
Attention Shoppers: Internet Is Open (1994) - marban
https://www.nytimes.com/1994/08/12/business/attention-shoppers-internet-is-open.html
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spudwaffle
> _Digital cash, Mr. Zimmermann explained, is "a combination of cryptographic
> protocols that behave the way real dollars behave but are untraceable."_

> _In other words, they are packets of worth that have value in cyberspace,
> the same way dollars have value in the real world, except that they have the
> properties of anonymity, privacy and untraceability. Many details remain to
> be worked out, Mr. Zimmermann said._

Very cool how people were predicting cryptocurrencies from the beginning!

~~~
mirimir
Cool, yes. But "predicting" isn't how I see it.

We wanted anonymous, private and untraceable digital cash. Many people worked
on it. There were several ~centralized electronic currencies, and they all got
taken down, sooner or later. Because of FinCEN "know your customer"
requirements. E-gold lasted until 2009. Liberty Reserve lasted until 2013, and
the founder went to jail. Pecunix still sort of exists in a weird stunted way.

So anyway, Bitcoin was developed as a non-centralized electronic currency.
Which would be far harder to take down.

~~~
Nursie
E-Gold and Liberty Reserve were, like BTC is now, rife with scams, Ponzis and
other fraud.

It's not really a surprise that the Quadriga CX founders have history in those
arenas.

~~~
mirimir
Last I checked, dollars are "rife with scams, Ponzis and other fraud". Bernie
Madoff, for example.

~~~
Nursie
Not in the same way, not as their primary use or as such a large proportion of
their use.

This is a really disingenuous argument.

~~~
mirimir
Mostly, for me, it's "so what?".

It's entirely predictable that any system that's truly private, anonymous and
untraceable will be abused. That's simply because some people are wont to
abuse others.

But that doesn't require that we eliminate privacy and anonymity, and make
everything traceable. Personally, that would be intolerable. And unless people
became hugely more tolerant, it would tend to enforce conformity, and inhibit
dissent.

Also, perhaps ironically, "scams, Ponzis and other fraud" are reliable
indicators that systems are truly private, anonymous and untraceable.
Canaries, one might say.

~~~
Nursie
>But that doesn't require that we eliminate privacy and anonymity

But it seriously limits any sort of appeal it may have to regular folk who
don't really care about that anonymity.

In the case of Liberty Reserve and e-gold, just their mention becomes a huge
red flag for any legitimate activity. Cryptocurrency is basically there too,
particularly as it's a worse system in pretty much every other way.

~~~
mirimir
Well, Liberty Reserve allowed me to pay anonymously for VPN services and
servers. And now, Bitcoin does. That's all that matters to me.

------
spunker540
"Even if the N.S.A. was listening in, they couldn't get his credit card
number" \-- what a prescient quote for 1994, pre-Patriot Act, pre-Snowden.

~~~
dankohn1
FYI, I'm not remotely as confident about that claim as I was 25 years ago.
(I'm the one quoted.) Specifically, I use Signal today and suspect that it's
secure against mass surveillance.

But if I were ever targeted individually by a nation-state actor, I presume it
would be game over.

------
pyreal
Here's an internet store I wrote around that time (1994-1996):

[https://github.com/steveclarke/vintage-online-
store](https://github.com/steveclarke/vintage-online-store)

I wrote it just on a whim for the computer sales company I was working for at
the time. I had the store fully working and taking orders -- it just needed to
be kept up to date. The feedback I got back from the owners at the time was,
"Why are you making this? It's just a fad. Nobody will ever put their credit
card number into the Internet." So the online store died on the vine.

------
habitue
For anyone curious, I looked up Daniel Kohn, the founder of the company that
sold the CD. Turns out now he's the president of the CNCF!

~~~
dankohn1
And a regular HN poster. Feel free to ask me anything.

------
marban
Here is to 25 years of Cyberspace shopping!

