

Could Tiny Somaliland Become the First Cashless Society? - Ainab
http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/05/guest-post-could-tiny-somaliland-become-the-first-cashless-society/

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BrandonM
I think the commenters so far are missing the point. This isn't a _money_
-less society, but a _cash_ less society. The money is based on American
dollars, but soon they expect no hard cash to be changing hands.

I don't mind the idea of cashless society, as long as there is some way to
allow for anonymous purchases.

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maeon3
I do mind the idea of a cashless society because then there will be no way for
anonymous purchases. It's like saying: "I don't mind being set on fire just so
long as they make provision that I won't get too hot. Uhhh.. yeah. We'll get
right on that.

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BrandonM
"I don't mind being set on fire just so long as they make provision that I
won't get too hot"

It's called a fire suit. And one could certainly devise a method to allow for
anonymous digital transactions via public-private key cryptography and Tor-
like network routing.

One possible implementation would require a central transaction entity (CTE).
The buyer's bank would send the digital money and a one-time public key to the
CTE via a TOR-like network. The CTE would then reply with a unique identifier
(encrypted using that public key), to be relayed to the buyer (some personal
device). This unique identifier is what would then be encrypted with the
seller's public key. The seller's bank would then receive the money from the
CTE by using that same unique identifier.

What does this mean?

    
    
      1. The buyer's bank does not know where it sent the money.
      2. The CTE knows only that a transaction occurred between two banks.
      3. The seller's bank does not know where it received the money from.
    

Obviously there are additional difficulties in trying to add ambiguity to the
dollar amounts, but in principal a process like this could work.

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GiraffeNecktie
First _modern_ cashless society

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almost
This article would have been vastly improved by actually describing how the
system works for cashless purchases of goods and services. I can sort of guess
but it would be interesting to actually know...

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kiba
Cash is not going to disappear but rather 'digitalized' and 'decentralized'.

