Re: The End of the Ecash Trial?

[rah@shipwright.com (Robert Hettinga)]

At 12:35 PM 8/23/95, Nathan Loofbourrow wrote:
>I have yet to see a date, but Digicash states several times in their
>press releases that Cyberbucks are only a trial currency, and that at
>some point in the future the trial will come to an end.

We've talked about this a little bit on ecm.

Someone from Digicash is on record there as saying that trading in c$ came
as a complete surprise.

The hitch about continuing to honor c$ is that there needs to be a bank.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that the current system does
work on an offline, peer-to-peer basis.  Nonetheless, ocassionally, you
still need to verify that the money hasn't been double spent, and for that
you need a bank.

The problem with being a bank is the price of the bank software, which is
where David Chaum and Co. want make their money.  Thus, the last price I
got (offhand) from David on the phone a year ago was $250k + 10% of net
profits.  Given the cost of hardware, people, lawyers, and if you actually
back the certificates with dollars in a bank of deposit (not being what we
want do to here, admittedly) bankers, and more lawyers.  Could add up to a
mulitmillion dollar proposition.

Of course, it could be done with donated professional time, bandwidth,
hardware and donated bank software from Digicash. But it's hard to see that
happening from here...

Cheers,
Bob Hettinga

-----------------
Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com)
Shipwright Development Corporation, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131
USA (617) 323-7923
"Reality is not optional." --Thomas Sowell
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