-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 1:09 PM -0800 on 11/21/01, Blanc wrote:
> From R. A. Hettinga: <only operative bits included for brevity> >> actually works in production for assets >> people want to trade in large quantity > But sometimes it seems like it will be a Cold Day in Hell before > that happens. Helps if you're actually plugged into and loading value from, say, the ATM network, or, more fun, something like CREST, or even DTC, getting us what Schear and I called unsponsored network depository receipts, back in the day. Relying on those networks for debit/credit authentication for the loading problem looks sucky on a first approximation, nothing can be farther from anonymous, obviously, but once a fungible, and more important, exchangeable, asset like cash or securities in a custodial account is subsequently reserved in the account of an underwriter and represented in bearer form on the net, it can go anywhere it wants -- until, anyway, it has to go off the net to be put into an identified account again. Someday, of course, the money stays on forever, and that's when things get interesting, and that might happen sooner than we think. Certainly lots of people as has been noted, have figured out ways to mix the money around once it's there, if that's necessary for one thing or another. When IBUC did some work with CRESTCo earlier this year, we figured it would cost about a million pounds to demo, including the work on CREST itself, about 2 million pounds for the lawyers, :-), and a few more mil to go from there into production, not including marketing, if any. Since the white-label ATM hardware/software/account service is out there already, and FSTC's done lots of net-side work already, a plain-old retail cash product might even be faster to do, once the banking community -- and, oddly enough, the regulators who weren't *that* negative on the idea once it was explained to them -- crawl out from their desks someday. > (Ryan, would you make this your next project? > We'd all appreciate it *ever* so much.) Not to un-swash his buckle, and all that, because he really deserves massive kudos for what he's done with HavenCo., but Ryan's already tried that, once before, on Anguilla, if we all remember, and it wasn't at all pretty (cf. Declan's articles earlier this year about the E-Gold/Systemics pissing contest). I figure this is going to have to be a front-door operation, actually resident in a financial-center city like London or New York (Boston would do, I suppose :-)), and not something with servers parked on an artillery platform, however cool that might be to think about at a distance. Fortunately, the economic/technology front door keeps getting opened wider, which, I suppose, was the point of my post to begin with. It's going to happen, sooner or later, and it doesn't really matter who does it first. Even more fun, doing a bearer-form depository receipt instrument collateralized by any security in CREST, including the S&P 500, is completely doable right now, up to and including an ATM patch from CREST to the Link network in the UK. We had proposals flying around as early as March/April last year from people you've heard of and they were completely serious. They just got dot-bombed. Transaction volumes at London depositories, custodians and underwriters, of course, went in the shitter, and nobody wanted to talk about tomorrow anymore while they were dodging bullets today. Pretty spooky, having actual appreciable assets on the net in bearer form, but it really is that close. Or, at least it was that close until September 11. And, like I said before, people shouldn't even afraid of even that anymore. Cheers, RAH -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 7.0 iQEVAwUBO/wuzcUCGwxmWcHhAQGrvQf/R6DNBfZxtOAcITJwjROWxttZje4iwlv1 GZRP8fl1D4IJBhzJe+t8PgQ37mTaL92wD+Li39Ucf80mYJH1iWEEwHHmWPu1BZ+O hcQheuLcBGoRofnlpMKFZ+tlzI+s7tHfRTtDbGvBn1X+/5o5pddY6n/xFuEPuonb cIVcP9l2/fASh50QqQEm+QtKz9d0EGehde1QTcZgLGITFGIRjiTVgsjdZFeCK0uF moQrP2iWTCj76bN8AiXhQG1AsxA9wBdnRz9Lt2ig9hckpZUmi0zcdxXQvWF5vXVy gTgBtYu/sGDKZevHcx2cAzLtuGqcj6Kj/EA70rcx/SFIkxg8BcTFzQ== =eCLn -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- ----------------- 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'
