Daniel Boone writes:
> This would currently be a bad idea. E-Gold apparently has an
> ill-articulated policy of "freezing" accounts containing "funds that appear
> to be tainted by crime." They have so far refused to say what they do with
> the gold in frozen accounts, although I have Ian Grigg's assurance it is
> fair and reasonable.
>
> Given the possible uses for anonymous e-cash, the risk that e-gold would do
> something unpleasant to the anonymous mint account seems unreasonably
> large, at least until e-gold formalizes its policies in this regard. I'm
> not holding my breath, as there seems to be some (IMO misguided) sentiment
> for keeping the policy secret to avoid having people try to game the system.
The anonymous mint would be an indirect mechanism for e-gold account
transfers. Account holder Alice transfers into the mint account,
and later unlinkably directs the mint to transfer into Bob's account.
In the worst case, suppose Alice and Bob are criminals. Hopefully e-gold
would direct their ire at the wrongdoers, and not try to freeze everyone's
account who did business with them.
> Hints have gone by on the e-gold list that there may be plans for an
> electronic bearer currency backed in part by e-gold, but I don't know what
> minting arrangements will be made or when we will see useable product. If
> it's electronic, and truly bearer, anonymity should follow fairly trivially
> even if not built into the system. Ian may know more -- the e-gold list has
> contained hints that he's involved in the project.
Apparently, strong anonymity is explicitly NOT a design goal of the
forthcoming DigiGold project, in fact the people involved get downright
touchy when you try to talk to them about blinded transfers. Furthermore
the proposed anonymous ecash layer would be a competitor with DigiGold,
which is closely affiliated with e-gold (e-gold affiliated companies
spawn faster than rabbits). Then we add the fact that anonymity would
be something of a threat to e-gold's apparent desire to track the
spending habits of its customers in order to detect suspicious activity
(the company was crowing a few weeks ago about catching some guy who'd
filled a bogus PayPal account with stolen funds and then transferred
his gains to e-gold).
Admittedly it doesn't add up to a scenario very friendly for anonymity.
But still it might be worth trying as an experiment. At least it would
get the e-gold guys to show their true colors if nothing more.
