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Yeah, right. Tell that to Digicash and others who failed miserably as attempts to introduce "electronic cash". Their old site isn't even responding anymore. Anyone remember Mojo Nation? Look what's hosted there now (no, I didn't mis-type that, it redirects there... try typing the URL yourself to see).

These are two high profile companies that come to mind right away. It's pretty clear by this point that digital cash and micropayments have been a miserable failure. A lot can be said about what went wrong and why, but the ultimate unescapable conclusion is that a digital cash system with micropayment-level transactions is anything but a simple solution.

So you're sending your credit card details to an anonymising service. How long will you stay anonymous?

Exactly why we need government backed (so it's accepted) digital cash (a.k.a. e-cash) (cash so it's anonymous).

Any bets how soon that will happen, post 9-11?

(Yes, I am aware of the downside.)

There's a company : eCash Technologies Inc having a viable solution for micropayment, but I don't think it will become a standard before all patent claims on this are lifted (a cryptographer, David Chaum owns most of the patents on digital cash), like RSA usage took off when we approached the end of the patent and explodes now.

Another technology that won't took off before patents expire...

See also http://www.aci.net/kalliste/dcguide.htm.

Well, this happened in the past to DigiCash as many of you might remember. The point there was not that the company was really out of money, the point was to get rid of Dr. David Chaum. Look here for details. Today eCash Technologies is a successful company with continuing support from the PREVIOUS Investors (the ones that pulled the plug). So, I do not think that this is the end for Loki. If they focus on their successful business and have patient Investors PLUS MANY customers. But that shouldn't be a problem, should it?

Hey - you just invented David Chaum's DigiCash. I knew it was a good idea.

And the refund idea merits a lot more thought... if I've understood #6 correctly. (Non habeo Latineramumble)

So I could say scan the card into a computer terminal and buy/sell with the money I have on the card and build something similar to a trust rating (karma points) based on the id I had on the card but there'd be no way to track my identity back to who I was irl from that card even if I had done business with you in person.

This type of scenario would call for something known as anonymous digital cash. The protocol that allows for authenticated but untraceable messages is somewhat complicated, but it is nicely outlined in Applied Cryptography by Bruce Schneier in section 6.4. Those wishing to explore this can start here. A couple of interesting things to note about Digital Cash:

1. It would be possible to commit the perfect crime with such a tool. Truly untraceable money???

2. A Dutch company, DigiCash, owns most of the digital cash patents and has implemented digital cash protocols in working products.

3. Elizabeth Hurley is HOT. OK -that's off topic, but I just saw the remake of Bedazzled, and wow!

It's *really* *easy* to come up with really bad protocols for this sort of thing. I didn't see anything on their site except "we use 128-bit encryption" and "our server is behind a firewall". Neither of these give me a warm fuzzy feeling.

David Chaum's "Digicash" has all of the nifty features that you'd want with digital cash/micropayments/whatever you want to call it -- security, anonymity, non-duplicatibility, non-repudiation, and so forth. Unfortunately, Digicash went bankrupt. Not surprising, given that the only US agent charged 5% to put money into an account and %5 to take money out.

I suspect that there was Government pressure here. After all, the vast majority of folks out there are drug dealing, embassy bombing, money laundering, MP3 downloading child pornographers who have to be watched every minute.

Lay you odds that the PayPal computers have a complete, detailed record of who sent what to who, accessible by a single phone call by an "authorized law enforcement agent".

DigiCash was founded in 1990 by cryptologist David Chaum (site apparently not updated in recent years...) who owned the two (three?) major patents covering completely anonymized digital cash. To my knowledge it still isn't certain whether it's possible to create a truly anonymous digital money scheme without violating these patents.

Like you said, David is a great mathematician, and an even greater evangelist/idealist (i once attended a lecture of his on cryptology protocols which he turned into a sort of political rally). But he wasn't an unqualified succes as a bussinessman (ahem). Due to various mismanagement problems Digicash went broke in 1998. About a year ago, all Digicash IP (including the patents, source code and the url) was bought out of the brankcupty by startup eCash Technologies inc., located in Seattle.

Though superficially somewhat similar to something like PayPal, this system, should it become viable, will have a far wider impact. Truly anonymous digital cash with a high solvability is something that will strike fear into the heart of every government economist on the planet. Should it ever become implemented, it will change the nature of the internet, and society itself won't escaped unharmed either.

That being said, they don't appear to have made much progress yet in securing deals with major financial institutions, which will probably be a neccesity to make it a success.

Go here for a good list of ecash related links.

David Chaum's ideas can be used to prevent the state from proving a ballot is mine... but since I know my own "blinding" factor (at least for a while, even if the software immediately discards it) I can prove how I voted. I suspect all cryptographic protocols will have the same problem.

I'm not a cryptographic expert, but I worked at DigiCash for a while (founded by David Chaum). One of the cryptographers there was Berry Schoenmakers. He either invented a new voting protocol or extended David's ideas - unfortunately I can't recall which. Check out DigiCash voting protocols for further details. I don't think your assertion is correct, but we'd really need Berry to provide an authoritative answer.

I also believe Berry's implementation was trialled in a recent Dutch election, but I don't have any corroboration.

Outside of the question about cryptographic protocols, this also suggests that any off-site voting, with the possible exception of official "floating" precincts which visit the invalid, may be unconstitutional. With electronic ballots it is certainly within the realm of possibility that some organizations will have "election parties" with incredible social pressure for everyone to publicly vote in the "correct" manner.

If this gets to be a problem, then laws will be written to prevent this behaviour. Current law has never had to deal with this issue. Saying that we should not use the technology because the law hadn't anticipated a potential abuse is not very useful - most technologies in common use today had the same property at their time of introduction. Update the laws - don't ban innovation.

On a personal level, one can always vote _before_ heading to the mandatory voting party. If your vote is already cast, any further attempt to cast a (socially coerced) vote will fail.

Reading stories like this makes me sad that technologies such as eCash -- the convenience of electronic exchange with the anonymity of hard currency -- seem to be having a hard time catching on. I regret not buying any eCash while there was still a U.S.-based bank working with it.