Re: Digital Bearer Settlement

[Bill Stewart <bill.stewart@pobox.com>]

Nice article, and I'll have to see if I can get Ian
to talk about HINDE for this month's Bay Area Cypherpunks.

One thing I noticed while reading it, though, is that you still have
"and then you go to jail" at the end of some transaction failure branches,
though most of the failure branches end with "Nothing happens".
While you're not doing book entry at every step,
bearer instruments still depend on the maker honoring them,
whether it's exchanging the bank note for gold pieces
or trading the digicash bits for Federal Reserve Notes --
"then the banker goes to jail" can still happen,
and a digicash world may not have as many S&L Bailout
political favors as the Reagan Years provided.
Also, there are the transactions where you trade
digicash for goods&services, and there's still the problem
of making sure the goods&services got delivered,
making sure the payment got delivered, and dealing with
poor quality products.  For purely digital products,
like consulting hours, movies, and microcode, there are
protocols that can take care of the exchange,
but for goods&services involving real stuff,
like pizza delivery, there's still an element of
trust required.
				Thanks! 
					Bill
Bill Stewart, bill.stewart@pobox.com
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