From: lethin@ai.mit.edu (Rich Lethin)
Date: Fri, 22 Sep 95 08:15:08 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: No Subject
Message-ID: <199509221511.LAA09778@grape-nuts.ai.mit.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



I just received the following email message:

   I just concluded a small number of trades whereby I purchased cb$ with US$
   at the rate of US$8 per cb$100. An obvious concern with ticker tapes is the
   loss of privacy. The truly paranoid should avoid even posting exchange
   rates, but even regular folks might want to avoid the details of each of
   their transactions.

I still think a ticker tape to ecm with concluded transactions and
bids taking place on the electronic cash market web pages is useful.

I don't want to spend time polling various exchanges.  The ticker tape
could also be used to do arbitrage between exchanges.

The names of the participants can be omitted to protect anonymity of
traders.  Besides, if the traders really want to protect anonymity
they'll be working through remailers or TCP tunnels.

The exchange SHOULD be listed on the ticker tape, so that people
wanting to trade can find the spot where they can make the trade.
This then serves as an advertising means for the exchanges which are
offering the best prices and volume, etc.

In any transaction one of the two parties will have wished they'd
known the market price, if the price of the transaction is not at the
market price.

This ignores the value of the reputation of the parties involved, etc.

So I propose that transactions and offers be sent to ecm in the
following form:

E=<number> US=<number> BUY-OFFER|SELL-OFFER|CONCLUDED DATE TIME serial# EUID=<exchange-uid>

which is more or less the original syntax for ecm, substituting the
exhange UID for the email address of the person making the offer.

As usual the syntax is optional, so you should feel free to append
other information as you'd like (expiration date, method of concluding
transaction, etc.)

---
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