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Where is My Digital Cash?
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."
e-gold is still going strong. Just like in Cryptonomicon, only without quite so many stupendous badasses.
We could all just email IOU's to eachother...
Oh! Ooh!
Please send royalty payments via check or money order to...
Where is My Digital Cash?
It got stolen by hackers. Sorry.
I ask you, where is my digital cash?
REQUEST FOR URGENT BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP
FIRST, I MUST SOLICIT YOUR STRICTEST CONFIDENCE IN THIS TRANSACTION. THIS IS BY VIRTUE OF ITS NATURE AS BEING UTTERLY CONFIDENTIAL AND 'TOP SECRET'. I AM SURE AND HAVE CONFIDENCE OF YOUR ABILITY AND RELIABILITY TO PROSECUTE A TRANSACTION OF THIS GREAT MAGNITUDE INVOLVING A PENDING TRANSACTION REQUIRING MAXIIMUM CONFIDENCE.
IN MY COUNTRY, I AM THE FORMER MINISTER OF DIGITAL CASH, A CHANGE IN GOVERNMENTS HAS LEFT US WITH 30 GIGABYTES (GB) OF eCASH. IF YOU ARE WILLING TO ASSIST US IN DOWNLOAD IT, I WILL GIVE YOU 10% (3 GB) OF eCASH.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT MY BROTHER IN-LAW MR. BELLO ABACHA IMMEDIATELY ON TELEPHONE NUMBER 234-1-7591526 OR FAX NUMBER 234-1-759O845 WHO WILL INFORM YOU PROPERLY ON THE PROCEDURES FOR EXECUTION . PLEASE, BE INFORMED THAT THIS PROPOSAL IS 100% RISK FREE. HOWEVER, THE CONFIDENTIALITY OF THIS PROPOSAL IS VERY IMPORTANT.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Easy, hassle-free micropayments ( $.05) would be an incredible boon to web publishers by providing a viable business plan to supplement/replace advertisements. Anyone creating any sort of content (games, stories, news, music) to be distributed online could benefit, but not many consumers could be bothered (or really willing/trusting enough) to keep CC numbers on file with scores of different content providers. A central, trusted source is needed for this to take off - a "content escrow" that takes the money and content, then passes them both along when they're both received. It seems like PayPal, AOL, or Microsoft Passport could roll out something like this with very little trouble. AOL already has scores of CC#'s on file as well as content, but can't really afford to antagonzie their users with micropayments, when they're starting to wise up that there are much better ISPs around.
For great justice.
What does this digital money do that my regular money doesn't?
Excellent question. Banks are considered safe because they're insured by the FDIC, and because they've got a really good track record. Not to mention that it's just empirically hard to rob a bank. Credit, usually being an extension of a bank, is also very secure. People have problems with their credit accounts all the time, but that's nothing new, and there are well-established procedures for working out those problems.
I have a couple of cards in my wallet, and with them I can buy just about any product or service in real life, over the phone, or on the Internet. For managing my actual physical money, I log on to my bank's web site. As far as I'm concerned, "digital cash" is here.
I write in my journal
Where were you and you when I had mod points two days ago? Folks, if you don't even know what digital money is, don't bother posting your ill-informed opinions!
:)
The problem to date, dear Ask Slashdotter, is that no digital money company has been able to get their heads out of their technology centered asses and talk to their customers. They would rather put together a presentation that talks about public key cryptography and e-wallets, than actually talk about the benefits to the consumer. PayPal is leading the way because they 1) didn't create a new currency and 2) worked with a paradigm that everyone understands: bank accounts.
What should happen now is that digital money companies should create a product that uses cryptography and all those groovy things and links into systems like PayPal. When digital money companies start talking about what the customer gets out of it, then we'll get somewhere.
On a similar note, what does the customer get out of a flying car?
How we know is more important than what we know.
What does this digital money do that my regular money doesn't?
If you're comparing digital cash to online credit card transactions, then the difference is that digital cash is anonymous and irrepudiable.
If you're comparing digital cash to cold cash, then the difference is that cold cash requires you to be in the same meatspace as the other transactee. Whereas digital cash can be spent online over the net, or offline face to face.
I have a couple of cards in my wallet, and with them I can buy just about any product or service in real life, over the phone, or on the Internet. ... As far as I'm concerned, "digital cash" is here.
Can you use them to buy something that costs $0.05? How about something that costs $500,000?
Can you use them anonymously?
Credit cards are great if you're buying medium priced stuff from large businesses and you don't mind the world knowing about it. They suck for micropayments, for macropayments, for purchases from small businesses, and for purchases that are "outside the norm".
I have paper cash in my wallet. It is lightweight, accepted everywhere and there are no fees or auditing associated with it.
Accepted everywhere? Ever tried using it online?
With eCash, I'll invariably be paying fees for using my money
You don't pay fees for regular cash because the government runs it- you pay taxes in order to use regular cash. You could theoretically use privately issued cold cash and pay fees to use it. You could likewise theoretically use government issued digital cash and pay taxes instead.
and whomever is running the system & the government will be able to track or audit my activity.
there is such a thing as anonymous digital cash. that's why it's called "digital cash" and not "digital credit".
If you don't want to carry cash, call American Express and get a credit or charge card.
I like carrying cash, and use it for as many offline transactions as possible. It just doesn't work so well online.
I want my flying car!!! I can pay cash.
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
I have paper cash in my wallet. It is lightweight, accepted everywhere and there are no fees or auditing associated with it.
Online commerce isn't a new thing... for many years people have been transacting business from afar. The transmission protocol was called postal mail and the payment method was a draft or money order.
Online commerce only differs in it's speed.
You don't pay fees for regular cash because the government runs it- you pay taxes in order to use regular cash
Money isn't run by the government. The Federal Reserve System, a consortium of banks, is the issuer of the US dollar. The dollar is in turn backed by the faith and credit of the United States government. (Most nations have a similar scheme, or base their currency on the value of the US dollar)
You can use private currency, but nobody is obligated to accept this as payment. This is why Nordstrom will not accept a Macy's gift certificate. On the US dollar, you'll see the words "THIS NOTE IS LEGAL TENDER FOR ALL DEBTS, PUBLIC AND PRIVATE". If someone refuses to accept US currency to settle a debt in the US, the courts would discharge the debt.
Anonymous digital cash involves complex schemes of purchasing gold or some other commodity and then getting other people to use the private currency. The problem with anonymous eCash is the extremely high transaction costs (you basically pay $1.00 for $0.80). You money is also subject to rapid shifts in value as commodity prices change. Also, no eCash scheme is safe from a court subpeona.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Niven wrote an essay once called, "Yet Another Modest Proposal." It's collected in one or another of his books; I believe it's in my copy of All the Myriad Ways. In it, he pitched the idea of putting US currency on the uranium standard. Coins would be made of actual radioactive uranium, in concentrations proportional to their value.
The benefits would be legion. Counterfeiting would become a crime of the past, because anybody with a Geiger counter could tell if your scratch was genuine. And what better way to keep the economy going than to encourage the circulation of money?
Lends a whole new meaning to the phrase, "burning a hole in your pocket."
I write in my journal
I disagree. If this scheme would work, someone would have implemented it already.
The problem with micropayments is the "micro" part.
If information is available for $0.05, the chance are that it isn't very important or valuable. Nobody wants to deal with the hassles of paying for content on a piece by piece basis.
You can sell valuable information. Many people pay $30/month to read the Wall Street Journal online. Others pay $5,000 a year to IBM to get support information for software or hardware.
$0.05 donations are even more ludicrous. Who is going to go through the hassle of setting up an account to voluntarily give some random person $0.05? Answer: Not enough to make it worthwhile.
Things like the Kuro5hin or Public Radio pledge campaign do work. The person in the next cubicle at work gave them $50 because they simply love the discussion there.
If a web publisher doesn't have a big enough community to support a pledge drive, then he either needs to swallow the costs, merge with someone or cease to exist.
Ever since the printing press came on the scene, small publishers have had it tough. The internet is certainly makes it cheaper to reach an audience and publish content, it doesn't eliminate costs. So small publishers will continue to fold when they cannot accept additional publishing costs.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Governments would love to tax these small, currently impractical to keep "on the books" transactions. What they will call digital cash will in reality be an EFT system in which every transaction is rigorously tracked, and will eventually supplant currency, making it impossible to opt out, save for barter.
Call (206) 338-5780 COLLECT for information about a genuine BA, BS, MA, MS, MBA, or Ph.D.
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.
Your digital cash will arrive in 2005, when an important David Chaum patent expires.
Nope. I did get the citation wrong, though. It's not included in All the Myriad Ways; it's in Limits. And it actually carries a subtitle: "Yet Another Modest Proposal: The Roentgen Standard."
It's unfortunately not available on the web, but Larry has given his permission for "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex" to be published here. It's great. And where else can you find the unforgettable passage, "But with kryptonian muscles behind it, Kal-El's semen would emerge with the muzzle velocity of a machine gun bullet."
I write in my journal
I used to work for a company who designed vending machines, and they were involved in the Mondex scheme.
This was a really exciting idea:
i) Cash was to be carried on smart cards the same size as credit cards. Cash could be moved from the user's bank account to the card, or between individuals, by a range of technologies.
ii) Users would have a wallet, which was a small electronic device, just larger than the card. This let the users view how much cash their card had on it, and also had a simple calculator (doubling as a method of authenticating the owner of the card) with currency conversion built in.
iii) Payments could be made at point of sale by handing the card over and entering a PIN to authorise the cash transaction.
iv) Payments could be made remotely via telephone (this was all pre-WWW) by using special home telephones that had card readers built in. Again, payment authorisation was by PIN.
v) The name and other details of the owner of a particular card were encoded on it, so that lost cards could be returned to banks for sending back to the owners. People who found cards could not use the cash stored on it, or see how much cash was stored on it, and would be given a small reward for returning lost cards.
The scheme was trialled in a reasonably large UK town. Supermarkets and other stores etc. were set up with the infrastructure, people were given cards, wallets and telephones, and instructed to go about their business as normal, but using the digital cash.
Unfortunately, the scheme did not work. People did not understand the central concept behind the idea: Cash is an abstract idea -- it isn't really the coins and bank notes that we pass around -- these are just tokens, and electronic tokens could be used instead. The people of the town thought these cards were just credit cards and didn't understand the fundamental difference.
It is a real shame, as the idea was quite elegant in my opinion, and would have made for a much more secure, interoperable, convenient, private and manageable currency system.
I guess it is the average person's poor education and lack of deep thought about everyday things that scuppers such ideas. As technologists we can think up some truly wonderful, grounbreaking ideas, but in the end we need to convince the regular public about these ideas. But often, the everyday public don't really want to have to think.
"The noble art of losing face will one day save the human race"---Hans Blix
see
(this is just the cardinal example- other people have come up with other ways of providing offline
but you can't implement it till 2005: