From: jeff@Molasar.BlackMagic.Com (Jeff Humphrey (KSC))
Date: Sat, 23 Mar 1996 17:10:59 +0800
To: ecash@digicash.com
Subject: e$'s (mini-rant)
Message-ID: <199603230546.AAA14968@Molasar.blackmagic.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



  <begin mini-rant>

                 The Internet Economy Must Be Grass Roots

                    (or, why can't we mint coins YET ?)


  Just a few thoughts.

  Being a small business, here are some of the things we THOUGHT we'd be
  able to do by now with anonymously transferable digital tokens (e$'s)
  that I'm amazed we still can't do.

  1) Issue tokens backed by services our site offers, or the services of
     our consultants, etc.

     Obviously, this isn't intended for general use (though we certainly
     wouldn't care if the currency was traded to organizations who would
     accept it for it's value)- it's intended to be traded with those
     people on the net that we do business with on a regular basis, rather
     like a ledger system, but slightly different (Even an online system
     that wasn't anonymous, a ledger, would be better than what's out
     there right now, which is NOTHING).

  2) Run our own mint- obviously, it's to our advantage to run the mint,
     we want to make sure it's secure, it's responsible for keeping value
     in OUR COINS, something of great importance to our reputation.

     Businesses want to issue all kinds of currencies- state currency is
     only ONE FORM of value.  We want to mint coins and distribute them
     freely in some cases, to advertise our services, to attract new
     customers, etc.  We want to mint "coupons" that have the same effect.
     We want to mint coins that are actually licenses for use of products
     that we want to distribute, licenses people can TRADE, licenses that
     hold their value past site-by-site use.  We want to be able to issue
     coins that we can optionally expire, optionally have anonimity, and
     optionally can or can't be transferred (some uses of these token
     systems are not served well by anonimity or by transferability). The
     possibilities are only endless if there is a transport, if there is
     a mechanism.  Not in theory, but in PRACTICE.

  When I played with the Magic Money software, my only thought was "YES!"
  but then it "went away" ?  It went away because it was difficult to
  use, which I'm sure would have been resolved (obviously, it would have
  needed extensions for network transport with email transport as an
  option but not a necessity).  It went away because the inventor of the
  original scheme holds the patents (which I have no problem with,
  obviously, but aren't there any competeing ideas ?  or does the inventor
  plan to "let" us mint our own currencies in the future ?).

  That this mechanism is being restricted to some "higher purpose" of a
  universal cash system, beginning (and ending I suspect) with backing
  by state currency makes me down right mad.  There are a million and
  one uses for this mechanism that nobody has even THOUGHT OF yet, and
  there are plenty that people HAVE thought of- but the mechanism isn't
  available to the public, it's being used instead in a very narrow way.
  And in my Not So humble opinion, the way to Internet Economy isn't
  from the top anyway, it's from the people who provide the value in the
  first place, it's from the businesses who desperately want to get 
  moving but feel their hands are tied.

  I have communicated with every author of "e$" type systems that I know
  of, and they all had very big plans for their systems, were all looking
  for sponsorship and talking to banks, and everyone of them completely
  FAILED to even ANSWER email from me when I asked when we could use
  their mechanisms for minting our own currencies and running our own
  mints on the Internet (I take that back, one of them answered, they
  just said, in a word, "no").  And I find that ANNOYING, mostly because
  it's just putting things off-- years now and we're not much closer to
  "Internet Economy" than we were when we started.

  It's gotta be grass roots, it's gotta be free (or cheap), and most
  importantly, it's gotta be SOON.

  History has show in endless repetition, that the only standards on the
  Internet are free standards.  The Web would have never taken off if
  both the thing that "lets the user access the system" (the client) and
  the thing that "allows distribution of content" (the server) hadn't
  been available freely-- and the mint software in any of the proposed
  token systems are just that, content distributing servers.  Every single
  person on this planet is a business.  All good things start with the
  individuals (especially on the net, as we've seen OVER and OVER).

  The world is full of things that were "good", but were too propietary,
  they fill the backrooms of many a code shop.  In the words of a very
  common-sensical post I saw just a few days ago,

   "... because of a Betamax attitude, I'll follow the market to VHS."

  The only thing lacking right now is a VHS to follow, but beware, the
  need is so high, there will be one ...

  In short, give us the mechanism!  Once it's available, sit back and
  watch the net soar ... just like it always does ...

  The most recent application of this type of mechanism that I saw, or at
  least it could have been an application for it if there WAS a mechanism,
  was a group of organizations that wanted to trade certain types of
  information among themselves-- they wanted it to be based on merit, that
  is, those individuals/organizations who PROVIDE data also GET data from
  the system.  It was a perfectly contained closed economy that desperately
  needed a token system as it's heart, but alas, there wasn't one.

  Trying to remain patient.

  <end mini-rant>

  Woowoo!  Spring is here! :)

  Jeff.


-- 
Simply Be.