Re: Mark Twain Bank's DigiCash offer

Hal writes:
>  As far as I can tell there is no charge for moving funds between
>  your ecash wallet and the "mint" at the bank.  The charges are for
>  moving between the "mint" and the world access account.  If you
>  had a shop which was able to pay much of its expenditures in ecash
>  it sounds like there would be no percentage fee to the bank.

The gotcha being that as long as your money is in the "mint" it is not under  
FDIC protection...  Just how safe your cash is when it is in the mint is  
entirely related to the security of Mark Twain's systems, which are  
high-profile machines that will surely be subjected to many cracking  
attempts.  Some may prefer to keep complete control over their cash and store  
all of it themselves.  Unlike physical cash, this stuff can be split up,  
encrypted, and stored in multiple places, possibly offering more security  
than the Mark Twain "mint."


andrew

On Fri, 27 Oct 1995, Andrew Loewenstern wrote:
 
> The gotcha being that as long as your money is in the "mint" it is not under  
> FDIC protection...  Just how safe your cash is when it is in the mint is  
> entirely related to the security of Mark Twain's systems, which are  
> high-profile machines that will surely be subjected to many cracking  
> attempts.  Some may prefer to keep complete control over their cash and store  
> all of it themselves.  Unlike physical cash, this stuff can be split up,  
> encrypted, and stored in multiple places, possibly offering more security  
> than the Mark Twain "mint."

Unfortunately, it also expires (btw, how soon??):

----- 8< ----- quoted from http://www.marktwain.com/digifaq.html ---------
Once the money is on your hard drive, you can hold it (until expiration 
date - check this often), or spend it. 
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Enzo