[Digital Bearer Settlement <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> address removed.] On Thursday, April 11, 2002, at 06:37 AM, Adam Back wrote:
> New thread about deployment barriers to explore the topic of whether > there are now more internet services and technologies that would allow > us to get closer to deployment of ecash. (It would be about time > you'd think). > non-obvious). Plus for the particular application of ecash it would > seem the biggest stumbling blocks are: > > - deployment / chicken and egg problem (merchants want lots of users > before they're interested users want wide merchant acceptance before > their interested) Motivation is the real issue. People will not adopt a complicated (to them, to many) new financial system unless it offers them more value than it costs them. Or unless they have no choice because others have made the change and they need to be compliant. People will not clamor for digital cash (henceforth assumed to be 2-way untraceable, not one of the watered-down one-way untraceable forms) unless they seem some advantages. "Protecting their privacy" alone is not sufficient, at least not for most transactions (buying things in stores, buying books and computers online, CDs, DVDs, etc.). The " millicent ghetto" is especially unfruitful as a market for digital cash, at least at our level. As I have said, some people make efforts to open offshore bank accounts, for income tax evasion, money laundering, purchase of illegal items, etc. The crackdown on offshore-backed VISAs and Mastercards is in the news. This provides some clue as to how much effort people will make to avoid certain kinds of traceability...and the efforts against banks and clearinghouses to stop these bypasses. What would people really seek good 2-way digital cash for? Anonymity and untraceability really matters when the consequences of being traced are serious. Selling child porn, for example. Examples abound.. What the world needs is not a good 5-cent digital money token, but a good $5 or $50 digital money token. And I mean "good," because law enforcement will be seeking to trace down who is buying and selling illegal warez. Other illegal uses which could motivate use of digital cash are: online gambling/numbers games, buying and selling of corporate insider information, tax evasion (eventually), etc. Redemption issues are not easy to arrange. Any bank which acts to issue and redeem/convert such tokens, when the main market is for trading child porn or other illegal warez, will likely be shut down by international bodies. A tough nut to crack. But at least we should be thinking about the customer-driven uses, not trying to get convince Joe Sixpack that he really should be using digital cash online, especially when just last week he was happy to give his SS number for the online drawing for a free CD. > Also who gets the first coins. Just give them free to the first n > people that ask and then let market decide from there. > > Also the in-out exchange is less convenient. Perhaps with paypal now > having wider acceptance people would trade this kind of digicash > beta-bucks like scheme for real money paying with paypal with bidding > on ebay as for the everquest internal currency. > > That might be an interesting experiment. Or better yet for everquest > or other popular VR gaming thing to replace their currency by digicash > currency server, privacy for VR characters and their real-life > players. Game use is an interesting one, as we've talked about over the years. First, it may ostensibly seem "innocuous." Second, it both simulates and educates. Third, there is the potential for a "redemption leakage," e.g., where the artificial money of the artificial system is bought and sold by players (seen in Everquest recently, seen a decade ago with an Extropians reputation-rating system). More generally, I'm a fan of building simulated systems which have more "moving parts" than just the "here's a digital cash" protocol...enjoy!" approach. Pieces in isolation are like giving someone a piece of a complicated machine and telling him to make use of it. More on this later. --Tim May "They played all kinds of games, kept the House in session all night, and it was a very complicated bill. Maybe a handful of staffers actually read it, but the bill definitely was not available to members before the vote." --Rep. Ron Paul, TX, on how few Congresscritters saw the USA-PATRIOT Bill before voting overwhelmingly to impose a police state
