From: Eli Brandt <ebrandt@jarthur.cs.hmc.edu>
Date: Fri, 11 Mar 94 20:42:20 PST
To: cypherpunks list <cypherpunks@toad.com>
Subject: Re: mo money woe
In-Reply-To: <199403120350.AA11570@netsys.com>
Message-ID: <9403120442.AA01101@toad.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


> Perhaps people may be driven to Sandy's (et al) digital cash simply
> because the technology to counterfeit paper cash is becoming more
> reliable and available with each passing day.

Well, ordinary people won't be driven to digicash by this -- after
all, it doesn't much matter to the holder whether a given greenback
was printed by the Treasury or not, as long as it circulates.  And
it *will* circulate even if the printing isn't perfect, because
nobody but the SS actually looks at the fine details of bills.  (The
hard part would probably be the texture, weight, and thickness, but
I don't think I'd be allowed to do a study.)  The point of
anti-forgery features in bills is to restrict to the government
the power to debase the currency.  :-)

Forgery, however, may drive the *government* to digicash, and you
can bet it won't be the good kind of digicash.  Hmm, we've heard
that eliminating cash would hit "drug kingpins".  We've heard that
Syria(?) is printing large quantities of U.S. bills, so we have the
terrorism link.  I'm waiting from a story to break which ties
child pornography to conterfeiting...

   Eli   ebrandt@hmc.edu