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Where is My Digital Cash?

Posted by Cliff on from the credit-cards-are-digital-enough-for-me dept.

LinuxTek asks: "Using the IBM commercial as a starting point (the one with the guy from DS9 asking about flying cars), I ask you, where is my digital cash? I remember a couple of years ago all the hype about digital money and several companies that were supposed to make a revolution in micropayment and 'secure' online purchase (i.e. anonymous). I remember Digicash as being one of the most promising companies, and I even remember downloading their digital wallet test app. It seems they went out of business and sold their patents to eCash, but now I can't even acces the eCash site. Does anyone know if there are other projects like this (still alive), and/or Open Source alternatives? Digital money should be a reality by now."

4 of 100 comments (clear)

  1. e-gold by Wonko42 · · Score: 5, Informative

    e-gold is still going strong. Just like in Cryptonomicon, only without quite so many stupendous badasses.

  2. Re:"digital money" per se is impossible by kurowski · · Score: 3, Informative

    What I mean is, having some magic string of bits that stands alone, with no link to a central server etc., and can be swapped around, will never happen. Because whatever those strings of bits are, they can be duplicated digitally.

    there are several solutions to this problem. see the work of David Chaum, Stefan Brands, and others.

  3. Wait 3 years by kurowski · · Score: 5, Informative

    Your digital cash will arrive in 2005, when an important David Chaum patent expires.

  4. Re:Oh really? by kurowski · · Score: 4, Informative
    Two: it's impossible. Impossible to do it and meet all of your criteria for anonymity and so on.

    see
    Chaum, D. Fiat, A. Naor, M., Untraceable electronic cash. (Springer-Verlag, Berlin, West Germany, p. 319-27, 1990)(Conference: Advances in Cryptology - CRYPTO '88. Proceedings, Santa Barbara, CA, USA, 21-25 Aug. 1988)

    (this is just the cardinal example- other people have come up with other ways of providing offline ,untraceable, anonymous electronic cash

    but you can't implement it till 2005:

    D. Chaum, "Cryptographic Identification, Financial Transaction, and Credential Device," US Pat #4,529,870, Jul. 16, 1985.