In light of the various companies popping up recently- some of then obviously fraudulent scams... let's get a bit of perspective, shall we?
http://cryptome.org/jya/digicrash.htmThere is something very seductive about the promise of money that comes from nowhere, carries no responsibility, no national authority and thus cannot be said to cause violence(actually anonymous cash is probably responsible for more violence than the official kind). Practically everyone has to manage personal debt so these vague promises of alternative money systems soothe some of the more unpleasant factors of life.
How DigiCash Blew Everything
In September 1998 the high-tech company DigiCash finally went bankrupt. The office in Palo Alto, California remained open for a while but it was merely a stay of execution. Two months ago the company filed for Chapter 11.
Nobody realises, but with the "pending failure" of DigiCash, a bit of Dutch Glory died. The company made a brilliant product. Even Silicon Valley was jealous of the avant garde technology invented in the Amsterdam Science Park. Internet "guru" Nicholas Negroponte went so far as to call the electronic payment system, ecash1, "the most exciting product I have seen in the past 20 years." The rise and fall of DigiCash: a story of paranoia, idealism, amateurism and greed.
David Chaum
The name of one man stands out way above anyone else in the history of DigiCash: David Chaum, US citizen, born into a wealthy family, brilliant mathematician and one who had to always have things his own way2. After travelling around the world he ended up in Amsterdam in the late 80's. Here, he became head of the cryptography department of the CWI (Centre of Mathematics and Information Science). Cryptography is the science of encoding and decoding of data, in order to maintain privacy. Chaum had built a big reputation in this field in the previous few years. Insiders estimated he was in the top 5 of the world at the time.
And at the CWI, they also worked on electronic payment systems. In the early 90s, Rijkswaterstaat3 became interested as they were thinking about introducing automatic toll-collection roads. Chaum got together a few researchers, mainly from earlier contacts with the university of Eindhoven. All guys who knew each other through a "young researchers" programme sponsored by Philips. They had all spent their youth programming behind a computer. Enthusiastically they started, and within little over a week the job was done.
