The Crypto Winter

[Petro]

On Sunday, November 18, 2001, at 02:16 PM, Faustine wrote:
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> declan wrote:
>> Not so with digital cash. It also suffers from deployment problems, of
>> course, but far more substantial regulatory ones. You need two
>> consenting users -- and a tie-in to the banking system (preferable) or
>> at least some exchange of value (like e-gold) that's sufficiently
>> trusted. Crypto may peeve the FBI, but widespread digital cash is far
>> more alarming to governments, which will not permit true digital cash
>> to be deployed in any popular way. One obvious way to limit its utility
>> is to restrict its tie-ins with the banking system, or prohibit 
>> businesses
>> within their borders from using it.
>> That's the crypto winter.
>
> On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely do you think it is that these 
> problems will
> be resolved in, say, the next decade? Where are the people most likely 
> to make
> it happen? Fascinating stuff.

	0.

	Can't happen, and won't. Why? there's no margin in it.

	RH was always going on about Digital bearer Certs being 2 orders of 
magnitude cheaper to clear than a book entry transaction, and he may 
well be right.

	But Citibank, AmEX and the others make their money making those 
transactions, and they aren't stupid people. They're not going to cut 
their own throats--they realize that the costs of setting up and running 
a clearing house for DBC/Ecash/whatever are trivial compared to running 
a clearing house for credit cards. And the government realizes what 
happens when they can no longer track the money.

	I used to have one thin wedge of hope, that someone with the 
brains, the code and the capital would realize that there could be a 
killing made in the Adult Entertainment side of things--porn and 
gambling. Areas where (1) Participants do not necessarily trust each 
other, (2) People often wish to be anonymous, and (3) large amounts of 
cash change hands.

	However the Porn Sites are obviously doing quite well getting True 
Names from people, and the people obviously don't mind much that these 
sites will often double charge their credit cards &etc. And the gambling 
people, well, they're heavily regulated.

--
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad
people will find a way around the laws.
Plato (427-347 B.C.)