On Mon, 6 Mar 2000, R. A. Hettinga wrote:
> At 6:44 PM -0800 on 3/6/00, bram wrote:
>
> > Why aren't the banks lobbying heavily to get rid of those laws so they can
> > save money? Or do they appreciate the increased barriers to entry to their
> > industry?
>
> Yes, and yes. :-).
>
> Remember what Milton Friedman said, regulations only benefit the regulated,
> rarely the consumer.
>
> The only way to really change the rules is to pull the rug out from under
> them. Crypto helps. :-).
I'm going to use this to segue into a issue that is perhaps more than
peripheraly related...
It is related to the concept of private money.
The other nite I had the tv on and saw an add where Liberia was minting
$10 JFK Jr. memorial coins and they were selling them for $10 US. Now of
course this doesn't mean you can walk into your local convenience store
and buy some smokes and a six pack. But since one is buying it for
collectibility there isn't an issue. Apparently there were only a few
thousand made.
This implies that the coins are relatively cheap for Liberia to mint and
back. It certainly didn't cost $10 to mint the silver coin.
Has anyone looked at doing something like this to back a digital
certificate? It would seem to nicely side-step many of the money
laundering issues that crop up.
Something like purchase a $10 Bob Marley commemorative from Belize. The
actual coin stays on account in the bank. A digital certificate is issued
to represent that $10 investment. You purchase it with $10 US (there's an
inflation rate since they're currently about 2::1). You could then use
that certificate to build 'ownership contracts' on that certificate. In
other words you need $5 for a used CD. The CD vendor says he'll take the
amount as part owner of the certificate. There are even issues of
seignorage with respect to re-sale value.
____________________________________________________________________
The future is downloading. Can you hear the impact?
O[rphan] D[rift>]
Cyber Positive
The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate
Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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