From: paul@poboy.b17c.ingr.com (Paul Robichaux)
Date: Thu, 1 Dec 94 14:02:42 PST
To: mccoy@io.com (Jim McCoy)
Subject: Re: Brands excluded from digicash beta
In-Reply-To: <199412012151.PAA07927@pentagon.io.com>
Message-ID: <199412012201.AA08104@poboy.b17c.ingr.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

> paul@poboy.b17c.ingr.com (Paul Robichaux) writes:
> [digicash stuff...]
> At some point I am going to have to take a look at my NDA with Digicash
> again and see how much I can say about the reality of some of these
> things... 

I've asked them to say something. The best I could get out of Paul
Dineissen is that they're talking with banks. Well, duh. The _present_
reality is that I can sell things ** and get paid ** if I use First
Virtual, but not if I use ecash.

> >
> > As others have pointed out,
> > network bandwidth and processing CPU are cheap enough to allow
> > multiple banks to communicate cleanly. Real banks already understand
> > how to do this.

> Wanna bet?  You should get into a clearing discussion with Eric sometime (I
> think that the clearing issue must be one of his favorite things in the
> world as he has so much to say about it :)  Clearing is not only
> non-trivial, it can be downright ugly.  A small system is not incredibly
> difficult to set up, but a nationwide or global system would be something
> that would give scores of engineers and designers nightmares for years to
> come.  Things are easy when you talk about your $50 Visa purchase or check,
> but when you start to deal with clearing big aggregate sums through banks
> things get real nasty very quickly.

Why clear big aggregate sums? Why not just clear smaller ones? Hell,
why not use a forwarding engine that just says "this cash came from
bank X" and sends it along?

I'm sure that the design of a robust, usable system is nontrivial, and
I don't mean to imply that it is. I just don't believe that a tool the
size of Fedwire and the existing bank architectures are, or will be, required.

- -Paul

- -- 
Paul Robichaux, KD4JZG       | Good software engineering doesn't reduce the 
perobich@ingr.com            | amount of work you put into a product; it just 
Not speaking for Intergraph. | redistributes it differently.
		  ### http://www.intergraph.com ###

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: 2.6.2

iQCVAwUBLt5Hxqfb4pLe9tolAQGA0gQAgd8BcSVu199NjEx3uMq4/ZrtaRA34z/g
X/VOMOIfUOuftj2wIiF5iVM5CMOoxMUz4J3gPESIOjZnVEtDUsfsD5aCtTuJW+39
Dmmjkm1nlTynDag7A0tsW39AfqGCpWy4gqcgwhHrvUvKt2Tts/XkvFwkT/wjLM0f
3reNbfPMSZY=
=y4mZ
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----