On Sunday, August 26, 2001, at 09:13 AM, mean-green@hushmail.com wrote:

Right on target. There is one aspect to this loss of nerve not mentioned: the correlation between those with the means and interest to pursue these avenues and those with merely the interest.

There are a couple of points to make on this issue: First, the "correlation of interests" situation is a well-solved problem. Those with the financial means (and maybe some political/technical interest) set up a company and hire those with the technical abilities and interest. The company may be self-funded by the founders, or outside investors may be sought. However, this is not so easy to do when it comes to these technologies. ZKS did it and raised, we hear, something like $60 million. Quite a warchest for untraceability tools. ZKS has been much-discussed here. There are some major obstacles with such a public company: 1. Patents and IP in general. Doing digital cash without using Chaum's blinding patent may be tough. (Some of the "agnostic" approaches discussed here may work, technically, but will probably still be litigated. A public company is a public target. The current owners of the Chaum patent, a Canadian company IIRC, will not look dispassionately on other companies doing an end-run.) 2. A public company or traceable group of developers will become targets. The attacks could be just simple legal ones, but could range up to RICO and beyond. "Pedophile-grade untraceability" is powerful stuff. How long before Mojo faces lawsuits analogous to what Napster faced? (Napster is a good example of this. Utter traceability, of both music traders and the company itself. Those who downloaded or uploaded music got nastygrams and threats of civil action, and the company itself was sued and now faces extinction. It may be that anyone developing such tools should just give up on the idea of becoming a dot com tycoon and instead release products untraceably...perhaps benefitting in other ways.)

One of this list's members shopped here and elsewhere a few years back for participation in building a DBC-based payment and value system. He had assembled a team with the banking experience, needing the technology implementors. None were willing to put their talents to the test. They all nodded regarding the need for such a facility but none would expend any efforts.

If you are talking about Bob Hettinga, there are many things one could say about his schemes and plans. I'm more impressed with what another person is actually doing: Orlin Grabbe. Do some Web searches. Orlin has good banking credentials himself (Wharton, coined the term "regulatory arbitrage"), good libertarian credentials (a powerful newsletter for many years), some technical abilities (writes code), has been willing to move to places like Costa Rica, and, most importantly, he UNDERSTANDS the "sweet spot" argument. Bob H., in my opinion, got too fixated on coining new acronyms and in flitting around to various lists and focussed in on the wrong end of the cost/benefit continuum. He kept claiming the DBC or E$bux or whatever would be cheaper to use than real money. Anyway, it is not easy to create a public company, a public nexus of attack, and then deploy systems which target that high-value sweet spot. The real bankers and the regulators won't allow such things into the official banking system. (Why do people think the banking system will embrace "digital bearer bonds" having untraceability features when true bearer bonds were eliminated years ago?)

They were all being courted by the failed dot.bombs which waved generous salary and stock offers. Now that the tulip market has evaporated along with the dreams of quick riches I wonder if any these pseudo-zealots were ever really interested or was it a merely a childish fancy from the start? As Tim demonstrates the opportunity is still there it waits only for those with the right stuff to grab for the ring.

I know several list members who started or joined Mojo. I know several who started or joined C2. I know several who joined ZKS. I know several who joined Digicash. The problem has not been that Cypherpunks were so greedy they went to work for Pets.com instead of ZKS, C2, Mojo, or Digicash. The problems were with the ability of those companies to make money, for lots of reasons. My interest is not in doing a "Cypherpunks Business Review" dissection of these companies and their (possible) failings. Frankly, I don't think the "let's form a corporation!' model is the best one in all cases, particularly in this one. Maybe I'll say more about this in another post. --Tim May

On Thu, 30 Aug 2001 jamesd@echeque.com wrote:

I think the safest convenient path to development is to develop untraceable cash in the US with restrictions on any large transfers.

Absolutely unacceptable: (1) Define "large"; (2) Define a (sane) rationale to justify this type of intrusion - tip: "The USG already does this" is neither sane nor rational.

James A. Donald

-- Yours, J.A. Terranson sysadmin@mfn.org If Governments really want us to behave like civilized human beings, they should give serious consideration towards setting a better example: Ruling by force, rather than consensus; the unrestrained application of unjust laws (which the victim-populations were never allowed input on in the first place); the State policy of justice only for the rich and elected; the intentional abuse and occassionally destruction of entire populations merely to distract an already apathetic and numb electorate... This type of demogoguery must surely wipe out the fascist United States as surely as it wiped out the fascist Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The views expressed here are mine, and NOT those of my employers, associates, or others. Besides, if it *were* the opinion of all of those people, I doubt there would be a problem to bitch about in the first place... --------------------------------------------------------------------