[FYI] (Fwd) FC: Why we don't use digital cash

["Axel H Horns" <horns@ipjur.com>]

------- Forwarded message follows -------
Date sent:      	Thu, 14 Jun 2001 11:27:13 -0400
From:           	Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
To:             	politech@politechbot.com
Subject:        	FC: Why we don't use digital cash
Send reply to:  	declan@well.com

[Digital cash inventor David Chaum filed for his first patent in this
area on June 25, 1982. The suite begins to expire in 2002, with an
important patent expiring in 2005. Seems as though we'll have to wait
'til then to see truly anonymous digital cash. For now, we're stuck
with PayPal and credit cards. Sigh. --Declan]

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http://www.wired.com/news/ebiz/0,1272,44507,00.html

   Digging Those Digicash Blues
   By Declan McCullagh (declan@wired.com)
   2:00 a.m. June 14, 2001 PDT

   BALTIMORE -- For the last six years, Robert Hettinga has been
   agitating, begging and pleading for the world to listen to his
   ambitious plans for digital money.

   Like any savvy techno-evangelist, Hettinga coined a name for his
   idea -- digital bearer certificates -- and envisions a day when
   Internet users can withdraw electronic cash by simply typing in an
   ATM card number and their PIN.

   To bolster his campaign, Hettinga launched the Digital Commerce
   Society of Boston, co-founded the Financial Cryptography
   conference, and has become a fixture on mailing lists devoted to
   cryptography and security. DCSB has even birthed offspring: On
   Tuesday, Hettinga came to Baltimore to speak at the inaugural
   meeting of a new sister chapter.

   But six years, five Financial Cryptography conferences and
   thousands of e-mail missives later, Hettinga has been almost
   entirely unsuccessful in attracting serious interest in his ideas.

   His two-year-old Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation missed
   the ready capital of the online boom. It has attracted only
   $160,000 in funding, and has done about $100,000 of consulting work
   so far.

   "Quite frankly, the dot-com money has gone away," says Hettinga,
   42. "We're also running over ground that CyberCash, DigiCash and a
   lot of other people have burned."

   Incinerated would be closer to the truth. The electronic cash
   landscape is littered with the looted corpses of companies that
   tried and failed to compete with credit cards for online purchases.

   True digital cash that's as anonymous, as privacy-protected and as
   cheap as the humble greenback seems to be one of those technologies
   that pundits laud and technologists adore, but markets stubbornly
   fail to adopt.

   [...]




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