WebMoney

[James A. Donald]

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On 22 Apr 2005 at 16:20, Bill Stewart wrote:
> Last time I wanted to use an online gold system, I
> used pecunix as the currency and goldage.net as the
> payment handler.  That was partly because of the fees
> for the size of transactions I was doing (for small
> transactions, the minimum fee is more important than
> the percentage), but partly for convenience - one way
> to pay Goldage in the US is to go to a bank where they
> have an account and make a deposit - Wells Fargo is
> one of their more widespread banks.

A procedure that was, of course, anonymous.  You
probably made a deposit in cash.

In the cypherpunk vision, internet transactions should
be blinded, so that the adversary cannot do connection
analysis.  If Ann pays Bob, the adversary can detect
this, and perhaps suspect that Ann actually is Bob.  We
do however have anonymous deposits and withdrawals from
internet transaction services, and weakly nymous
providers of accounts.

Many foreign banks go through the motions of verifying
foreign account holders true names, but not all them try
all that hard.  E-gold goes through the motions, and
sporadically enforces its acceptable use policy, which
requires you to submit true name information, but really
does not try at all for the most part, unless the shit
hits the fan.  Pecunix does not require true name
information - merely an email account at which you are
capable of receiving mail - preferably PGP mail.

WebMoney does not even require an email account.  If you
use their classic security system, their client just
generates what I assume is a private key on your
computer, and that is your identifier.

Though these systems permit governments to do connection
analysis, most governments are not terribly interested
in doing connection analysis on foreigners, and
governments do not work well with other governments.

Not that I suggest that any of this is an adequate
substitute for true Chaumian blinded transactions, but
it is a substitute, and also foreshadows demand for such
transactions, and a profitable business model based on
such transactions.  The real obstacle is that 99% of
customers cannot understand WebMoney's security, or use
Pecunix's PGP based interface.  If you try to sell them
Chaumian blinded transactions, the average mobster is
going to be seriously boggled. 

    --digsig
         James A. Donald
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