[556] in Cypherpunks
Re: Digital cash issues...
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Dr. Cat)
Tue May 25 12:39:13 1993
To: CompuServe.COM!74076.1041@cactus.org (Hal)
Date: Tue, 25 May 93 11:12:34 CDT
From: Dr. Cat <wixer!wixer.bga.com!cat@cactus.org>
Cc: cypherpunks@toad.com
In-Reply-To: <930525075401_74076.1041_FHD58-1@CompuServe.COM>; from "Hal" at May 25, 93 3:54 am
Regarding the issue of what to do under Chaum's scheme when someone double-
spends a piece of digital cash & their identity is revealed... While this
might be a problem for a cypherpunk style "kick society in the pants and get
this going early" implementation of digital banking, I don't think it's going
to be a serious hindrance in the long term. While I'm sure all big retail
chains and the like will have terminals that can instantly verify a piece of
cash, if there are niches for an offline system, there's a very significant
economic infrastructure set up for collecting on bad debts. Any credit card
company, phone company, or other corporation that does a lot of billing
already has staff dedicated solely to that function, with collection agencies
providing a second tier of functionality for the tougher cases.
Dr. Cat / Dragon's Eye / New traditions for the next century
