Re: bearer = anonymous = freedom to contract

[Ben Laurie <ben@algroup.co.uk>]

Robert Hettinga wrote:
> At 4:36 PM -0500 on 2/16/99, Ben Laurie wrote:
> > but I can't see any difference between these
> > boxes of yours and what Kawika calls a "bank".
> 
> Certainly, there's a financial difference, and so who owns those boxes is a
> material consideration.
> 
> In certain jurisdictions, anyway. :-).
> 
> Seriously, the box, or more properly the owner of the box, is of course, a
> financial intermediary. It owns assets on behalf of the certificate
> holders, who, in the case of cash, can redeem those certificates for the
> assets in question on demand. For this, the intermediary gets paid in fees
> (hopefully front-loaded, like traveller's checks, or merchants wouldn't
> accept them so readily) and interest on the reserve assets backing up the
> certificates outstanding.
> 
> The reserve assets, of course, are held by a trustee. A bank. Someday the
> trustt might not be an actual bank of deposit. But since this kind of thing
> could be done by a business like State Street Bank, who does this all the
> time for mutual fund companies like Fidelity (who we can't call a bank on
> this side of the pond, see jurisdiction joke, above), or, more properly, a
> bond underwriter like Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, who we still can't really
> call a bank even though we all know who Mr. Morgan's father was.
> 
> Frankly, I think that underwriters will operate more like the owners of
> those third-part ATM machines found in American convenience stores.
> Remember that the original digicash mint was a 486.
> 
> However, a MicroMint machine, say, would have to be big, and fast, and
> expensive, in order to generate all those hash collisions cheaply enough.
> Cryptographers even know how much this machine costs, already.
> 
> Any clearer?

No. You still seem to be saying the same thing: the only difference is
who owns the box.

OK, I've spent more time than I care to think about on planes and in
taxis today (hey, that's almost on-topic - I was consulting at a bank!
but not in their banking role, darn), and I'm several glasses of wine
into recovery. Perhaps I should sleep on this. OTOH, perhaps you can try
explaining again :-)

Cheers,

Ben.


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