This post is hard to title. It relates to: 1. the claimed 'asset' status of goldmoney 2. what it really means to own and hold gold as an asset and 3. how crytography might enable a gold currency to be a true asset currency Goldmoney claims to be 'unique' in that holdings of goldgrams are title to the actual gold in the holding, rather than a currency backed by a holding. This is simply not the case, as the owner of 1 gg simply cannot take his holding out and effect his claimed ownership of it -- bullion backing goldmoney is in bullion of much greater masses. Even if you had enough goldgrams to remove bullion from allocated storage, your holding is not a specified/allocated piece of bullion, but an interest in allocated storage of of all goldmoney holdings at the repository. Further still, the direct holding of a piece of bullion at a repository is not true ownership, as you lack actual and rely on the security and reputation of the repository. The only true asset currency in respect to gold is the physical possession of bullion, which is physically passed from payer to payee to act as means of payment and medium of exchange, money. In deciding whether or not to accept bullion as payment, the payee will seek warrant for believing that the bullion contains the gold it is claimed to contain. This usually will involve agents who assess the bullion and provide opinion of its gold content. This is where cryptography could provide a means of demonstrating the authenticity of the opinion -- showing that the named agent does in fact give a particular opinion about a particular piece of bullion. Bullion could be assessed and then packed/encased, together with a micro-computer, into a tamper evident packaging, in a convinient size, shape and appearence for use in commerce (an alternative to tamper evident packaging would be that seperation of bullion from micro-computer (or attempt to re-attach the micro-computer to another piece of bullion) would destroy the micro-computer). The micro-computer would have the capacity to respond to a crypto challenge and response protocol through the tamper evident packaging (or some other method of cryptography). Thus the payee can be sure the stated opinion is not a forgery. The design would also require that the costs of removing the micro-computer and repackaging with a fake bullion would exceed the value of the bullion. If this design condition was met, the payee could also be sure that the opinion referred to the bullion it is enclosed/encased with. Perhaps the a method of production would be to mint coins with a cavity on one face, into which the micro-computer fitted, and the coin would be encased in plastic, making seperation either destructive of the micro-computer or at least very difficult and substantially more expensive than the value of the coin. The micro-computer could be solar powered (plastic encasing would be transparent) and use 3G wireless technology to communicate with conventional computing/communication devices. Induction could also be used to power the micro-computer. Plastic encasing would make the coins water-proof. David Hillary --- You are currently subscribed to e-gold-list as: archive@jab.org To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
