Starting an e-cash bank

Scott Brickner sjb at universe.digex.net
Thu Jan 4 11:52:57 PST 1996


Lucky Green writes:
>At 13:25 1/3/96, Alex Strasheim wrote:
>>I've got a storefront in Chicago.
>>What would prevent me from opening up a Mark Twain account and buying and
>>selling ecash on floppies, in person?

>You touched on a very important issue: the party converting currency into
>Ecash does not have to be the Ecash bank. There have been discussions that
>in the future one should be able to buy Ecash on floppy at the local
>supermarket, similar to today's prepaid calling cards. I certainly would
>like to see that happen rather sooner than later.

Wait a minute.  I can see how one needn't be a bank to convert ecash
into pcash, but going the other way requires that the cash be
transferrable in ways that Digicash isn't.

If I withdraw ecash from the bank, it's marked so I'm the one who's
identified if it's double-spent.  If I give the cash to someone else
(different from paying it to them, which requires they have an account)
they're free to double-spend with (relative) impugnity.

What'd I miss?






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