From: Hal <hfinney@shell.portal.com>
Date: Mon, 29 Aug 94 12:02:31 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Problems with anonymous escrow 2
Message-ID: <199408291902.MAA11465@jobe.shell.portal.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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Besides the question of trustworthiness, another problem I see with
anonymous escrow agents applies more generally to any form of
anonymous business.  Anonymity makes sense to me for the individual.
Each person manages his own affairs and he can keep secret or reveal
what he wants.  But at the business level it is going to be much
harder to keep the same level of secrecy.  It is hard for me to see
how a business larger than two or three people can really expect to
operate with the kind of anonymity we are talking about here.

These escrow agents will need significant assets to be useful, and
probably staffs of at least dozens or hundreds of actuaries and other
professionals who will judge the safety and appropriateness of the
various deals the agency is offered.  How can you expect to keep the
location and true identities of the business principals secret?  It is
said that no more than three people can keep a secret; can we really
expect a staff of hundreds not to reveal that they actually work for
the mysterious XYZ escrow agency, accessible only through Blacknet?
Even with the Mafia, everyone knows who works there (judging from the
newspapers).  Can we really expect more secrecy for these anonymous
businesses?

I think that it is really impossible for a business of any significant
size to be anonymous in the same way that an individual can.  The idea
of an escrow agency that retains its anonymity seems impractical to
me.

Hal