Re: ecash-info

[rah@shipwright.com (Robert Hettinga)]

At  8:22 PM 8/15/94 -0500, Zipper wrote:

>I think it would be kinda nifty to come up with some kinda' experimental
>beta test here in the States.  I'll do some headscratching and see with
>what I can find out.

Me too. With that idea in mind, I called them about 6 weeks ago to get some
stuff sent to me in the mail, and got put on the blower David himself.
After I picked myself up off the floor, I told him how some cronies and I
were interested in linking up with a bank to try a market test. The idea
was that the bank puts up a (forgive me, but they'll understand it better
this way, I swear) "drive up window on the information highway", and some
third third party (or even the bank themselves) would issue and underwrite
the digicash.  If the bank doesn't do it, I was hoping there would be a
market for third-party underwriters.  That's where most of my team's skills
might work, anyway.

Anyway, when I screwed up the guts to ask, Chaum told me that the going
price for the underwriter's license/code was $275K plus a percentage of the
net profits. He said that it would include some development support. He
said that he'd send some stuff, and he got my address, but I never got
anything back either.

The price didn't seem too outrageous to me at the time (Boone Pickens: "You
can name any price you want, if I can set the terms"), but the problem is,
there's no data to determine what the market would be. I guess that's why
they call it risk capital.

From what I've read in the press about him, Chaum has talked to very large
banks about this, and hasn't seemed to get anywhere with this except for
non-internet uses (automated tollbooths, smartcards, etc.).  It's possible
he sensed my relative playerlessness and blew off the follow-up.  Seeing
the increase in traffic about his inactivity in promotion leads me to
believe that he's either working hard in getting his product market-ready,
which makes sense, or he's dropping the ball, which I would charitably say
is an unfair reading of the facts.  I think that accusing him of not
properly promoting his product misses two points. The first is, everyone
who is the least bit interested in e$ knows what Chaum is doing, and that's
everyone who could do anything with the information, thus his promotional
activities on that front are quite successful, I would say.  The second
point is if he really is bringing new code to market, increasing
expectations until the code is ready could cause more harm than good.


I agree with you.  I expect that if a bank with a significant
institutional, trustee, or transaction processing presence stepped up to
the plate on this something interesting could happen. I am interested in
approaching a bank here in Boston with those credentials once I have
something (or even someone) to go in there and talk to them with.

>
>Only, any system I develop would have to have a centralized database
>to prevent double-spending and fraud.  I don't quite understand how
>they are going to work around such a problem, and I can probably
>surmize why the total lack of response from them.

My own auto de fe on all this is that in the early stages, most digicash
will go straight to the bank to be cashed out.  Enough people will be sent
to jail at this stage that people will be very careful not to double spend
in later secondary transactions where a piece of cash is spent several
times before being cashed out.  Eventually, the protocols will be imbedded
so far into the software's user interface that it will be very hard for the
average person to double spend by accident.  Professional criminals who do
it on purpose will be as prevalent as counterfeiters are now.  There will
be a few determined people who will get caught inevitably and go to jail.
I don't expect the level of fraud in digital cash to be much higher than
that of credit card fraud, which as we've discussed here, is pretty low.  I
expect that the level of digital cash fraud will be about that of
counterfeiting now, which is pretty damn low, I bet.


I like this. I must say that the last month or so has been a really good
month for e$ discussions here.  Thanks to all who have been talking about
it.

We should remember that certain people around here are very good at what
they do, and should be paid attention to even when their delivery can be
upsetting for one reason or another.

I chalk it up to interface fatigue, in the sense that there are certain
abrasions that occur when so many brains of different viewpoints bump
against each other here on the net.  Another way to look at it may be
another form of friction, the transaction cost of the information you get
by interacting on the list.  That's certainly appropriate to a discussion
of internet commerce, eh?

Cheers,
Bob Hettinga

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Robert Hettinga  (rah@shipwright.com) "There is no difference between someone
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