From: jim@bilbo.suite.com (Jim Miller)
Date: Sat, 20 Jan 1996 00:48:00 +0800
To: a-kurtb@microsoft.com
Subject: Re: underground digital economy
Message-ID: <9601180428.AA11604@bilbo.suite.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain




> Certainly. There are a couple of ways, but all one needs is
> some sort of  gateway to an e-cash
> 


This is the part that bothers me.  Wouldn't a gateway between anonymous  
e-money and identified e-money would stick out like a sore thumb to  
agencies tracking the flow of identified e-money?  Wouldn't identified  
e-money trails start and/or terminate at the gateway?  Once the gateway is  
discovered, all clients on the identified e-money side of the gateway  
would be discovered.

I think the gateway could only succeed if there was a way to perform the  
conversion anonymously.  But how do you anonymously generate/propagate  
identified e-money?

There is probably an obvious solution, but I'm not devious enough to see  
it.  One unstated assumption I have that may be confounding me is that I  
assume the identified e-money system will completely replace paper money,  
which will then be "discontinued".

Jim_Miller@suite.com