Peter Sunde: We need cash for anonymous transactions | Hacker News Reader

Peter Sunde: We need cash for anonymous transactions

wired.co.uk

32 pointsvetler19 comments

Milne said that the value of mobile was in predictive behaviour, so you could walk into a café and it would immediately trigger the barista to create your usual coffee. "It think that's going to be a big driver for mobile."

Ugh, is that supposed to be a compelling argument?

Right?

"Here sir, I made you your favorite coffee."

"But I wanted to try something different this time."

"Ok, well you'll have to pay for both."

Maybe one step too far. more along the lines of:

"Hi there <yourname>. Your usual big latte today or something else?"

"The usual please (It's nice not having to make those big decisions.)"

My barista already does that because we have a face to face relationship and she knows what I like to drink.

"Hi, how are you doing today? The usual?" "Morning! Very well thank you - yes please."

I agree the use case ulf suggested is more of a turn-off, and more used for trying to create a beneficial relationship through dishonest / manipulative means.

Starbucks does the name-game in the best "automated" way as you can. Asking for your name to put on your drink, and then they repeat your name a bunch of times - which attempts to make people feel they have more of a connection.

It's not just that - it seems there's this idea that we should actually be optimising these interactions out of our day, which I disagree with.

Perhaps if you think about all the mom and pop stores in many us cities closing and being replaced with generic chains its possible to understand some of this behaviour.

"I want to walk into any Starbucks and they must know my name and produce my chosen beverage".

This seems like a perfectly reasonable response to wanting to 'personalise' a large chain now that all the small and personal mom and pop places are gone.

From my perspective though, I can't wait to get back to my home city where I don't have to go into Faceless Mega Brand stores. I want to go back to my favourite coffee place simply because they know my name, what I like and we get to chat. For me, having my coffee shop try to predict what I want so it can optimise out 30 seconds of my day where I chat to the owner and have some human interaction will actually make my day worse. No thanks.

If there's a need for cash, it will exist in some form.

If the governments of the world get rid of cash, meaning all of our transactions are identifiable and traceable by gov'ts and corporations an immediate black-market cash system of some kind will spring up. Of course, they'll make it illegal, and if caught then you'll go to jail just for buying something legal but embarrassing. Then various methods will be invented to help ensure people aren't caught as easily.

Such is the way of things.

There is still trade by barter. ;-) If push comes to shove, people will find a way.

I wonder what the new cigarettes or nylon stockings will be.

In some countries smaller trades are done with prepaid credits for cellphones.

Tide detergent seems to be the money equivalent of choice among drug dealers:

http://bastiat.mises.org/2012/03/tide-as-money/

we have in Germany the so called "Moneycard" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geldkarte ), which is quite anonymous, and misses any kind of authentication. Interesting would be to be able to transfer the amounts from one moneycard to the some other moneycard, same way I would give someone a 5 Euro bill in hand. This seems to be impossible ( or forbidden). At this moment the uses are just to buy transportation tickets, cigarettes or parking fees. Since is totally offline, it behaves like money, but electronic. Paying with this takes a 0.3% of amount for the transaction. So, if someone could monetize this, we would totally forget the banknotes or coins. However, you still need interraction with some terminal to load it, so it similar to going to an ATM and fetch the real money.

There's also the PaySafeCard (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paysafecard), which I wish would have a lot more adoption than it currently has, especially outside the EU.

You can buy them at gas stations or supermarkets, pay completely in cash and receive a code (although you don't have to, you can also exchange money for codes online), which you then use to pay online. You stay completely anonymous that way, and it's quite convenient. They don't even charge transaction fees, though they start deducting small fees from a code after a certain time period if it isn't used up (I think it was a year). You can check the cash balance of a code on their website.

What - you mean like the Diety of Cryptography (Bruce Schneier) figured out how to do 10+ years ago ? http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0471117099?ie=UTF8&tag=...

Where does applied crypto talk about anonymous currency?

I read Cryptography Engineering (its successor) last year, and don't think I remember anything about that ...

I'm sure it discusses standard public key crypto, but it's a huge leap to go from that to a truly anonymous digital currency. Even with blind signatures it's really hard to prevent the 'bank' from maintaining an audit trail. My understanding is that even Bitcoin maintains an auditable transaction trail, so it's still not as good as cash.

PS: s/diety/deity/

PPS: I'd consider it bad form to use an affiliate amazon link there

(http://www.schneier.com/book-applied-toc.html#chap6)

    Chapter 6: Esoteric Protocols 
    * SECURE ELECTIONS
    * Secure Multiparty Computation
    * Anonymous Message Broadcast
    * DIGITAL CASH

Sunde is partly right, I guess. There are things that probably most people don't want to appear on their credit card statement. But then again, there are enough people who already use their credit cards for paying for shady services or for porn and they don't give a damn.

See, for example "Operation Ore" where a website with images of child sexual abuse was raided, and it contained many names and credit card details.

Many of those will have been fraudulently used, but it appears from some arrests (and convictions) that some people do, indeed, pay for illegal "child porn" using their credit cards.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ore)

[insert the inevitable BitCoin comment here]

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