Re: The Continued Attack on Cash (Was: "The Right of Anonymity"...)

[Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>]

At 10:31 pm -0500 on 2/2/98, Tim May wrote:


> At 6:42 PM -0800 2/2/98, Anonymous wrote:
> >Tim May wrote:
> >> The real solution is easy.
> >
> >
> >Easier said than done.

<snip>

> When I say the real solution is easy, I mean it. Get rid of the laws

Nope. Making or repealing laws won't mean too much for the privacy of
transactions, except to reallocate who gets screwed in some kind of
political zero-sum game.

Anyway, laws are there because there's an economic incentive for them to be
there. Reality is not optional. Physics creates economics which creates
laws. Not the other way around. Even morality and ethics come from culture,
which itself is a physical phenomenon, the collective response of humans to
the resources on hand,  which is an economic process if there ever was one.

So, only when digital bearer certificate technology like blind signatures
is proven to be *cheaper* than the current privacy-invasive book entry
transaction regime will there be any demand for digital bearer settlement
of assets, debt, and cash transactions.

Personally, I believe that that time is coming sooner than most people
realize. That's because when someone figures out how to save everyone a
bunch of money with digital bearer certificates, they're going to make a
bunch of money doing it, and the race to the bottom-line will begin.

As I've said here several times before, the paradox will prove to be that
digital bearer settlement will be cheaper to use *because* they're
physically anonymous. You don't *care* what the biometric identity of
someone is, as long as you're protected from bad economic actors, and can
do reputation damage to people who you can prove have damaged you
financially.

Which, as we all know here, is simply a matter of financial cryptography.


The cost of anything is the foregone alternative. People will only demand
more privacy when it's cheaper than not having it. I believe that that time
is coming, rather quickly.

Cheers,
Bob Hettinga



-----------------
Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com), Philodox
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"... 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'
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