-- 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 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG +QZmFHKyDPKB9S60+rLQsOzIgeGk4o2tjKPzSX+8 4ROdV+LJ4M5hm4HiXOxPfEhStMMRfi09HNAiWbEKa