From: hughes@ah.com (Eric Hughes)
Date: Wed, 10 Aug 94 07:42:54 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: e$
In-Reply-To: <4877@aiki.demon.co.uk>
Message-ID: <9408101414.AA24954@ah.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


   Yes.  But my initial point was that a check for $1.00 does not constitute
   an alternative currency and you do not seem to be disagreeing with this.

Merely the fact that an instrument is denominated in USA dollars is
irrelevant to legality.  What I was saying is that there are other
activities that would be the ones ruled illegal.

   I think that whether
   the $5000 is transferred as greenbacks or as $e is irrelevant, if the
   creation of $e is handled correctly.

Irrelevant to whom?  As long as it's _not_ irrelevant to the
government, it will be irrelevant to very few other parties.

   >				   A company engaged in the business of
   > issuing such notes [etc.]

To clarify, I'm talking about a digital money company here, and since
USA regulation is what is at issue, I'm talking about a USA digital
money company.

   Every bank in the United States that allows checks to be made out to
   cash already does this.

The one-at-a-time has never been an issue.  And it's not banks that
"allow" this, it's the Uniform Commercial Code.  

   A second point, relating to this paragraph: obviously, a foreign bank
   cannot be constrained in the same way to report financial transactions
   to US authorities.

Well, this is just what I've been talking about for some time.  It's
clearly possible to have the issuer in another country.

Eric