James A. Donald, Tim May, Robert Hettinga: Five years, and still no useful internet cash
1999 May 14
See all posts
James A. Donald, Tim May, Robert Hettinga: Five years, and still no useful internet cash @ Satoshi Nakamoto
- Author
-
Tim May, James A. Donald, Robert Hettinga
- Email
-
satoshinakamotonetwork@proton.me
- Site
-
https://satoshinakamoto.network
At 5:13 PM -0700 5/13/99, James A. Donald wrote:
I have created a web page reviewing the various efforts to bring a
cashlike medium to the internet.
I'll look at it.
But I'd say it's been more like "10 years and still no useful
cash." ( being Chaumian, untraceable digital
cash.)
I wrote my Cryptoanarchist Manifesto almost 11 years ago. I met with
Chaum in '88. I knew DC would not come quickly, but I didn't expect that
10+ years later there would be nothing credible/usable.
Yeah, there was that "Mark Twain Bank" foot in the water. Nobody ever
used it for anything interesting. I wouldn't be surprised if the total
amount of Mark Twain Bank transactions were less than $10K, not counting
various "showpiece" uses, like some vendor paying for Financial
Cryptography space with "digital cash."
Fact is, in fact, that in most ways we are regressing.
The interesing ideas of the early days of the Cypherpunks list have
not been realized.
[This space reserved for Bob Hettinga to jump in with his
paleosocialist claptrap about how I should be donating some or all of my
money for "the cause."}
I have some hopes that the Zero Knowledge Systems product will bring
back some excitement, and I wish them all the best.
Sadly, much of the crypto community is debating the strength of
conventional symmetric ciphers, which I thought had pretty much been
debunked as long ago as 21 years ago. (I recall reading Diffie and
Hellman's analysis of DES and prospects for custom DES cracker machines.
Inasmuch as I worked for Intel at that time, I read with interest their
proposal to use commercial DES chips, such as the DES implementation
Intel was providing with one of their 8041 variants.)
And we see folks here on the list asking whether it's "legal" to
publish the MI6 site name. Have people lost sight of the very basics? Or
even of things like regulatory arbitrage?
Whatever, instead of despairing I simple shrug.
– Tim May
At 9:34 PM -0400 on 5/13/99, Tim May trolled:
[This space reserved for Bob Hettinga to jump in with his
paleosocialist claptrap about how I should be donating some or all of my
money for "the cause."}
No, I made a very stupid suggestion that you actually invest
in the technology, if you – like a lot of us – think it's so important.
For an economic return. Look ma, no altruism.
[After all, you know more about this stuff than anyone here, and
you're the one who's gotten most of us here interested in this stuff.
If, as Harold Bloom says, influence is everything that matters, you've
made a rather significant impact on humanity, or at least it will
probably turn out that way. I think I'd rank your vision of
cryptoanarchy in the same league as that of Dante, or Milton, or even
Joseph Smith, since most of us are working to make cryptoanarchy happen,
like so many crypto-Mormons trudging across the plains to Zion.
Certainly you're better at this influence stuff than Freud was, say.
:-).]
Anyway, my suggestion that you invest, on your own, in the technology
of digital cash, rather than "simply shrug" about it was a very stupid
one because, apparently, you have exactly enough (admirably enough, I
might even say) financial savvy, or at least discipline, to save your
money and keep it in the functional equivalent of a company ESOP. Given
your displayed knowlege of finance here, had you invested significantly
in any technology you actually thought important, besides your
apparently recreational foray into alternate operating systems, you'd
have probably lost your ass. In that regard, you seem to have taken
Dirty Harry's advice about a man's limitations to heart.
Of course, calling me a "paleosocialist" doesn't make it so, any more
than me calling you, say, "a loon" does.
(And, yeah, I know, like a whole bunch of folks here of a certain
age, I was a liberal until graduation. Even a clerk's job in an
investment bank, much less any real job, fixes that shit in a hurry. It
takes bullshit to grow mushrooms, sometimes.)
So, Tim, while we're calling each other names, you're ugly. And your
mother dresses you funny.
Take that, you bounder...
Cheers,
RAH
At 8:27 PM -0700 5/13/99, Robert Hettinga wrote:
At 9:34 PM -0400 on 5/13/99, Tim May trolled:
Not a troll. History shows you have not quite shed your leftist
origin trappings, as your appeals to "fund my company for the good of
the Cause" show.
[This space reserved for Bob Hettinga to jump in with his
paleosocialist claptrap about how I should be donating some or all of my
money for "the cause."}
No, I made a very stupid suggestion that you actually invest
in the technology, if you – like a lot of us – think it's so important.
For an economic return. Look ma, no altruism.
I have funded, and am funding, startup companies.
You have offered nothing, at least not in the couple of years you
have been talking, which is concrete enough to be interesting. A few
years ago you were talking about a a generic "technology hothouse."
Nothing concrete, just "send me money."
And when others propose ventures, as in the acquisition of Digicash,
you rant for pages and pages about how impossible and stupid this is.
Which is too bad.
[After all, you know more about this stuff than anyone here, and
you're the one who's gotten most of us here interested in this stuff.
If, as Harold Bloom says, influence is everything that matters, you've
made a rather significant impact on humanity, or at least it will
probably turn out that way. I think I'd rank your vision of
cryptoanarchy in the same league as that of Dante, or Milton, or even
Joseph Smith, since most of us are working to make cryptoanarchy happen,
like so many crypto-Mormons trudging across the plains to Zion.
Certainly you're better at this influence stuff than Freud was, say.
:-).]
And here I thought you'd get through an article without one of your
smileys you use to show disdain, disgust, and ennui.
Anyway, my suggestion that you invest, on your own, in the technology
of digital cash, rather than "simply shrug" about it was a very stupid
one because, apparently, you have exactly enough (admirably enough, I
might even say) financial savvy, or at least discipline, to save your
money and keep it in the functional equivalent of a company ESOP. Given
your displayed knowlege of finance here, had you invested significantly
in any technology you actually thought important, besides your
apparently recreational foray into alternate operating systems, you'd
have probably lost your ass. In that regard, you seem to have taken
Dirty Harry's advice about a man's limitations to heart.
Well, in the years which Cypherpunks have existed, I've invested some
surplus cash in several companies. For example, through the Hackers
Conference and Cypherpunks I met Phil Karn, circa 1993-4. I bought
Qualcomm stock several years ago for about 30, sold it when it went to
50, bought back in when it dropped to 25 or so, and then sold out a
month ago at 140.
Alas, it's now 230, but picking peaks is not my goal.
Likewise, I got into some Internet companies.
As for "making things happen," this is a foolish basis for
investment, as it presumes one's investment can make people get
interested in something.
There is also the matter of taxation. I have no particular interest
in paying 32% of my gains in taxes to swith from an Internet or
technology company to invest in a company which will probably fail.
(And, yeah, I know, like a whole bunch of folks here of a certain
age, I was a liberal until graduation. Even a clerk's job in an
investment bank, much less any real job, fixes that shit in a hurry. It
takes bullshit to grow mushrooms, sometimes.)
Many of us of another age, and even many younger folk, were never
liberals. My younger brother, for example, is 34. He was never a
liberal.
You can't help your background, so I am not criticizing it. You were
once a socialist and you will likely always show the trappings of having
been a socialist.
Those of us who were raised (by ourselves, of course) on Heinlein and
Rand will always be disdainful of paleosocialist echoes.
If you have a good idea for a company, with a real product, then
FUCKING START THE FUCKING COMPANY!!!
Maundering about for several years with no concrete plan, nothing
even hinted at here on this list of presumably sympathetic and
interested folks, and muttering about a possible "hot house" in the
Boston area is not very interesing. Boring, even.
While you've been muttering about your company, or multiple
companies, I've seen several interesting actual startups. I've even
invested in some of them.
So, Tim, while we're calling each other names, you're ugly.
How typically Hettingian.
– Tim May
At 1:21 AM -0400 on 5/14/99, Tim May emetted:
History shows you have not quite shed your leftist origin trappings,
as your appeals to "fund my company for the good of the Cause" show.
Again, a canard.
I have never asked you, nor anyone here, to invest in anything I'm
working on. When I ask for money, I go directly to people, usually in
person, and with a business plan, NDA, etc., and I haven't done that
yet, unfortunately :-/.
Since I've had the fortune of actually meeting you once – by way of
saying goodbye on my way out the door, I might add – I don't think you
can fairly claim that I ever asked you for anything.
A suggestion on this list that you put your money where your mouth is
as far as the blind signature patent is concerned is not an invitation
for you to invest in anything I'm doing at all.
I have funded, and am funding, startup companies.
Splendid. I would venture a guess that you have not funded, and are
not funding, any companies in cryptography, much less financial
cryptography, much less digital bearer transaction technology, much less
anonymous digital bearer technology. Yes?
You have offered nothing, at least not in the couple of years you
have been talking, which is concrete enough to be interesting.
True.
A few years ago you were talking about a a generic "technology
hothouse."
True. Actually, I was kicking around an idea for a financial
cryptography "technology hothouse". And, no, it didn't get past the
talking stage. Or even the drinking stage. Most new businesses don't, by
the way, even, to my chagrin, the ones I think about. The fact that I
think aloud about them, and on the net, doesn't make much difference,
one way or another, in the over all scheme of the universe.
Nothing concrete,
True enough.
just "send me money."
Certainly not your money, and, frankly, not
anybody's money, because we never got to the offering
memorandum stage. You know, the part where you actually, legally, ask
for money?
Sheesh. Like most things you say about me here, Tim, it's nothing but
half-truth. A quacking, walking, canard.
And when others propose ventures, as in the acquisition of
Digicash,
Which you don't fund, either?
you rant for pages and pages about how impossible and stupid this is.
Which is too bad.
A guy's gotta have an opinion, sometimes, and, when I have one, it
can go on for pages and pages. Life is hard. You know where the ‘d' key
is. Like the Franz Joseph's Kappelmiester, you complain about "too many
notes". Can't help ya there, much.
Frankly, to inject a little content into this perpetual
pissfight, getting control of the blind signature patent won't be easy
as long as anyone out there with actual money thinks they can make a
software business out of the thing requiring exclusive control of those
patents. Which is, also, too bad.
Discussing people's prospects for doing so, for the "right" reasons,
whatever economics proves that to be, is probably, at the margin, more
useful than predicting the imminent "reformatting" of the "Amerikan"
hard-drive through Y2K, terrorism, or otherwise, or, even more fun,
saying that various government officials, ones with a demonstrable
ability to hurt you, "need killing".
And here I thought you'd get through an article without one of your
smileys you use to show disdain, disgust, and ennui.
Actually, I use smileys to show when I smile, Tim. :-). Why I smile
when I do is a mystery, even to me.
<Tim's stock-picking prowess elided>
Except to note the lack of any actual cryptographic investments. And,
no Virginia, Qualcomm is not a crypto company, the noble Karn
notwithstanding, any more than Intel is, now that they're putting random
number generators, and other things, into their chips.
Except to note that hell hath no fury like a reformed sinner, and I'm
certainly one of those :-).
And to give my emerging opinion, after several years here, that
politics and political solutions, libertarian, cryptoanarchic or
otherwise, are not nearly as productive as actual technology, especially
that yielding economic results. Cypherpunks write code, as some people
used to say here.
Any idiot can use force, and, invariably, given the current economies
of scale of modern force technology, no matter said idiot's ostensible
politics, libertarian, anarchic or otherwise, he ends up confiscating
other people's resources with that force, and lying about what he's
doing it for, and, the more force he has control of, the more this
happens.
If you have a good idea for a company, with a real product, then
FUCKING START THE FUCKING COMPANY!!!
As soon as I find one that looks even plausible, economically.
Believe me, it's not for lack of trying. And, of course, the one I'm
working on now looks really good, so far, same as it ever
was.
Maundering about for several years with no concrete plan, nothing
even hinted at here on this list of presumably sympathetic and
interested folks, and muttering about a possible "hot house" in the
Boston area is not very interesing. Boring, even.
True enough. And, apparently, I haven't even failed enough to have
something to show anything for the effort. But, like the optimist kid
said, digging through the pile of horseshit at the foot of the Christmas
tree, "There's gotta be a pony in here somewhere".
While you've been muttering about your company, or multiple
companies, I've seen several interesting actual startups. I've even
invested in some of them.
Again, I'd be surprised if any of them were cryptographic, and,
again, most of your investments in anything but your original ESOP
shares of Intel are probably a miniscule proportion of your total
portfolio. Again, a good thing, too, or you yourself would have to work
for a living, yes? :-).
So, Tim, while we're calling each other names, you're ugly. <And
your mother dresses you funny.>
How typically Hettingian.
A red herring? How typically, heh, Mayan. Bless your little, um,
flattened forehead. Or was that Incan, and not Mayan?...
Cheers,
RAH
James A. Donald, Tim May, Robert Hettinga: Five years, and still no useful internet cash
1999 May 14 See all postsTim May, James A. Donald, Robert Hettinga
satoshinakamotonetwork@proton.me
https://satoshinakamoto.network
At 5:13 PM -0700 5/13/99, James A. Donald wrote:
I'll look at it.
But I'd say it's been more like "10 years and still no useful cash." ( being Chaumian, untraceable digital
cash.)
I wrote my Cryptoanarchist Manifesto almost 11 years ago. I met with Chaum in '88. I knew DC would not come quickly, but I didn't expect that 10+ years later there would be nothing credible/usable.
Yeah, there was that "Mark Twain Bank" foot in the water. Nobody ever used it for anything interesting. I wouldn't be surprised if the total amount of Mark Twain Bank transactions were less than $10K, not counting various "showpiece" uses, like some vendor paying for Financial Cryptography space with "digital cash."
Fact is, in fact, that in most ways we are regressing.
The interesing ideas of the early days of the Cypherpunks list have not been realized.
[This space reserved for Bob Hettinga to jump in with his paleosocialist claptrap about how I should be donating some or all of my money for "the cause."}
I have some hopes that the Zero Knowledge Systems product will bring back some excitement, and I wish them all the best.
Sadly, much of the crypto community is debating the strength of conventional symmetric ciphers, which I thought had pretty much been debunked as long ago as 21 years ago. (I recall reading Diffie and Hellman's analysis of DES and prospects for custom DES cracker machines. Inasmuch as I worked for Intel at that time, I read with interest their proposal to use commercial DES chips, such as the DES implementation Intel was providing with one of their 8041 variants.)
And we see folks here on the list asking whether it's "legal" to publish the MI6 site name. Have people lost sight of the very basics? Or even of things like regulatory arbitrage?
Whatever, instead of despairing I simple shrug.
– Tim May
At 9:34 PM -0400 on 5/13/99, Tim May trolled:
No, I made a very stupid suggestion that you actually invest in the technology, if you – like a lot of us – think it's so important. For an economic return. Look ma, no altruism.
[After all, you know more about this stuff than anyone here, and you're the one who's gotten most of us here interested in this stuff. If, as Harold Bloom says, influence is everything that matters, you've made a rather significant impact on humanity, or at least it will probably turn out that way. I think I'd rank your vision of cryptoanarchy in the same league as that of Dante, or Milton, or even Joseph Smith, since most of us are working to make cryptoanarchy happen, like so many crypto-Mormons trudging across the plains to Zion. Certainly you're better at this influence stuff than Freud was, say. :-).]
Anyway, my suggestion that you invest, on your own, in the technology of digital cash, rather than "simply shrug" about it was a very stupid one because, apparently, you have exactly enough (admirably enough, I might even say) financial savvy, or at least discipline, to save your money and keep it in the functional equivalent of a company ESOP. Given your displayed knowlege of finance here, had you invested significantly in any technology you actually thought important, besides your apparently recreational foray into alternate operating systems, you'd have probably lost your ass. In that regard, you seem to have taken Dirty Harry's advice about a man's limitations to heart.
Of course, calling me a "paleosocialist" doesn't make it so, any more than me calling you, say, "a loon" does.
(And, yeah, I know, like a whole bunch of folks here of a certain age, I was a liberal until graduation. Even a clerk's job in an investment bank, much less any real job, fixes that shit in a hurry. It takes bullshit to grow mushrooms, sometimes.)
So, Tim, while we're calling each other names, you're ugly. And your mother dresses you funny.
Take that, you bounder...
Cheers,
RAH
At 8:27 PM -0700 5/13/99, Robert Hettinga wrote:
Not a troll. History shows you have not quite shed your leftist origin trappings, as your appeals to "fund my company for the good of the Cause" show.
I have funded, and am funding, startup companies.
You have offered nothing, at least not in the couple of years you have been talking, which is concrete enough to be interesting. A few years ago you were talking about a a generic "technology hothouse." Nothing concrete, just "send me money."
And when others propose ventures, as in the acquisition of Digicash, you rant for pages and pages about how impossible and stupid this is. Which is too bad.
And here I thought you'd get through an article without one of your smileys you use to show disdain, disgust, and ennui.
Well, in the years which Cypherpunks have existed, I've invested some surplus cash in several companies. For example, through the Hackers Conference and Cypherpunks I met Phil Karn, circa 1993-4. I bought Qualcomm stock several years ago for about 30, sold it when it went to 50, bought back in when it dropped to 25 or so, and then sold out a month ago at 140.
Alas, it's now 230, but picking peaks is not my goal.
Likewise, I got into some Internet companies.
As for "making things happen," this is a foolish basis for investment, as it presumes one's investment can make people get interested in something.
There is also the matter of taxation. I have no particular interest in paying 32% of my gains in taxes to swith from an Internet or technology company to invest in a company which will probably fail.
Many of us of another age, and even many younger folk, were never liberals. My younger brother, for example, is 34. He was never a liberal.
You can't help your background, so I am not criticizing it. You were once a socialist and you will likely always show the trappings of having been a socialist.
Those of us who were raised (by ourselves, of course) on Heinlein and Rand will always be disdainful of paleosocialist echoes.
If you have a good idea for a company, with a real product, then FUCKING START THE FUCKING COMPANY!!!
Maundering about for several years with no concrete plan, nothing even hinted at here on this list of presumably sympathetic and interested folks, and muttering about a possible "hot house" in the Boston area is not very interesing. Boring, even.
While you've been muttering about your company, or multiple companies, I've seen several interesting actual startups. I've even invested in some of them.
How typically Hettingian.
– Tim May
At 1:21 AM -0400 on 5/14/99, Tim May emetted:
Again, a canard.
I have never asked you, nor anyone here, to invest in anything I'm working on. When I ask for money, I go directly to people, usually in person, and with a business plan, NDA, etc., and I haven't done that yet, unfortunately :-/.
Since I've had the fortune of actually meeting you once – by way of saying goodbye on my way out the door, I might add – I don't think you can fairly claim that I ever asked you for anything.
A suggestion on this list that you put your money where your mouth is as far as the blind signature patent is concerned is not an invitation for you to invest in anything I'm doing at all.
Splendid. I would venture a guess that you have not funded, and are not funding, any companies in cryptography, much less financial cryptography, much less digital bearer transaction technology, much less anonymous digital bearer technology. Yes?
True.
True. Actually, I was kicking around an idea for a financial cryptography "technology hothouse". And, no, it didn't get past the talking stage. Or even the drinking stage. Most new businesses don't, by the way, even, to my chagrin, the ones I think about. The fact that I think aloud about them, and on the net, doesn't make much difference, one way or another, in the over all scheme of the universe.
True enough.
Certainly not your money, and, frankly, not anybody's money, because we never got to the offering memorandum stage. You know, the part where you actually, legally, ask for money?
Sheesh. Like most things you say about me here, Tim, it's nothing but half-truth. A quacking, walking, canard.
Which you don't fund, either?
A guy's gotta have an opinion, sometimes, and, when I have one, it can go on for pages and pages. Life is hard. You know where the ‘d' key is. Like the Franz Joseph's Kappelmiester, you complain about "too many notes". Can't help ya there, much.
Frankly, to inject a little content into this perpetual pissfight, getting control of the blind signature patent won't be easy as long as anyone out there with actual money thinks they can make a software business out of the thing requiring exclusive control of those patents. Which is, also, too bad.
Discussing people's prospects for doing so, for the "right" reasons, whatever economics proves that to be, is probably, at the margin, more useful than predicting the imminent "reformatting" of the "Amerikan" hard-drive through Y2K, terrorism, or otherwise, or, even more fun, saying that various government officials, ones with a demonstrable ability to hurt you, "need killing".
Actually, I use smileys to show when I smile, Tim. :-). Why I smile when I do is a mystery, even to me.
<Tim's stock-picking prowess elided>
Except to note the lack of any actual cryptographic investments. And, no Virginia, Qualcomm is not a crypto company, the noble Karn notwithstanding, any more than Intel is, now that they're putting random number generators, and other things, into their chips.
Except to note that hell hath no fury like a reformed sinner, and I'm certainly one of those :-).
And to give my emerging opinion, after several years here, that politics and political solutions, libertarian, cryptoanarchic or otherwise, are not nearly as productive as actual technology, especially that yielding economic results. Cypherpunks write code, as some people used to say here.
Any idiot can use force, and, invariably, given the current economies of scale of modern force technology, no matter said idiot's ostensible politics, libertarian, anarchic or otherwise, he ends up confiscating other people's resources with that force, and lying about what he's doing it for, and, the more force he has control of, the more this happens.
As soon as I find one that looks even plausible, economically. Believe me, it's not for lack of trying. And, of course, the one I'm working on now looks really good, so far, same as it ever was.
True enough. And, apparently, I haven't even failed enough to have something to show anything for the effort. But, like the optimist kid said, digging through the pile of horseshit at the foot of the Christmas tree, "There's gotta be a pony in here somewhere".
Again, I'd be surprised if any of them were cryptographic, and, again, most of your investments in anything but your original ESOP shares of Intel are probably a miniscule proportion of your total portfolio. Again, a good thing, too, or you yourself would have to work for a living, yes? :-).
A red herring? How typically, heh, Mayan. Bless your little, um, flattened forehead. Or was that Incan, and not Mayan?...
Cheers,
RAH