RE: In Search of Genuine DigiCash

["Claborne, Chris" <claborne@microcosm.sandiegoca.NCR.COM>]

> From: Eric Hughes <hughes@ah.com>
> 
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>    Well we agree that the selling point is economic efficiency. But 
"anonymity
>    reduces overhead" ?
>
>    All that you save is the space required for the recording of names.
>
> From a naive implementor's view, yes, perhaps that is the whole
> savings.  But the implementor's view is not the executive's view, and
> many activities which the technical community does not understand have
> real economic valuations.
>
> Take "recording of names", for example.  You're going to have to hire
> (physical) people to look at other (physical) people and look at
> various forms of ID.  You'll have to pay these employees, and staff
> costs always dominate the other costs in service industries.  You'll
> have to ascertain that a particular public key, for example, matches
> that of the (physical) person who opened the account.
>
> When the gov't comes and asks for all the records for a certain name,
> you'll have to produce all that you have or be criminally negligent.
> I assure you, setting up an archival system for seven years of
> transaction information with high reliability is not inexpensive.
>
> There are more savings, which others can enumerate.  I didn't even get
> into legal savings, for example.
>
> Eric
>

   Your point is an excellent example of what doing business in the US would 
be like... A pain in the ass!  If we had someone from the banking community 
that knew all of the ins and outs, we probably find that setting this up in 
the US breaks laws, would cost too much in all of the pay-offs to govt. 
officials, take too long,  etc.  I would suggest setting up in a off-shore 
e$ banking system to avoid all of this and get it off the ground quickly.

   Aren't the Swiss are known to have sufficient privacy?  They might be 
open to setting something up and an existing Swiss bank would have 
credibility.  Privacy issues, regarding transactions, could be kept private. 
 Why do you think crooks use them?  I have no direct experience with Swiss 
accounts  and have no idea what it would take to interest  the Swiss Banking 
community.  Anything that our government would come up with would be???
     a.   A clusterfuck.

     b.   Designed so that they could track the movement of money for
          IRS and of course, to fight crime..

     c.   Expensive because of all the regulations.

     d.   Have very little value add.

     e.  All of the above.

     f.   None of the above.

If you chose "E", you are correct. :)

   The ability to issue orders to a bank to move e$ from one account to 
another could be done quickly and securely in any bank.  If the destination 
is not at that bank, then the bank could create a check on your behalf  and 
reference your name, account or what ever you want ... if anything. 
 CheckFree in the US does this now but your name or the account your are 
paying on is on the check and I am sure our govt. has access to all the info 
in their database of transactions.  I could also send you a e-note that you 
could then send to the bank and quickly confirm that the transaction is 
covered. (This would be better than todays banking where a merchant can call 
a bank and ask them about my account but boost the amount of the transaction 
to find out if I'm ritch bastard or not.  With a crypto-sig on an e-note, I 
would be guaranteed that my bank would only answer questions about the 
amount on my e-note.

Example.

   I ask you to move $e}1000.00 to a reference number X20567 at my Swiss 
bank.  When I see the transaction deposited into my account I can send you 
my software.  This account could be a temporary holding account or my 
permanent account.  If you use the same Swiss bank or another Swiss bank 
that is part of the e$ community, it could take just a second and be easy 
for both of us.

Issues:
   I guess it boils down to this, we have to have someone that we can trust. 
 The issue of currency conversion would also be a new one for me.  Would my 
money be Swiss?  If the transaction gos south, what do I do, I am no longer 
covered by US law and would have no proof that this transaction ever took 
place (remember, no one can ask the bank for records). Hmmmm


   Is there a way that we can make the answer  to my question above = "F"?

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