ecash, cut & choose and private credentials (Re: Jim Bell)

Bill Stewart bill.stewart at pobox.com
Mon Dec 4 02:49:05 PST 2000


At 11:24 PM 12/3/00 -0800, Ray Dillinger wrote:
>
>On Mon, 4 Dec 2000, Adam Back wrote:
>>The protocols you list are online.  Not that this is a bad thing -- I
>>kind of prefer the online idea -- rather than the "and then you go to
>>jail" implications of fraud tracing in the offline protocols.  Plus
>>you have a risk of accidentally double spending if your computer
>>crashes or something.
>
>I think that would depend on the banker.  "Bob spent this hundred 
>dollars three times," muses Alice.  "Check and see if he's got 
>overdraft protection for the extra two hundred...  if he doesn't, 
>then put it on his credit card with a fifteen dollar loan orignation 
>fee and charge him two percent a month...."  Jail time, in most 
>cases, probably just isn't profitable for the bankers.  After all, 

The issue isn't whether jail or just extra charges are the
appropriate remedy for double-spending - it's that the
offline methods generally rely on encoding a user's name
in the coins so you can tell who did the double spending,
which not only adds a lot of administrative overhead but
requires that you have a system of identification of your users.

Some online methods also do the "identify and punish" approach;
others do the far simpler "first one to grab the money wins" approach
to double-spending, which is better for anonymity,
though it imposes different risks on the users.
				Thanks! 
					Bill
Bill Stewart, bill.stewart at pobox.com
PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF  3C85 B884 0ABE 4639





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