral side effects, then we already _have_ "digital cash" in the encrypted credit card systems some folks are already offering.
They are peripheral side effects. They also are the very things that make digital cash a more efficient medium of exchange.
How? There are alot of reasons why I think anonymity is important, but I fail to see any significant economic advantage that anonymity confers to a person who otherwise couldn't care less about it. Jason W. Solinsky
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