Re: Starting an e-cash bank

At 12:41 1/4/96, Scott Brickner wrote:

>Wait a minute.  I can see how one needn't be a bank to convert ecash
>into pcash, but going the other way requires that the cash be
>transferrable in ways that Digicash isn't.
>
>If I withdraw ecash from the bank, it's marked so I'm the one who's
>identified if it's double-spent.  If I give the cash to someone else
>(different from paying it to them, which requires they have an account)
>they're free to double-spend with (relative) impugnity.

Present day Ecash is bases on online clearing. I does not encode any user
idendifiying information into the coin. You are thinking of offline Ecash.
Besides, wherer users get the Ecash from, be it by putting money into their
account at MT or buying it from you doesn't matter. They still need an
account with MT.

-- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com>
   PGP encrypted mail preferred.

In article <v02120d1fad11eb9da339@[192.0.2.1]>,
Lucky Green <shamrock@netcom.com> wrote:
>Besides, wherer users get the Ecash from, be it by putting money into their
>account at MT or buying it from you doesn't matter. They still need an
>account with MT.

Huh?  Why?  If I'm an ecash seller, I take a customer's paper money,
withdraw ecash from _my_ MT account, give the ecash to the customer
(_not_ a payment: I just give him the coin -- the pair (n,f(n)^(1/h)))
and the customer is free to use it at will.  It's Digicash's slogan:
the numbers _are_ the money.

   - Ian

On 5 Jan 1996, Ian Goldberg wrote:

> Huh?  Why?  If I'm an ecash seller, I take a customer's paper money,
> withdraw ecash from _my_ MT account, give the ecash to the customer
> (_not_ a payment: I just give him the coin -- the pair (n,f(n)^(1/h)))
> and the customer is free to use it at will.  It's Digicash's slogan:
> the numbers _are_ the money.

But you're not issuing ecash, you're just exchanging it.  Do the
blackmarket money changers of many countries issue cash?  No, the
governments do that.  The governments may outlaw the practice, but its
still done coz of the government's inneffiencies. 

But MT is the issuer, they actually create the money from your original
deposits.  They can't issue ecash without user deposits. 

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