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Comment by julkali | Hacker News Reader

“As the Web grew, the average level of sophistication of users dropped. It was hard to explain the importance of privacy to them”

Chaum certainly was ahead of his time, and what he said will deeply resonate with any privacy advocate.

Now, more than two decades later, I believe his idea has much more potential.

Firstly people are a lot more educated, about how the web works in general, how valuable privacy is and about the strength of cryptography.

Secondly, it is no secret anymore that Visa et al. blatantly sell any data they have on their customers.

And lastly, any entity that wants to do business online or via card transactions has to pay high fees to Card/payment providers.

An open standard of electronic cash could solve these issues perfectly, undermining the existance of companies that only exist because they have a license.

Maybe the time has come for Chaum's legacy.

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> Firstly people are a lot more educated, about how the web works in general, how valuable privacy is and about the strength of cryptography.

I don't think you can support this claim. Today, 96% of iPhone users opt out of tracking [1]. However previously I remember a similar number of users not turning off tracking when it was an opt out option in Settings (can't find the sources). This inconsistency between opt-in and opt-out behavior means one thing: users generally don't care and neither do they understand what privacy means. Because otherwise the difference between the two approaches would have been smaller.

[1] https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/05/07/only-4-of-ios-use...

> An open standard of electronic cash could solve these issues perfectly

The reason this is not happening is, or not so fast anyway, is I think (1) people tend to trust government-backed currencies and (2) converting such currency to any other form is a friction point. I get my hard earn money in govt.-backend currency on my card from a bank that is tightly regulated and has govt. protection and guarantees. Then I pay from the same card. Because card network fees are not immediately visible to the consumers, they generally don't care about them, just the same way they don't care about privacy.

In other words, safety and frictionless trade overweighs privacy. At least today.

You are talking about a new type of digital cash, now look at some societies like Germany where about half of all transactions still takes place in cash (!). Germany is a country that's probably most privacy aware in the developed world, they don't have Google Street View for example. So instead of moving towards the unknown, privacy-aware societies seem to do the opposite, they go back to paper money.

Neither do we want to have ways of spending more, I think the humanity is slowly rolling back from the consumerist mode d'emploi of the late previous century.

So the picture is not as simple as we want it to be when it comes to earning, safely storing and spending our hard earned cash.

Yes, my statement might have been slightly too euphoric, however, let me provide some counter examples.

> Users generally don't care and neither do they understand what privacy means.

I agree with you that there is still a lot of ground to gain, however there are also signs of change, one of which Signal's strong growth in the past months (1). There were weeks where I would get a message that someone from my contacts installed the app every day. This was, of course, triggered by WhatsApp's change of TOS.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-signal-users-idUSKBN29I27...

I believe that IF there is a privacy-enhancing alternative that is comparably comfortable to use, people do migrate. This would also agree with your claim that users take whatever's default.

Your remarks about trust and interoperability are very valid in my view also. To solve both of this, it would, I believe, need a system that is government backed, open standard and free of charge. The latter might of course be a little optimistic, however not impossible; especially European countries provide/host many administrative services for free, why not subsidize such a system as well.

I am thinking of a coin-based system where coins are created/distributed by each bank separately and can be either transferred seemlessly to another owner or exchanged at that bank for a regular currency. In terms of convenience, this could be as easy as scanning a QR code or a similar mobile implementation and should be no obstacle.

> Look at some societies like Germany where about half of all transactions still takes place in cash.

This is true, however especially due to the pandemic, there was a considerable shift towards cashless (2). In Munich area, for example, most of time I see people pay, they use debit or credit cards, especially young people.

[2] https://www.inquirer.com/business/retail/coronavirus-surge-c...

And lastly, the connection to the amount of the expense is not clear to me, how does the amount have anything to do with the means in this particular case?

I agree with you, that we might not be there yet, also because viable protocols are missing, but I still stand by my belief that the shift is possible and by magnitudes more likely than back in 1999.

So if I understand you correctly, digital cash is just a way of escaping the big two, Visa and MasterCard and their fees? Because otherwise, what'd be the essential difference between any govt.-backed digital money and the official one? What would be the exchange rate? Say 1-to-1 with Euro, or with the dollar? Then what's the point of having it in the first place?

I would say this would certainly add a lot of value in terms of privacy.

It is possible to create a scheme where transactions happen absolutely anonymously, both horizontally between payer and payee and vertically. Payments would thus be completely private given the used cryptography holds. However, it does require some authority that needs to be trusted, a national central bank for example. At this point, the currency would already be similar to regular cash in terms of trust and value.

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