richard childers (rchilder@us.oracle.com) :

It might be more likely to arrange for a compromise where numbered accounts are permitted iff account balances are publically available also.

This might have interesting spinoffs, such as allowing a much wider range of interested individuals, access to economic data at the level usually reserved for banking institutions. We might - as many people have noted - learn much and contribute accordingly to both economic and cryptographic theory.

It is said information should be free... however, if someone was (and someone undoubtedly would), to monitor the bank(s) they would probably see accounts going up and down by various amounts and it should be possible to track transactions between identities. This, coupled with widespread traffic analysis (assuming no padding had occured) would allow someone to deduce that Alice had asked something of Bob and had then paid him. This probably isnt particularly inviting to the majority to know that your funds could be traced very anonymously and that patterns could be formulated... for instance three times a month various amounts are deducted from your account and those exact same amounts appear in an account known to be owned by a 1-900 phone sex number. That would have an affect on your reputation, (if not your marriage if your True Name was known), if it was published. (The 1-900's identity could be discovered simply by someone using the service and noting what psuedonym took your funds, or if that was changed, noting which account increased by your $127.30. (It was an intense call I guess :) If you wish to entertain such a testbed financial system be very careful with any decision made and work through each possible consequence. Most people I think would prefer to remain anonymous. I know I would, in the long run. Mark mark@coombs.anu.edu.au