Pricing Mojo, Integrating PGP, TAZ, and D.C. Cypherpunks

[Steve Schear]

At 08:55 PM 11/24/2001 -0600, Incognito Innominatus wrote:

<snip>
>These are serious proposals.  With Ben Laurie's lucre library and a
>berkeley db for the double spending database, a basic server could be
>put together in a few hours' work.  Adam Back's hashcash software can
>be used as a client to generate the initial requests.  The basic pieces
>are all here, no magic fairies required.
>
>The main question is again whether there exists an initial market which
>could be enticed into trying out this package on an experimental basis.

Look at the significant uptake for e-gold (current transaction rate about 
$1 million day) as an example of how to bootstrap a creditable value 
system.  As for how to get value into the system and avoid inflation the 
answer is to use a recognized value store as backing: U.S. currency.

IMHO, the code code isn't the hard part but all UI, back office systems and 
logistics of running such an operation.  Ian Grigg has toiled for many 
years to create open source components for value store, payment and 
transaction systems.  A look at his http://www.webfunds.org is a good place 
to start.

At the July BA CP meeting an attempt was made to develop a consensus of 
where the opportunities for ecash lay.  The strongest and most informed 
opinions are in general agreement with Tim May's 8/25 posting "The 
Privacy/Untraceability Sweet Spot"  The second reason for the meeting was 
to assess interest in creating an ecash API and a reference open source 
implementation.  AFAIK no progress on these second purpose has been made 
but if anyone is looking to get involved please count me in.

steve