[4219] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: bearer = anonymous = freedom to contract
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Robert Hettinga)
Tue Feb 16 08:43:43 1999
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1999 22:23:33 -0500
To: Digital Bearer Settlement List <dbs@philodox.com>, dcsb@ai.mit.edu,
micropay@ai.mit.edu, e$@vmeng.com, cryptography@c2.net,
cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
From: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
--- begin forwarded text
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1999 18:51:20 -0800
From: Wei Dai <weidai@eskimo.com>
To: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
Cc: Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk>, dbs@philodox.com
Subject: Re: bearer = anonymous = freedom to contract
Sender: <dbs@philodox.com>
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On Mon, Feb 15, 1999 at 08:03:57PM -0500, Robert Hettinga wrote:
> Not true. I claim that the closer you get to a cheap, instantaneous,
> electronic, book-entry settled transaction over an insecure public
> internetwork, the closer you have to frontload the authorization, the
> "signature" of the intermediary in the transaction. In fact, that's the
> most important part of the transaction, the reputation of the transaction's
> guarantor. You end up with a cryptographic object which whose only
> information component is the value of the asset and the guarantee of a
> financial intermediary. A digital bearer certificate, in other words.
Suppose you have a payment system that works like this:
Bob wants to pay Alice $100, so he sends Alice a digitally signed check
"Pay Alice $100 from my account at Bank B." Alice forwards this check to
her bank, Bank A. Bank A immediately forwards the check to Bank B. Bank B
checks it hasn't seen this check before and Bob has $100 in his account,
then debits Bob's account by $100 and sends confirmation to Bank A. Bank A
debits Bank B's account at Bank A by $100 and credits Alice's account by
$100, then sends confirmation to Alice. (Or if Bank A trusts Bank B,
instead of Bank A debiting Bank B's account, Bank B can credit Bank A's
account at Bank B.)
In an appropriate jurisdiction (namely one that won't force the banks to
reverse the payment for any reason) this system has instant settlement,
but I think it would be rather confusing to call Bob's check a digital
bearer document.
But to move away from terminology for a moment, if people really want
instant settlement and don't care too much about privacy, is there any
reason to expect that something like the above system won't be adopted
(along with legal changes to allow for instant settlement) instead of a
more privacy-friendly system like blinded ecash?
--- end forwarded text
-----------------
Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@philodox.com>
Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.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'
