Financial identity is *dangerous*? (was re: Fake companies, real money)

[James A. Donald]

    --
On 12 Oct 2004 at 10:52, R.A. Hettinga wrote:
> A long time ago I came to the conclusion that the closer we
> get to transaction instantaneity, the less counterparty
> identity matters at all. That is, the fastest transaction we
> can think of is a cryptographically secure glop of bits that
> is issued by an entity who is responsible for the integrity
> of the transaction and the quality of assets that the bits
> represent. Blind signature notes work fine for a first-order
> approximation. In other words, an internet bearer 
> transaction.
>
> In such a scenario, nobody *cares* who the counterparties are
> for two reasons. The first reason is existential: title to
> the asset has transferred instantaneously. There is *no*
> float. I have it now, so I don't *care* who you were,
> because, well, it's *mine* now. :-).
>
> Second, keeping an audit trail when the title is never in
> question is, in the best circumstances superfluous and
> expensive, and, in the worst, even dangerous for any of a
> number of security reasons,

Two problems:

1.  Instantaneous and complete transfer is irrevocable, thus
attractive to ten million phishing spammers, virus witers etc.

2.  Governments want everyone to keep records on everyone else,
and make those records available to the government, thus
discriminate against the more cashlike forms of internet money.

It is clear that the world needs a fully cashlike form of
internet money, that there is real demand for this, but the low
security of personal computers makes it insecure from thieves,
and the hostility of national governments make it insecure from
governments. 

    --digsig
         James A. Donald
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