-- At 09:25 AM 2/9/98 -0800, Tim May wrote:

Sadly, the ideas of David Chaum are more needed than ever, but his stuff is essentially nowhere to be seen. (To reflect Lucky's comments back to him, :-), spare us any citations of how Mark Twain Bank will let :some people open a cumbersome Digicash account.)

Why are blind signatures dead in the water? One obvious reason is that people attempting to do business with David Chaum seem to get rather irritable. Still, despite that, Digicash actually exists, but no one uses it. One reason is that the network to convert Digicash into other forms of value is rather limited, whereas the credit card network is fast and spans the world. Another is that people do not wish to hold large amounts of Digicash] for long periods, (security, no interest) and converting money back and forth between interest bearing forms and Digicash attracts rather high charges. (Or used to attract rather high charges when last I looked.) So where do we go from here? One obvious solution is nymous money-- money that is not anonymous, but is not required to be connected to one's government approved and registered name either. This is arguably better than the half-anonymous money that has in fact been implemented by Digicash. What nymous money projects are happening, and how are they going? --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG LYaOPLZKNwSNWeffnb7uS95ByY1zFrrw5ORiNblo 4jCWkLjLNXwKCdAtmb4IoOno/9n7A5bv6OhoyZ2Ki --------------------------------------------------------------------- We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because of the kind of animals that we are. True law derives from this right, not from the arbitrary power of the state. http://www.jim.com/jamesd/