A 'Funky A.T.M.' Lets You Pay for Purchases Made Online

[Sampo Syreeni]

On 2003-07-22, Sunder uttered:

>If the digicash isn't anonymous, it's worthless.

I'd argue to the contrary. First, "most people have nothing to hide".
The folks will want digicash for reasons other than anonymity, as argued
by this particular "inventor" (I've wanted to handle my cash automatically
eversince I got my first debit card). Second, once the cash is online,
it's considerably easier to pool it, confuse the authorities about it,
connect it to the existing anonymity infrastructure, build secondary
services which allow its origin to be completely masked, and so on.

These sorts of hacks can well bridge the gap between ordinary cash/credit
and truly anonymous online specie. They aren't the final solution, but
they can help overcome the chicken and egg problem inherent in all
digicash.
-- 
Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy - mailto:decoy at iki.fi, tel:+358-50-5756111
student/math+cs/helsinki university, http://www.iki.fi/~decoy/front
openpgp: 050985C2/025E D175 ABE5 027C 9494 EEB0 E090 8BA9 0509 85C2