The Bank of the Internet!? (fwd)

[hughes@ah.com (Eric Hughes)]

Zeek forwarded a message written by Arthur Chandler which appears to
have appeared on Future Culture.  This reply is going both to the
cypherpunks list (worldwide) and also to the austin-cypherpunks list
(a locality); some comments may be obvious for one group or the other.

There are several small factual details incorrect in this post, most
of which I will not try to correct.  As he said, "I'm oversimplifying
all this."

One in particular, though, should be.  The EFF is not "backing" a
credit union, at least not the national organization.  Members of
EFF-Austin, a local chapter of the EFF, (well, the only local chapter,
but that's another story) are looking to form their own credit union.
Their efforts will provide a model for other such efforts.

True, it will use the "internet as the monetary highway" (a phrase I
delight in), but at least at the outset will neither issue digital
money nor deploy internationally distributed secret sharing.  I did
talk about both of these, but not as specifically regards any
particular financial project.

Eric