I had heard of eCache, but not uKash. (URL?)
URL is http://www.ukash.com/global/en/home.aspxSmart Voucher Limited. (of which Ukash is a trading name) is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority in the United Kingdom as an electronic money institution. This regulation has been passported to all other countries in which Smart Voucher Ltd operates, with approval from the relevant local regulator. Smart Voucher Ltd (trading as Ukash) FSA register number: 900007, Company Number 4202050 registered in England & Wales at 5-7 Tanner Street, London, SE1 3LE, UK |
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fellowtraveler and markm, thanks for putting some time to address my questions. How is it possible to return the cash notes anonymously to the user? ANSWER: Over an anonymous network. How is it possible that the note itself cannot be traced as it is spent? ANSWER: Using blind signatures. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_Signatures As end result for the user, how is that different to using eCash anonymous banking operating through interfaces in the Tor network or using uKash (Smart Voucher Ltd)? |
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Me, molecular and Mitchell (worldly) weighed up the various options for the location of the next conference. Me arguing for London, and molecular for Berlin. What about Munich? |
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I hope you are. Can you please help me understand? I've read the original paper by Chaum, David (1983). "Blind signatures for untraceable payments" - http://www.hit.bme.hu/~buttyan/courses/BMEVIHIM219/2009/Chaum.BlindSigForPayment.1982.PDFAn example payment transaction in 13 steps is described on page 4 where blind signature usage is illustrated. The actors are a bank, a payer, and a payee. 1. In step (4) - Bank returns the signed note c'(c(x)), to payer. And there is a clarification after transaction is done - "the bank does not know which payer the note was originally issued to in step (4)". How is that possible to return something to somebody without knowing who he is? 2. There is a note prior to this example "The critical concept is that the bank will sign anything with its private key, but anything so signed is worth a fixed amount, say $1." This is pretty much in line with the carbon paper lined envelopes voting example where this concept is derived from - 1 vote 1 transaction. But what if payment transaction amounts to, say $12.36 or $0.84? 3. To best of my knowledge there is no bank in the world currently offering blind signature payment transactions to their customers. Why do banks stick to "know everything about every transaction" practice about 30 years after blind signature concept was introduced by David Chaum? |
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This is why Voucher-Safe is cash-only: because it enables the issuer to audit the receipts, but maintains full-anonymity and untraceability. I don't get this. On the one hand they state their design goals is "Payments must be irrevocable and untraceable. It must be physically impossible for any component, even the VP (voucher publisher), to provide a transaction history for any user", and on the other hand all operations (validate, merge, split) require that the VSC (the client) supply the VP with a "Voucher Request" where new serial numbers are assigned to replacement vouchers. Looks like a contradiction to me. I meant, in the long run, a centralized system that competes with the financial monopoly in place cannot survive in our current political and legal context.
Once Open Transactions grows to the point of threatening the advantages of the financial mob, it will be shutdown for any reason (non respect of KYC, AML,...) I have to agree. Centralized = Doomed. The entire legal framework (incl. voucher-related) can be changed in a day if financial interests of such magnitude are threatened. |
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If you want to argue that bitcoin is not money, I suggest you focus on the following:
- it is not issued by any central monetary authority.
- it is accepted in VERY few locations (despite what people on this forum would like to believe). You could also point out that most of the merchants that do accept it are (probably) based overseas and not within the jurisdiction of your central bank.
- there is no guarantee that you will be able to exchange it for anything of value in the future.
- there is not a single court decision anywhere in the world finding that it is money.
- it is held mainly by speculators who buy and sell it like a security
I wish you all the best.
Appreciated coin_toss. This is the kind of stuff I'd like to read. Thanks everybody for all constructive hints. |
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It all depends on what they mean by "Money". What do they want it to not be? Why?
Well, it is not they but me that will have to explain why is bitcoin not money! As far as I can read it this decision is about Mtgox holding fiat currency deposits. Under current financial regulations they can't do that unless they are a financial service company. It is not about bitcoin being money or not. |
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MtGox is dealing with the same problem in France. Thanks, nmat. Somehow I've missed this thread. Will have to read it. Seems the law is at crossroad? If they say bitcoin is not money then we can do perfect payment system connected to but independent from current fiat money regulations. If they say bitcoin is money then they say that people can have money without banks and central bank to issue them. So, I suspect court's decision will deliberately take years. Enough to kill bitcoin!? |
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What money?
Money. Like M-O-N-E-Y. |
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Seems I have quite unusual problem.  I intend to help the bitcoin community and help it big but I have to convince the central bank that bitcoin is NOT money. What would be my best arguments? Thank you all for caring to respond. |
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On the transaction list my bank gives me, for example, there are two timestamps. One designating the point in time when the money flow was considered to be happening (relevant for calculating interest, for example) and the point in time the transaction was validated by or inserted into the system. The two can be different. Of course, they can be different. The first one is date/time of value (i.e. when change of ownership took place) and the second one is date/time of accounting (i.e. when the corresponding record in the general ledger was made). |
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Obviously the USD "token" would only be as good as the exchange (maybe moneychanger is better term) that issued it.
Currency tokens need to be sanctioned by the local government as historically this practice resulted from a severe shortage of money or the governments's inability to issue its own coinage. In effect the organization behind the tokens became the regional bank. Instead of "token" I would use "voucher". A voucher is a bond which is worth a certain monetary value and which may be spent only for specific reasons or on specific goods i.e. purchasing bitcoins. For instance, a trusted 3rd party in Australia would get 100 fiat AUD and issue 100 AUD vouchercoins that can be traded only against bitcoins or redeemed back into 100 fiat AUD minus small fee. IMO, creating an alternative cryptocurrency block chain, say vouchercoin allowing all the world currencies in the chain, is the most robust approach to resolve bank dependencies once and for ever and for merchants to minimize exchange rate risks. Of course, those trusted 3rd parties need to be ultra solid anchors as they will become prime target for attacks from governments and bank lobbyists. One chain for multiple currencies and multiple issuers would be nice. I think the easiest way to implement is to allow in that chain for any private key to issue IOUs. The issuer can use that same key to signs documents that credit him (and where he explains the fiat denomination and the conditions for redemption). The document can also be signed with "legal cryptography" such as that contained in some electronic NIFs (for example, Spain has it). The problem here could be how to reward miners, because the IOUs issued are not fungible and the miner must trust the issuer of the currency paying the fee. That chain could also have ripple. See my related proposal for a chain implementing ripple: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=37505.0To perpetually reward miners I include a coin with demurrage in the chain (freicoin), but maybe miners can accept the IOUs directly in this case. The chain doesn't have to contain the denomination of each IOU, only an extra field in inputs and outputs of transaction with the "issuing address". That can be optimized by not allowing an address to receive from more than one issuing address and not allowing addresses that have issued to receive any IOUs different than their own. This way the field is not necessary. But I prefer to include the new field because it allows to trade IOUs of one kind for IOUs of another type within the same transaction (and this enables ripple, outside of the objectives here, but also useful). Without that field you cannot, for example, exchange mtgoxUSDcoins for IntersangoEURcoins atomically in a single transaction and you would need to use contracts like if the voucherCoins were in different chains. Thanks for sharing your view. Can't tell anything right now, have to look into the details. Will do that after the Bitcoin Conference. BTW are you going to visit Prague this weekend? |
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Obviously the USD "token" would only be as good as the exchange (maybe moneychanger is better term) that issued it.
Currency tokens need to be sanctioned by the local government as historically this practice resulted from a severe shortage of money or the governments's inability to issue its own coinage. In effect the organization behind the tokens became the regional bank. Instead of "token" I would use "voucher". A voucher is a bond which is worth a certain monetary value and which may be spent only for specific reasons or on specific goods i.e. purchasing bitcoins. For instance, a trusted 3rd party in Australia would get 100 fiat AUD and issue 100 AUD vouchercoins that can be traded only against bitcoins or redeemed back into 100 fiat AUD minus small fee. IMO, creating an alternative cryptocurrency block chain, say vouchercoin allowing all the world currencies in the chain, is the most robust approach to resolve bank dependencies once and for ever and for merchants to minimize exchange rate risks. Of course, those trusted 3rd parties need to be ultra solid anchors as they will become prime target for attacks from governments and bank lobbyists. |
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I came up with the term TRIPLE ENTRY CROWD ACCOUNTING as a way to abstractly describe Bitcoin in as few words as possible. I wanted to solicit feedback. This term would make sense to those who are familiar with banking but not with technology.
People have referred bitcoin as a distributed digital notary service. I like this description. Every notary service in every country is heavily regulated and licensed. Why do you want to break the law? I'm not sure why you all insist to put bitcoin in a certain category that already exists? Don't you understand that you're actually trying to put it under existing legal framework? This is the government and banks that need this done, not the average bitcoin user. Bitcoin is just bitcoin. Nothing like it was created before. This is the power of bitcoin. Let people read what is bitcoin. IMO, short explanations would do more harm than good. |
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"Accounting period", as used in the finance industry and in business, means a month, a quarter, a fiscal year. Accounting period can be any period. Accounting periods are not only those periods that are defined in IRS manuals... Every organization is free to define their own accounting periods to suit their internal needs. If you need reliable data for all financial transactions every minute then 1 minute can be the accounting period. If you are familiar with the algorithm that miners run though, you'll know that's not the case. Hmm... Well, I thought you have started this thread trying to abstractly describe Bitcoin in as few words as possible with terms that would make sense to those who are familiar with banking but not with technology? So, my short answer to your initial question is miners are like auditors and what they do is like reconciling data sets of financial transactions for 10 minute accounting periods. Obviously, your intention is to argue against every proposal and teach me what is mining. |
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You have highlighted part of the Wikipedia article, but seem to have underrepresented what it says after the highlighted part: making sure the balances end at the end of a particular accounting period. There is no point in highlighting the entire quotation... The highlight is to match against your previous argument! As far as your recent point, yes, every block is a set of transaction records and the end of the block is the end of accounting period. I don't see any valid arguments against what I have suggested. |
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Reconciling is like checking to see if two sums balance and, if not, explaining why. No. In accounting, reconciliation refers to a process that compares two sets of records (usually the balances of two accounts) to make sure they are in agreement. Reconciliation is used to ensure that the money leaving an account matches the actual money spent, this is done by making sure the balances match at the end of a particular accounting period. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconciliation_(accounting) This is exactly what miners are doing when checking against double spending! tbh I'd be happy with anything that's not "mining", but if we're going to change, we better do it right.
If we use auditors instead of miners then reconciling is the perfect addition. |
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"Bitcoin is a payment network based on triple-entry crowd accounting. A crowd of computers - run by ordinary Bitcoin users - observes the transactions, produces a single common ledger, and keeps everyone honest. The magic that came from Bitcoin's inventor - the thread that holds the whole thing together - is a process by which the entire crowd can always agree on what transactions it observed, despite differences in timing and perspective, and even despite varying levels of honesty among participants. Bitcoin's design ensures that no matter how big the crowd, its collective efforts always produce exactly one transaction ledger." Replace "magic" with "technology" and you've got my vote. I know you want to capture the magic of bitcoin, but if I were a banker, I'd stay the hell away from anything that "magically worked". In fact, I would almost boldly propose that the term "block chain" be renamed to "public ledger". This would be a jargon change to use a term familiar to anyone with anything to do with banking and accounting, rather than a term that only has meaning to computer scientists. It would encourage non-engineers to make many more useful assumptions, such as the fact that entries are only added to the end of it, and that it's available to everybody. Yes. And as long as we're renaming anyway: Please, please rename "mining" to "securing". As far as I can tell, people are saying "What, computers do some calculation, and then mine bitcoins out of nothing? Lol, what a joke!" By naming it securing, or maybe "verifying", it signifies useful work being done. "verifying" gets my vote. indicates a "truth" to the matter whereas secure could indicate even a hiding of the truth. Why not "reconciling"? And instead of triple-entry, if it is a crowd, why not use multi-entry accounting? |
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I really hope somebody else has made a deal with him and bring some coins so that we can buy them at the conference.
Count me in. I'll buy 3 25BTC. |
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i leave 4 separate clients open and i don't even mine. i do it for philosophical reasons to "help" the network. doesn't cost me anything.
Everything costs something! If bitcoin becomes fully fledged monetary system things like enthusiasm, altruism, philanthropy and philosophy will not be enough to secure its future! After all, it is about money! All tricks will be used both technically and economically to game the system and abuse it. Every expense that is possible to avoid paying will not be paid by participating agents in the network! There is no doubt about that... The big question here is whether all those avoidable expenses are fundamental incentives to keep bicoin network running? |
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