[Webfunds-users] it works!

Sun Sep 5 15:18:28 1999

On Sun, 5 Sep 1999, Ian Grigg wrote:

> > How centralized is it?
> 
> The issuer is a single server, so I guess that qualifies
> as centralised.  WebFunds is capable of talking to any
> number of issuers, so the financial system as a whole is
> not centralised.  There is another issuer being run somewhere,
> and when we get a contract out of it, we'll probably shove
> that in the distribution (this will be a play contract, not
> a for-value one).

You say that the balance is not stored, but that transactions are stored,
and then totalled to find the balance.  But sometime you have to calculate
a balance, otherwise you must store every transaction since the beginning
of time.  Do completed transactions "go away"?

When I receive digigold, and then write more digigold using only part of
the amount I have received, it seems like I should also get another "SOX
MESSAGE" making up the remainder.  The server then only serves to make
change between digigold.  But it doesn't work that way.  How does it work?

If I erase my installation of the software (and private keys), is some
digigold lost?  What repurcussions are there if digigold in circulation is
erased like this?

If I don't copy the SOX MESSAGE out of the Pay window when it is made, is
that also lost (I know, I can just write another one, so this may not
matter)?

> > Is it possible to operate in disconnected
> > mode?  I mean, I can write digigold even if I don't have enough, by just
> > saying OK to the warning that I might be overdrawn.  Can I do this without
> > being connected to the Internet?
> 
> You can write payments without being disconnected, but I've
> not tried it with the current WebFunds.

I assume you made a typo and meant I can write payments without being
connected.

> > What patents?
> 
> The infamous blinding patents are held by a company in
> Canada somewhere.  These formulas allow you to sign something
> without seeing the contents, so the mint (what we call the
> issuer) can then sign a payment, deduct the value, and the
> client can unblind the signature to reveal a valid signed
> payment that the mint has never seen.
> 
> There are (many) alternatives, and the method used by Ricardo
> is one.  I won't list the alternatives, because apparently,
> most of the world doesn't see it, so it becomes valuable IP
> assuming they work of course :)

http://www.ecashtechnologies.com/ claims (on their main page) to own the
patent now.

> > In the digigold contract, it says that digigold is backed by 25% e-gold,
> > and the rest can be "interest-bearing securities."  Why?
> 
> The precise makeup of the contract is outside my ambit, you'll
> notice that Systemics or myself don't promise anything in there
> (except to keep the accounting safe).
> 
> In the case of DigiGold, the legal issuers have decided that
> in order to pay for the costs of running a currency, they will
> place some proportion of the value where it earns interest.  This
> is in complete contrast to e-gold, where the metal sits there and
> costs.
> 
> You will probably notice from your transactions, that each one
> cost nothing.  There are no fees in the DigiGold currency.  So
> somewhere along the line there has to be enough money to pay
> for the servers and the lawyer's time and all the other costs.
> By sticking some of the float into securities, this is how the
> company DigiGold.net decided how to pay for it.  There are of
> course other possibilities.

How is digigold any different from loaning out e-gold at 0% interest,
digigold being the IOU?  Doesn't that make digigold a debt instrument
(note)?  It wouldn't then be a far stretch for someone to release
interest-bearing digigold, and then the e-gold you used to buy digigold
could be called a deposit.  

I should be addressing this to the issuers, but I was kind of assuming
they were on this list.

David Manifold <dem@tunes.org>
This message is placed in the public domain.