Amir Herzberg writes:
> (btw, I really wonder what's the point of having a technical discussion
> incognito... I hope this is not for a really good/bad reason such as
> you are living in some dark country)
Yes, regrettably many of us do live in a dark country. Public discussions
of cryptographic technology in a forum which is transmitted overseas
are outlawed, at least if the discussions might lead to the development
of cryptographic software (which would be the case for any but the most
abstract topics). Such discussions entail the provision of technical
assistance to foreigners and are forbidden by section 744.9 of the United
States Code of Federal Regulations.
Regarding the benefits of combining anonymous and non-anonymous payment
systems:
> Second, and more essential, there are some important advantages e.g. in
> efficiency to non-anonymous payment mechanisms.
Some people have been loudly arguing the opposite, that anonymous payment
systems are inherently more efficient than non anonymous ones. For one
thing, anonymous systems would tend to have lower record keeping costs
because there are fewer records to keep. Also, transactions close and
clear immediately because there can be no way to reverse them due to
their untraceability.
Of course these general considerations don't necessarily dominate the
specific details of any particular payment system, and indeed proposed
anonymous systems like DigiCash had a spent coin list and other overhead
which could make them more costly.
