Digital Cash

[Robert Hettinga, Shipwright Development Corp.]

>>Anybody else out there with less draconian advantages to digital cash?
>
>Immediate and final clearing.
>
>Eric

I think I see that... If your accounting systems were tightly coupled
enough, (and you were completely cash based) you could get your pro formas
on 12:01 am the day after the quarter ended. Of course you wouldn't have a
chance to back-pedal the results so well, either. .

Your comment about clearing reminds me of something else, though. I know
that options are settled much faster (Next-day, if I remember.  It's been
too long since I was in a cage.) than equity and fixed-income (5 days)
securities.

Is it possible to see instantaneous settlement happen in the financial
markets with digital cash?  I keep remembering that Edison made his first
real pile by inventing the stock ticker, though I'm not sure how
crypto-anarchist libertarians (syntax-error?) would make theirs here. ;-)

OTOH, would "immediate and final clearing" in a peer-to-peer clearing
mechanism be a useful enough benefit that a market's participants would pay
to use it?

-Bob Hettinga




-----------------
Robert Hettinga                       "There is no difference between someone
Shipwright Development Corporation      eats too little and sees Heaven and
44 Farquhar Street                      someone who drinks too much and sees
Boston, MA 02313 USA                    snakes." -- Bertrand Russell
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