[116632] in Cypherpunks
RE: The Chaum coding project
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Robert Hettinga)
Mon Aug 16 19:52:49 1999
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Date: Mon, 16 Aug 1999 19:33:58 -0400
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
From: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
Cc: Digital Bearer Settlement List <dbs@philodox.com>
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Reply-To: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
At 2:16 PM -0700 on 8/16/99, Petro wrote:
> Patents don't last forever, and getting the code ready before
>hand would make it a lot quicker to deploy when the patent does
>expire.
Um, granted. :-).
> Most of the issues, most of the "tough stuff" for e-cash is (I
>would think) at the client end, where you can't even trust that the
>machine is minimally secured or stable. Clients need to be tested in
>those environments for a while before big money would get involved.
Actually, from actually talking to them, "big money" won't get
involved for purely economic reasons.
You can't make money by making money unless you can turn money you
make into other money. Or whatever :-).
Since banks are the only place with money in them these days :-), and
banks are complete creatures of the criminal, much less contract,
law, you not only need the patent holders' permission to mint
Chaumian money, you need the permission of the state to do so, and,
to do that, you need to grow, or at least hypothecate, a
market-chicken or two before you can count your unhatched eggs, as
Mr. Young might put it.
As I've said before, the only way to get the acquiescence of the
state in the replacement of book-entry settlement with digital bearer
is to buy it. Physics causes markets which cause "policy", and all
that. That is, in order to turn net.money, the province of
mathematics, software and persistent digital reputation into
meat.money, the province of law, force, and biometric physical
identity, you must make, or threaten to make :-), so much money in
meatspace with your cypherspace activity that they'll leave you
alone, if only to see what happens next.
That is, not just because you can bribe the state with a tax- (and
lobby/campaign contribution-) base carrot, but also because you can
"threaten" them with the stick of long-term economic
uncompetitiveness if they *don't* adopt the technology. Good
parasites not killing their hosts, if you will.
Even "ecologically enlightened" (none dare call them backward? :-))
technophobic feudal theocracies like Bhutan are being forced to
accept the net, for instance, and I'd go so far as to say that
digital bearer transactions like the Chaumian blind signature
protocol are in the same league of fundamental technology as
telephony, automobiles, trains, and air travel -- or, of course, what
book-entry settlement used to be. That is, a state can run, but it
can't hide from it.
The only way to get there from here is prove the technology's worth
something, and then buy your way through the obstacles; all of which,
at this juncture, and as far as we can tell, are almost entirely
legal, be they contract or criminal.
Writing code and damning the torpedoes is fine for practice, and I
encourage it as much as possible, especially in the world of
interface design, and especially for people whose day jobs are either
extremely under control or nonexistent, but, again, in order to
actually make money you have to make the money you make into other
money. Or something. ;-).
First you need fungibility (which we already have, by definition --
anonymity is the ultimate fungibility), and then convertibility
(which we need a bank for), and, then, and only then, do you have
money.
Cheers,
RAH
-----------------
Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... 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'
