Re: Pricing Mojo, Integrating PGP, TAZ, and D.C. Cypherpunks
On 20 Nov 2001, at 22:54, Greg Broiles wrote: Very early in its lifetime, the Autonomous Zones/Mojo Nation people said that maybe Mojo would someday be exchangable with real cash, though the assumption was that during the early stages of software development, people were playing with worthless currency for proof-of-concept, and that at some point the old Mojo would be useless or disabled, and people would start using New Mojo instead, where New Mojo might have real value. Here's my recollection as to how this was supposed to work: 1) people who participated in the beta got free mojo as a reward for participating (they'd keep their mojo when the beta period was over) 2) In the non-beta, people would have to pay (or something) to get a starting stash of mojo 3) I don't think the Evil Geniuses ever expected to act as mojo-cash brokers; rather, anyone who had a supply of cash and mojo could act as a cash-mojo broker, and mojo would find its own price. And that problem seems to be at the center of Nomen Nescio's sotto voce suggestion that some unnamed cypherpunks work up a currency which can be used to pay people for providing information which is of value - I get the impression that s/he is imagining some magic fairy would mint up piles of the currency, and assign it equally to every subscriber, who would then be empowered to pay it to the content providers they liked best. That's very warm and fuzzy and hippy-like, but if these tokens are handed out for free, then what, exactly, is their value? Right. If the tokens are EVER going to be worth anything, there can't be a way to accumulate then for free. If people have this psychological block against paying real money for tokens, maybe it's a good idea to make them trade CPU time for them in one of the seti-like projects. Somebody mentioned something about one involving protein-folding that sounded like it might actually be useful. George I think the Extropians did something like that, which ended in some sort of fiasco which some cypherpunks were involved in, though I don't know the details and was never a participant in that list/social circle. -- Greg Broiles -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- PGP 0x26E4488c or 0x94245961 5000 dead in NYC? National tragedy. 1000 detained incommunicado without trial, expanded surveillance? National disgrace.
RE: Pricing Mojo, Integrating PGP, TAZ, and D.C. Cypherpunks
Greg wrote: That's very warm and fuzzy and hippy-like, but if these tokens are handed out for free, then what, exactly, is their value? I think the Extropians did something like that, which ended in some sort of fiasco which some cypherpunks were involved in, though I don't know the details and was never a participant in that list/social circle. I am unfamiliar with the Extropian electronic token experiment, but I as the first person on the planet to have conducted an Ecash-to-fiat currency transaction, I can assure you that somebody out there may well be willing to pay real cash for freely minted tokens. (I was on the Ecash selling side. The USD 35 for which I sold my Ecash beta tokens are still in my filing cabinet). --Lucky
Re: Pricing Mojo, Integrating PGP, TAZ, and D.C. Cypherpunks
On Sunday, November 25, 2001, at 07:05 PM, Lucky Green wrote: Greg wrote: That's very warm and fuzzy and hippy-like, but if these tokens are handed out for free, then what, exactly, is their value? I think the Extropians did something like that, which ended in some sort of fiasco which some cypherpunks were involved in, though I don't know the details and was never a participant in that list/social circle. I am unfamiliar with the Extropian electronic token experiment, but I as the first person on the planet to have conducted an Ecash-to-fiat currency transaction, I can assure you that somebody out there may well be willing to pay real cash for freely minted tokens. (I was on the Ecash selling side. The USD 35 for which I sold my Ecash beta tokens are still in my filing cabinet). I believe Greg may have been referring to a reputation market experiment, circa 1993. Each list subscriber was given some number of tokens and then a market in reputations was declared. People could buy and sell shares in the reputations of anyone, including themselves. The thought was that prices would go up on those reputations people thought the price would go up on. Issues of the real reputation were secondary issues (i.e., if people thought someone was a turkey, they probably wouldn't expect his rep to go up, despite the artificial nature of the market). I think the guy who wrote the market software was living in Salt Lake City at the time, but I could be misremembering. I don't remember his name, and my archives from back then are in a jumble. One thing that was interesting was the opportunity to manipulate the market. I offered to buy tokens from others, for cash. One person sold me all of his tokens for the agreed-upon price of $20. I sent him the money and he mailed his tokens to me. I then proceeded to use my extra wealth to bid up the value of my own reputation. The tokens were not cryptographically-strong forms of digital cash, but they worked for the intended purpose. (That is, no one tried to forge them, at least not successfully.) --Tim May The great object is that every man be armed and everyone who is able may have a gun. --Patrick Henry The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed. --Alexander Hamilton
Re: Pricing Mojo, Integrating PGP, TAZ, and D.C. Cypherpunks
At 05:04 PM 11/20/2001 -0700, Anonymous wrote: Some thoughts on digital cash. First, using anonymous cash to purchase physical goods online means giving up much of the benefit from the anonymity. If you have to give a delivery address, they obviously know who you are. It's still slightly better than using your Visa card because only the seller learns your address rather than a centralized agency that knows all of your purchases. But it's hardly worth it. Coin (or better yet eGold) operated rental, non-USPS, parcel delivery locker business. Second, using digital cash for purchases in the real world (grocery stores etc) is pretty much impossible today and relatively pointless anyway since physical cash exists. There might be some slight advantages in terms of not having to carry cash, resistance to theft, etc., but from the privacy perspective, things are about as good as they are going to get in the physical world. It's only going to go downhill from here. It may not be as bad as Scott Get Over It McNealy claims but realistically the use of surveillance cameras and face recognition systems is going to increase. ATMs dispensing currency for ecash Fourth, the significant exception is of course pornography, and we've had debates about whether it would make sense to create a privacy-protecting electronic payment system that catered to the porn market. It's profitable, it's information, and there are significant privacy considerations for some customers. Unfortunately the greatest sensitivity to privacy comes with illegal products like child pornography. And the Reedy case has to be a significant cautionary tale. Thomas Reedy was proprietor of an age verification service which had a couple of overseas child pornographers among its customers; he ended up with life imprisonment for what was essentially a payment collection service. Any digital cash system for the porn market would therefore have to screen its clients (the sellers) very closely. It's the buyers to whom you are selling privacy, not the sellers, so this is not inconsistent with the business model. But it could be expensive. And by eliminating illegal porn you would be turning away much of your potential business, leading to a constant temptation to cross the line as Reedy did. Offshore operation from less prudish countries. Can we identify other markets, other applications where cash or cash-like technology can be useful? MojoNation is a good example. Their mojo is intended to be a cash substitute to optimize load balancing and data distribution. Unfortunately the MN network lacks compelling content and the economy is still crude. use Automated publication from file names and meta-data. Removal of limitations of file size enabling publication of high quality video content. Imagine if all these systems could be served by a single virtual currency, where resources and work donated in one forum earned points which would entitle you to privileges in another. Eric Hughes proposed something similar back in the days of the text-based MUD and MOO online games, so that you could transfer quota from one system to another. Or consider the example recently where several people expressed interest in having someone go back to the early cypherpunk archives and select interesting threads. What if each of us had some virtual cash we could transfer to whomever did the work. eGold is already available. The point is that there is a possibility today for an online market in informal, peer to peer style information services. There is work to be done, services to provide which remain entirely in the virtual world. If you could be rewarded for work you do online with cash that would allow you to request similar services from others, the monetary system can get off the ground. This might be a more promising start for a virtual currency than attempts to tie it immediately to dollars. eGold has shown a substantial and profitable, though still not mainstream market, exists for an unregulated electronic currency. A similar system tied to dollars, pounds or marks, is greatly desired. steve
Re: Pricing Mojo, Integrating PGP, TAZ, and D.C. Cypherpunks
At 01:00 AM 11/21/2001 -0500, dmolnar wrote: On Tue, 20 Nov 2001, dmolnar wrote: Isn't this a description of Hawala? Maybe. I regret I'm not familiar with Hawala. I'll go google it. Gee, it's even in the cypherpunks archives. Sorry, everyone. Yes, as described sure sounds similar. The point of doing it over PayPal would just be to make it easy for people on this list to pay Nomen. Even though hawala works in the real world, I'm not so sure we could just start it and expect it to work here. PayPal is a poor choice due to fraud and repudiation issues. From a transactor's viewpoint one should only exchange harder for softer money http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:srzsJTHS-xE:www.coconutgold.com/mayscale.html+mayscalehl=en However, eGold would be excellent: no repudiations. First you must identify and reach your potential customers. Does anyone know where I could get a relatively list of hushmail addresses? One thing that came to mind while reading about it -- does it buy us anything in a MIX-net to separate control messages from payload messages? This came to mind because one of the descriptions of the hawala network seemed to imply that payment would come in from one source and then the name of the recipient would come in from another. The analogy in a MIX-net for e-mail would be having a message delivered to a MIX, and then later forwarding instructions for that message delivered by someone else. (said instructions identifying message by hash or something). Another way to look at this is putting delay in the hands of the client. Not clear to me that it helps; maybe make an adversary think a certain node is the final destination? I can't think of a MIX design off the top of my head which does this. Anyone else? something like this discussed way back when? Does using eGold change the MIX characteristics or feasibility? Possible downsides http://www.goldbankone.com/article.php?sid=77 steve
Re: Pricing Mojo, Integrating PGP, TAZ, and D.C. Cypherpunks
David Molnar wrote: On Tue, 20 Nov 2001, Anonymous wrote: than using your Visa card because only the seller learns your address rather than a centralized agency that knows all of your purchases. But it's hardly worth it. A friend of mine was considering a business plan for physical remailer+ infomediary for a class project a year or two ago. Precisely to get around this problem. Sell learns the remailer's address. More than a few remailers and you can chain them, etc. etc. Unfortunately U.S. postal regulations require identification when you rent a mail box, public or private. See http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/audio/private_mail_box.htm: Recent amendments to postal regulations will make it harder for criminals to victimize innocent consumers by using mail drops. Anyone renting a box from a commercial mail-receiving agency such as Mail Boxers, Etc., Parcel Post, and Postnet will be required to provide two forms of ID, one being a photo ID. It won't do much good to chain them if each one in the chain has your ID on file. Granted you can use fake ID but that would be breaking the law, raising the costs considerably.
RE: Pricing Mojo, Integrating PGP, TAZ, and D.C. Cypherpunks
Someone wrote: Unfortunately U.S. postal regulations require identification when you rent a mail box, public or private It won't do much good to chain them if each one in the chain has your ID on file. Granted you can use fake ID but that would be breaking the law, raising the costs considerably. US postal regs end at the US border. The rest of the world is full of mail drops, accommodation addresses and mail forwarding services. S a n d y
Re: Pricing Mojo, Integrating PGP, TAZ, and D.C. Cypherpunks
On Wed, Nov 21, 2001 at 04:22:36PM -0800, Sandy Sandfort wrote: US postal regs end at the US border. The rest of the world is full of mail drops, accommodation addresses and mail forwarding services. Or, even inside the U.S., you could run an anon mail-receiving locker (insert $20 bill for two days, much like train station lockers) service if you only accepted FedEx/UPS/etc. letters and packages. Obviously it would cost more for users, but for sufficiently valuable cargo... -Declan
Re: Pricing Mojo, Integrating PGP, TAZ, and D.C. Cypherpunks
-- On 20 Nov 2001, at 17:04, Anonymous wrote: Third, this leaves the use of digital cash to purchase information goods and services online. The problem is, few companies have succeeded so far in selling information goods online As you mention below, pornography is the big exception. Of course, control over assets is also an informational good, though not one that has been successfully put online yet. The cypherpunk dream will be close to realization when liability is limited not by the decree of the state but by the difficulty of discovering who the owners of a business are. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG omb+0fl57agPOUEzge7hMd8nVf7S5Qhuhj8H1YWY 4y+BQDxfgXp2UJcabXRe61UEv+6AWGmQpItvkZ9ym
Re: Pricing Mojo, Integrating PGP, TAZ, and D.C. Cypherpunks
On Sun, 18 Nov 2001, Tim May wrote: Any system involving units of Mojo, or understanding of auction models, etc. is hampered. And any system that has only a tiny fraction of what Napster had at its peak is hit with the So what? factor. And the Fax Effect kicks in--few users, not as many options, stagnation. Mojo Nation doesn't have to sell directly to consumers. In fact, as you point out, it's not realistic to expect consumers to manage their own pricing. On the other hand, this might be an opportunity for people to build services on top of Mojo Nation. Such a middle service could provide a consumer with a turnkey, flat fee, no hassle service, while using Mojo Nation to obtain the most efficient prics possible for resources. The difference between the flat fee and the most efficient price provided by Mojo becomes the profit for the middle service. I don't even know if this works in theory, however. Presumably I could set up a model to investigate the relationship between best possible Mojo prices and the characteristics of the network - things like how many users, how much trading, liqudity, which pricing algorithms people use, and so on. Then we could ask questions like how many people need to be offering which kinds of services before a service built on top of Mojo can be profitable? The ideal situation would be one in which the middle service can undercut traditional providers -- and still make money. Except that doesn't look like it's going to happen in the real world. You've mentioned the fact that not enough people are running Mojo clients (thin market/illiquid). It's not clear what it would take to get more people in the Mojo marketplace; even if the theory works out beyond my wildest dreams and I could somehow prove that Mojo will make everyone money **if only ten million people sign up tomorrow**, I suspect no one would pay attention. There are other problems as well. For one thing, who are the traditional providers in the previous paragraph against whom a Mojo service would compete? in markets for which resources? In the case of disk space, it seems to be the people who make and sell hard drives; both entrenched and selling physical goods which any middle service would be hard pressed to emulate perfectly. Plus, as one of the anonymous posters noted, the disk market is quite non-volatile (maybe boring is the right word) with a pronounced trend downward; what is the incentive to use a Mojo-based service there if the customer can just wait a week and then buy a bigger HD? So are there markets for which a middle service could work? I apologize for going on at length about this, but if you want Mojo to correspond at all to real money instead of being a DoS protection feature, I don't see many other ways than middle services to make it work on a wide scale. Then again, I may just be lacking imagination. Does anyone happen to know of real-world current examples like this, in which some aggregator buys and sells a commodity on an exchange, then turns around and offers it at a flat rate to end users? (Hint: Faustine, especially, should read TAZ. And True Names. And Ender's Game. And the archives. And the Cyphernomicon. Get beyond the fog of the mundane and see where the degrees of freedom of the Web will take us.) Have you seen the SemioText(e) anthology? TAZ is in it, along with stuff from J.G. Ballard, the Church of the Subgenius, stories vaguely inspired by gnosticism, and other usual suspects. Reading it reminded me of reading Douglas Rushkoff's _Cyberia_ for the first time -- another book which gives new meaning to your see where the degrees of freedom of the Web will take us. Heady stuff, all of it, and now seems to be out of fashion, but that's a tangent... -David Molnar
Re: Pricing Mojo, Integrating PGP, TAZ, and D.C. Cypherpunks
At 6:00 PM -0500 11/20/01, dmolnar wrote: Does anyone happen to know of real-world current examples like this, in which some aggregator buys and sells a commodity on an exchange, then turns around and offers it at a flat rate to end users? I think my electric company does this each month with my power and gas.
Re: Pricing Mojo, Integrating PGP, TAZ, and D.C. Cypherpunks
Some thoughts on digital cash. First, using anonymous cash to purchase physical goods online means giving up much of the benefit from the anonymity. If you have to give a delivery address, they obviously know who you are. It's still slightly better than using your Visa card because only the seller learns your address rather than a centralized agency that knows all of your purchases. But it's hardly worth it. Second, using digital cash for purchases in the real world (grocery stores etc) is pretty much impossible today and relatively pointless anyway since physical cash exists. There might be some slight advantages in terms of not having to carry cash, resistance to theft, etc., but from the privacy perspective, things are about as good as they are going to get in the physical world. It's only going to go downhill from here. It may not be as bad as Scott Get Over It McNealy claims but realistically the use of surveillance cameras and face recognition systems is going to increase. Third, this leaves the use of digital cash to purchase information goods and services online. The problem is, few companies have succeeded so far in selling information goods online, and the problems have nothing to do with the payment system or privacy issues. With self-contained products like music and software, piracy is rampant. There are some service businesses which are producing and selling information successfully, but usually they are in the B2B market where privacy is less of an issue. Fourth, the significant exception is of course pornography, and we've had debates about whether it would make sense to create a privacy-protecting electronic payment system that catered to the porn market. It's profitable, it's information, and there are significant privacy considerations for some customers. Unfortunately the greatest sensitivity to privacy comes with illegal products like child pornography. And the Reedy case has to be a significant cautionary tale. Thomas Reedy was proprietor of an age verification service which had a couple of overseas child pornographers among its customers; he ended up with life imprisonment for what was essentially a payment collection service. Any digital cash system for the porn market would therefore have to screen its clients (the sellers) very closely. It's the buyers to whom you are selling privacy, not the sellers, so this is not inconsistent with the business model. But it could be expensive. And by eliminating illegal porn you would be turning away much of your potential business, leading to a constant temptation to cross the line as Reedy did. Can we identify other markets, other applications where cash or cash-like technology can be useful? MojoNation is a good example. Their mojo is intended to be a cash substitute to optimize load balancing and data distribution. Unfortunately the MN network lacks compelling content and the economy is still crude. But the idea is sound; P2P networks which reward providers of information should flourish. The slashdot quota system is another example. Also, various warez sites work on an exchange basis, where people get credit for uploading files which gives them authorization to download. Imagine if all these systems could be served by a single virtual currency, where resources and work donated in one forum earned points which would entitle you to privileges in another. Eric Hughes proposed something similar back in the days of the text-based MUD and MOO online games, so that you could transfer quota from one system to another. Or consider the example recently where several people expressed interest in having someone go back to the early cypherpunk archives and select interesting threads. What if each of us had some virtual cash we could transfer to whomever did the work. The point is that there is a possibility today for an online market in informal, peer to peer style information services. There is work to be done, services to provide which remain entirely in the virtual world. If you could be rewarded for work you do online with cash that would allow you to request similar services from others, the monetary system can get off the ground. This might be a more promising start for a virtual currency than attempts to tie it immediately to dollars.
Re: Pricing Mojo, Integrating PGP, TAZ, and D.C. Cypherpunks
I don't mean to take issue with much of what Anonymous writes, but some of the examples mentioned can be taken care of adequately by existing payment systems. Using Amazon's payment system (they have two types, voluntary and pay-for-content), a webmaster can charge as low as $1, I believe, for content, and Paypal is another option. Naturally, they don't do micropayments, and they don't offer the type of anonymity that other systems do, but the early-cypherpunk-archive- editing project, for instance, wouldn't require anon payments in ha'pennies either. -Declan On Tue, Nov 20, 2001 at 05:04:03PM -0700, Anonymous wrote: Imagine if all these systems could be served by a single virtual currency, where resources and work donated in one forum earned points which would entitle you to privileges in another. Eric Hughes proposed something similar back in the days of the text-based MUD and MOO online games, so that you could transfer quota from one system to another. Or consider the example recently where several people expressed interest in having someone go back to the early cypherpunk archives and select interesting threads. What if each of us had some virtual cash we could transfer to whomever did the work. The point is that there is a possibility today for an online market in informal, peer to peer style information services. There is work to be done, services to provide which remain entirely in the virtual world. If you could be rewarded for work you do online with cash that would allow you to request similar services from others, the monetary system can get off the ground. This might be a more promising start for a virtual currency than attempts to tie it immediately to dollars.
Re: Pricing Mojo, Integrating PGP, TAZ, and D.C. Cypherpunks
Declan McCullagh writes: I don't mean to take issue with much of what Anonymous writes, but some of the examples mentioned can be taken care of adequately by existing payment systems. Using Amazon's payment system (they have two types, voluntary and pay-for-content), a webmaster can charge as low as $1, I believe, for content, and Paypal is another option. Naturally, they don't do micropayments, and they don't offer the type of anonymity that other systems do, but the early-cypherpunk-archive- editing project, for instance, wouldn't require anon payments in ha'pennies either. On November 13, you wrote to anon poster Nomen Nescio: (If you really wanted to do something that might be useful, you'd pick the more interesting threads from the dawn of the list, insert them into a good search utility, and make that available for searching and .tar.gz downloading.') Supposing you and others were willing to pay Nomen a modest sum for this service, how could you do so using Paypal or Amazon, and allow him to retain his anonymity? An alternative solution is barter. Nomen could agree to search certain years of archives, or certain topics, in exchange for other people working on other parts of the project, for example. Information barter can be performed while retaining anonymity. Maybe systems to facilitate barter could be developed if anonymous cash remains out of reach.
Re: Pricing Mojo, Integrating PGP, TAZ, and D.C. Cypherpunks
On Wed, Nov 21, 2001 at 02:57:23AM -, Anonymous wrote: Supposing you and others were willing to pay Nomen a modest sum for this service, how could you do so using Paypal or Amazon, and allow him to retain his anonymity? Ah, but I never said I'd pay for it -- I said it might be a better use Nomen's time than pointless flaming or somesuch. But going with your hypothetical, Nomen could find a trusted party with sufficient reputation capital and allow them to run the Amazon service for him/her in exchange for a small fee. Amazon requires a credit card number, billing address, and checking account number for a merchant account. Heck, I'd do it, for a sufficient expected fee, assuming legal content, and I suspect other folks would too, for different definitions of expected fee. How I would give a check or money order to Nomen is another problem. Perhaps he/she would like a copy of something I could download for a fee, encrypt, and send via a remailer or place in a Usenet newsgroup? Etc. I never claimed that Amazon/Paypal are sufficient for all cypherpunkly purposes; that is trivially untrue. But they may be sufficient for some tasks. -Declan
