From: wcs@anchor.ho.att.com (bill.stewart@pleasantonca.ncr.com +1-510-484-6204)
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 94 19:09:26 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re:  REAL WORLD ENCRYPTION
Message-ID: <9402230224.AA27703@anchor.ho.att.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


There are several factors that are probably leading people to ask about
how digicash is valued.  WHile digicash is basically a transaction technology,
there are different categories of transactions it can support.
One way for it to acquire value is the method that checks and bank notes use -
somebody deposits real money in a bank, and writes requests to move it around.
Since you're talkign about starting a bank, the obvious question is whether
the accounts will be in dollars, yen, gold/silver, rubles, etc.;
while much of the business may be in dollars or Swiss francs,
supporting more than one currency increases your workload a good bit,
and each additional currency adds a certain amount of work.

The other way digicash is likely to acquire value is for it to
represent requests for certain amounts of service, e.g. digital postage stamps,
highway tolls, etc, where it's basically service-provider scrip.
For some systems, this may be free and used just for resource allocation,
or testing, or whatever.
			Bill