Re: Digital Coin Claim

[nobody@pmantis.berkeley.edu]

At 10:24 PM 8/25/93 -0400, Paul L. Moses wrote:
>I think that creating a chain of title for digicoins would defeat the whole
>purpose of the exercise.  Creating a history of ownership is done in order to
>increase accountability, not privacy.  And such a history is necessary only to
>clarify disputes over ownership, liens, defects....things which are simply not
>problems with currency and bearer instruments.
>
>The question is, what is the end to which this chain of title is being put? 
>To verify that the holder is a "valid" holder?  THIS IS IRRELEVANT.  He who
>holds, owns.

Yes, but holds what?

I think you missed the point. You're thinking that people use their
identity-revealing keys to sign these public documents. I think Hnash
intended that people use anonymous or even one-time-only keys. The bearer
instrument is not the thing that gets publicized, it is the private key
corresponding to the public key in the public document. When you generate
that key, you put no identifying info in it. You use it only once, to
transfer ownership. Hence, your true identity is not tied in to the history
of ownership.

This leads back to the question about settling disputes - if the keys
associated with the owner of the coin do not identify him, he could attempt
to use the same coin more than once. This could perhaps be circumvented by
having a single registry. The merchant would wait until the registry showed
her (her key) to be the owner before handing over the goods.