At 3:57 PM -0500 on 2/19/03, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Great idea
It's perfect for you book-entry guys. YOu need strong identity to hunt down the check-bouncers...
Cheers, RAH Who'll stick to actual cash, thank you very much... :-).
ROFL! How do you transfer paper currency over a network?
Digital Bearer Certificates are nothing but bits, having no meaning at all outside of the central host that maintains them. Does that make them less of a "book-entry" system??
DBCs are a book-entry system that keeps track of its outstanding balance. Less is more. A book entry system, intentionally stripped of the functionality to keep track of identity of the account holder gee, what innovation.
And you still have to *trust* that the operator of the digital cash server isn't a sting or other venture who actually *are* tracking identity and use.
DBC is much like a bank, except taking away that which is good (deposit insurance and accountability), adding things that are bad (categories of risk that are impossible to address without governance) and NOT addressing the FUNDAMENTAL problem which is the Central Server. You're still totally susceptible to regulation and police and carnivore.
What we need is a P2P framework for *real economic activities* that is, exchanges of goods and services including rich collaborations, outside the predation of monopolies, platform vendors, and governments.
What we DONT need is a plaything for money balances for the aristocracy, private banking, and various criminals and worse--all divorced from real products/services or identity!
Serve the people RAH. :-)
Todd
-- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
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