From: hughes@ah.com (Eric Hughes)
Date: Sat, 6 Aug 94 18:10:13 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: e$: Cypherpunks Sell Concepts
In-Reply-To: <199408062229.SAA24471@zork.tiac.net>
Message-ID: <9408070041.AA17335@ah.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


   I'll bite. I think that practically the only thing holding digital cash
   back at this point is pure and simple hucksterism. 

It certainly needs that, but I don't think it's sufficient.

   Having heard what Eric has said about potential regulatory problems, I
   think that most of them are inadvertant obstacles, because they certainly
   weren't put there to obstruct e$, which didn't exist when they were
   written.

The obstacles are certainly not for electronic money, which the Fed's
been using for some time now, but rather for electronic cash, which
includes anonymity.  The USA provides a fair amount of financial
privacy to everyone but the government, particularly law enforcement.
So the _business_ case for privacy is largely felt to be already
satisfied by the regulators.

   I think if a reasonable (i.e. not illegal) business case were put
   to the regulators, they would (as usual) conform to whatever business
   interests want.

The Treasury department, among others, really _doesn't_ want
non-recorded transactions.  Unless the banking community as a united
front _does_, I don't think it will happen domestically (USA) before
other deployments.  If there's not a united front, it'll be divide and
conquer.

Eric