[118123] in Cypherpunks
Re: limits of contractual irrevocability (Re: e-gold isn't bearer(Re: e-gold: post confusion!))
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Adam Back)
Mon Sep 20 11:31:03 1999
Date: Mon, 20 Sep 1999 16:07:18 +0100
Message-Id: <199909201507.QAA15847@server.cypherspace.org>
From: Adam Back <adam@cypherspace.org>
To: shamrock@cypherpunks.to
Cc: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Cc: dbs@philodox.com
In-reply-to: <NDBBIFGOKODBCKDGJDKLEEEMCHAA.shamrock@cypherpunks.to>
Reply-To: Adam Back <adam@cypherspace.org>
Lucky writes:
> Just as a minor clarification, if I used the term organization, I
> was not exclusively referring to transactions occurring inside
> Widget International, Inc.
That partly explains the difference -- I interpreted your earlier post
to be saying internal transactions only. If you include external
players or players in the "loosely affiliated conglomorate", then one
might see some advantage to anonymous settlement -- the fact that
settlment is instant.
However instant settlement is not tied to blind ecash -- surely an
non-blind payment system with instant settlement (online ecash without
the blinding step) would be equally functional from their perspective
and save shelling out money for blind signature licenses?
You explained just now that you were just telling us about the
conglomorates expressed interest, not speculating about why they might
be interested -- my earlier comments were along the lines of "with
their big audit trail anyway, why on earth do they think they need
anonymous ecash".
So I still am confused as to why they see value in anonymity -- they
are shipping physical goods, they will have contracts, paper audit
trails, shipment notes etc. The paper trail will allow the
appropriate contractor to be IDed, and the fact that the payment was
anonymous won't help as the rest of the paper trail would be enough
evidence.
As someone with some marketing and business experience in this, have
you got any comments you could share with us on what economic
advantage you think they see in it that couldn't be as well provided
by non-blind payment?
However, if they want to do it:
> So the benefit to these companies is twofold:
>
> o reduce intra-conglomerate value transfer and settlement costs.
> o offer innovative financial services to the marketplace.
I wonder if you are able to re-examine this proposition
ecashtechnologies.com to see if they have more open licensing terms --
one presumes (a big assumption on past digicash performance) that they
bought the patents to make money from them, as it would be nice to see
the services in the market place even if I can't fathom what advantage
the deployers see in it for them.
Adam
