uncensorable net based payment system?

[Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk>]

The internet looks like it is slowly moving towards anonymous
micropayments for services, and metering for scarce resources.

One presumes that in 10-15 years time frame such payments will be
pervasive.  In such an environment where you can buy bandwidth per Mb
at your chosen bit-rate for anonymous ecash, and buy storage per
Mb/year, and CPU time per MIPs/year there will be a large amount of
readily marketable resources.

That is to say high velocity efficient markets will arise for resale
of bandwidth, storage and CPU hours.


The interesting question then is can we actually base an entirely net
based currency on trading of these resources.  What would the
architecture for such a payment system look like?  Design goals would
be that it should be:

	- a distributed system
	- not involve trusted banks
	- be immediately exchangeable for any currency
	- be outside the influence of governments and banks
	- be immune to government hidden taxations such as printing
	  new money as a form of tax
	- be immune from government taxation
	- be a stable form of cash (in the face of rapidly
	  depreciating assets like Mb/years of storage as mass storage
	  devices continue their price plumet.)

Possible?

Then I can have some net cash savings backed by the rights to 1Tb
of bandwidth at 100 Mb/sec.  100 Mb/sec for 3 days.

A problem with this is that the market prices of the assets is
continually dropping.  How do I hedge against this.  Can I buy
futures?  Sell 100 Mb/sec for 3 days now in exchange for 200 Mb/sec
for 3 days in 1 years time at an predicted equivalent value? 

Adam
-- 
Have *you* exported RSA today? --> http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/

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