Financial Anonymity and Privacy with DMT?

An anonymous reader asks: "I'll have to quote a fellow cypherpunk to give my question the correct framing: '...this is a time when the world needs these services more than ever. In crises there is a tendency for repressive governments to crack down on communications and free access to information. Lately the fear of terrorism has eroded many rights we took for granted. One of those rights, financial privacy and anonymity is disappearing fast, as the US takes steps to stop the movement of terrorist funds. There is a system out there that might help slow the erosion of rights: DMT. Might it be a solution to the erosion of financial privacy and anonymity?"

"DMT was launched a few years back:

'The Digital Monetary Trust is a computer system and mechanism that gives users the ability to hold assets anonymously, along with the ability to anonymously transfer these assets to other parties. You can think of a DMT customer account as an anonymously-held checking account (in which the customer is anonymous both to the bank and to other people), but one which allows the customer to write checks to third parties (and these third parties will also be anonymous to the bank and the outside world; in fact, you can even arrange for the receiver of your check to be anonymous to you also).'

Since then there has been very little public discussion about its security, anonymity, and use.

Has anyone used this system, or know of organizations that do? What magnitude of money flows in and out, and are there enough users to afford decent anonymity?"

Comments

Contridiction

[Rick the Red]

This will never catch on until it has the full backing and trust of the government, but since it allows total anonimity the government (any government) will never back it.

What good is it if your assets are locked into a system that can lose them without recourse? Who do you sue if the system wipes out your account? If people can't turn to the government for help in such situations, they won't use it. The government doesn't want people to use it, so they won't help. Hell, PayPal is only quasi-legal and on the edge of being shut down as it is -- what makes you think the government is going to allow DMT?

DMT Anonmity

[Anonymous Coward]

From reading the DMT docs, it seems that the number of uses would greatly affect the security and anonymity of the system.

Until a system like this is embraced by companies/people willing to take payment from DMT. All funds must be removed from the system before they can be utilized.

If the number of uses is small then monitoring of the network and of transfers in and out could provide enough information to link transactions to users.

I like the idea though, i can't wait till the day when true anonymous money is possible.