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James A. Donald:
> > When Chaumian money comes into wide use, I think that for
> > most end users we will have to stash all unused tokens
> > inside smartcards. However, because of the critical mass
> > problem, initial deployment for small payments cannot rely
> > on such means, though initial deployment for large payments
> > could.
Someone:
> Here in Hong Kong, contactless "Octopus" smartcards (based on
> the Sony FeliCa device) are well established for paying fares
> on buses, ferries and subways, and also for small
> transactions with vending machines, convenience stores and
> supermarkets. The implementation is definitely non-Chaumian
> (it's based on symmetric encryption using shared secrets for
> both mutual authentication and secure transfer of value) but
> the cards can be purchased and reloaded with cash. Alas, the
> system does not allow uploads of value to banks or
> peer-to-peer transfers, as Mondex did.
Critical mass is no problem if a payment mechanism is backed by
the big boys, but the big boys want a mechanism for
transferring value where only a few giant corporations who are
in bed with the state receive transaction payments, a system
that divides the economy into a tiny number of actors, the big
corporations, who alone take action, plan and produce, and huge
number of passive consumer zombies.
We would like a system which treats those making and receiving
payments as peers, which makes critical mass a considerably
more difficult problem.
--digsig
James A. Donald
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