Cypherpunks defeat? (fwd)

[Jim Choate]

Forwarded message:

> Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1998 21:05:34 -0700
> From: "James A. Donald" <jamesd at echeque.com>
> Subject: Re: Cypherpunks defeat?

> On the contrary, it is the server end that is hard.

> The problem is that we do not want to force everyone in the
> universe to be the clients of a single giant issuer.  That
> would bring us right back to the old problem of the
> tyrannical and oppressive central bank.

This would argue that what is needed is a distributed server-less protocol.
A peer-to-peer mechanism with a local arbitration mechanism.

> Visualize the following situation.  I buy tokens from Bob,
> who may be my local ISP.   I spend them on a server on a site
> in Sri Lanka.  The owner of the server cashes them with
> Evonne.  My money, aggregated with a multitude of other
> peoples money in a multitude of other peoples transactions
> flows by some complex and indirect route to through several
> different people, and eventually to Evonne, and finally to
> the owner of the server in Sri Lanka.

Whatever that protocol is, it should take care of currency conversion
transparently. Perhaps the wrong approach has been taken from the get go. As
I understand the various approaches every one of the has worried about how
to get the users money transfered into digital tokens. What if we approach
it from the other end and ask:

How can one design a system which focuses on how a users token cache and
converting it to the appropriate currency as required can be realized 
Further, this mechanism should not rely on any centralized server or
arbitration mechanism while doing this specie conversion.

One potential mechanism (admittedly very roughly described) would be to let
each participant in a transaction to agree on the worth of those tokens and
not worry if Bob gets the same bank per token from Sam that he gets from
Sue. So how many tokens Bob gets from Sam each time Sam buys one of Bob's
used CD's wouldn't necessarily be the same number of tokens from Sue, even
though Bob charges the same amount to both Sam and Sue.


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