> > Even if e-gold had no anonymity and pseudonymity capabilities, > > it is still a necessary infrastructure to support real e-cash, > > as there is no other internet medium that supports reasonably > > irrevocable and instant payments.
Tim May: > My contention is that physical gold sitting in a warehouse in, > say, the Bank of Bermuda, is no different from a stack of $20 > bills sitting in that same bank. The difference comes when the physical stuff has to move in and out of the bank in Bermuda. The gold does not carry serial numbers, and if it does the bank can melt it down. The problem is not that the serial numbers permit attacks on the customers of the Bank in Bermuda, but that they permit attacks by the federal reserve on the Bank in Bermuda. This important difference gives the issuer of that stack of $20 bills more power to meddle if the bank in Bermuda is carrying $20 bills than if the bank in Bermuda is carrying bars of gold. Whether or not this is the reason that e-gold seems to be functioning in a more cashlike fashion than Paypal or any of its clones, the fact is that it *is* functioning in a more cashlike fashion than Paypal or any of its clones. Of course it might be that a bunch of gold nuts are just more likely to believe in real cashlike money than banking types, but whatever the reason, e-gold is right now the nearest thing to money you can use on the internet. > > But, in fact, it does have some limited anonymity and > > pseudonymity capabilities > > > > e-gold does not provide an anonymization mechanism, unlike > > Chaum's e-cash. But it does allow money that has been > > anonymized or pseudonymized in real space to then be moved > > electronically. Tim May: > No more so than "dollars" are moved electronically. First get your pseudonymous dollars. If you have already created a large supply of pseudonymous dollars, then naturally e-gold looks rather silly to you. But when you withdraw those pseudonymous dollars, they will have serial numbers, instantly creating a problem if you wish to make a large purchase of a good that will be associated with another identity. Thus when time comes to withdraw those pseudonymous dollars, e-gold will not look quite so silly. > Without physical delivery, who cares about actual form? Without physical delivery, who cares about whether the thing to be delivered exists or not? But private systems for moving value do sometimes have to make physical delivery. > > Let us suppose that someone takes his physical bag of gold, > > and opens an account. How can they connect the identity > > owning that account, to that person's other identities. Tim May: > The same is true of FRNs carried to a bank and deposited. > > (Yes, I know that such deposits would be nearly impossible to > make in the U.S. or in many other countries. Ditto for gold, > too. If the claim is that once dollars have been converted to > gold in an offshore bank then the offshore funds can be moved > more freely, this is so. But the same applies to dollars > converted to dollars or marks or francs in an offshore bank. The > actual _form_ of the money, whether in gold or platinum or marks > or dollars, is not even of _secondary_ importance.) In principle, offshore dollars could be moved around as easily as offshore gold. In practice it is not so. Perhaps one of the fans of offshore banking and financial structuring should set up an e-dollar that works as e-gold does. But reality is, so far they have not. > The _form_ of the money is not important. Only the trust that > delivery will happen (belief about the future behavior of > actors). > > There is nothing "magic" (pun intended) about the putative > denomination having the word "gold" in it. Your points about > untraceability would apply just as well if the units were > nominally in "dollars." Possibly. But such an e-dollar is merely potential, while the e-gold is actual. For example, if one wishes to purchase a domain name untraceably, one does so with e-gold. > > ...Absolutely true, but e-cash does need an underlying thing > > of value. At present interfacing to federal reserve notes is > > being made more and more difficult. Tim May: > The crackdown on money movements apply to all forms of money, in > all currencies or objects of value. If the underlying thing of value is federal reserve notes, then at some fairly recent point in the chain of ownership, those physical notes were in the hands of the federal reserve. If one dines with the devil, one needs a long spoon. If the underlying thing of value is gold, it probably was not in the hands of the federal reserve at any recent time. Thus the fed has a lot more leverage to crack down on the movement of notes than of gold. An offshore bank moving e-dollars has to deal the the feds directly, or through a bank that has to deal with the feds. An offshore bank moving e-gold does not have to. This may well explain the fact that right now offshore gold can be moved around with far more ease than offshore dollars. I do not see facilities for moving offshore dollars as competitive with offshore gold, but as complimentary to offshore gold. If someone improves our ability to move offshore dollars, that would be a great advance for liberty. But right now today, our ability to move offshore dollars is unsatisfactory, while our ability to move offshore gold is satisfactory.
