New Hampshire INTERNET SIG Meeting, Tuesday, 6/2/98

[Jerry Feldman]

When: Tuesday June 2, 1997, 6:30 PM 
Where: Nashua, NH Public Library, 2 Court St, Nashua, NH. 
Featuring: Robert Hettinga, founder of the Digital Commerce Society of Boston.
Topic: Digital Bearer Transaction Settlement

Almost every non-cash transaction you make, in the net or in meatspace, is
executed, cleared, and settled using offsetting debits and credits sent
between the buyer, the seller, and a whole bunch of financial
intermediaries. Even if executed over the internet, all of them are
settled and cleared over a proprietary network of some kind.

Almost $10 billion in credit card purchases are done on the net annually,
and probably $100 billion, total, is executed on the net one way or
another and settled in meatspace. Remember that a credit card transaction
on the net just executes the trade. Money doesn't completely change hands
until up to 90 days after you get your bill. To give you some comparison,
$4 trillion a *day* is executed, cleared, and settled in the
proprietary-networked foreign exchange markets.


This wasn't how it was done before, of course. In the (very) old days, you
and I showed up in front of a buttonwood tree on Wall Street, I gave you
cash, and you gave me a bearer certificate representing a piece of a
company's stock or a bond issue. The trade was executed, cleared, and
settled all at once.

Oddly enough, using financial cryptography, you will be able to do exactly
that, that is, anonymous, instantaneous bearer transactions in digital
form, on the the public internet, and some day very soon. The reason
you'll do it that way is that it'll be 1000 times cheaper than the
"book-entry" way we clear and settle trades now, and not just because
it'll be the fastest and most private way to buy and sell things.


Robert Hettinga, founder of the Digital Commerce Society of Boston, the
International Conference on Financial Cryptography, the International
Financial Cryptography Association, and, recently, Philodox Financial
Technology Evangelism, will talk about all the interesting things you can
do in a world of digital bearer settlement. Things like personal bond
issues instead of consumer debt, digital cash instead of credit/debit
cards and checks, digital bearer stock and mutual fund shares, or bonds,
or any derivative therof. In transactions from cash-on-the-routerhead
internet packet tolls to instanteneous gigabuck foreign exchange
settlement and macrobonds for macroprojects. All anonymously, and all with
more protection against fraud and theft than we have now.


Because of book entry settlement, we also have book entry taxes (on
income, sales, and capital gains), book entry regulation (pretty much any
regulation with a financial component, meaning all of them ;-)), and book
entry marketing (database marketing). So, just like it did when telegraph
made bearer transaction execution obsolete, the world is going to change
when financial cryptography makes book-entry execution, clearing, and
settlement obsolete. A brave new world, indeed. See how brave you are on
June 2nd.

Robert Hettinga <rah at shipwright.com>
e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/

Everyone Welcome, No Memberships or Fees to attend! 



For more information contact Ken Adams <director at nh-isig.org> 
Or  Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org> 
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Directions to the Nashua Public Library (Plenty of free parking after 
5PM) map: http://www.nh-isig.org/gifs/map.jpg 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
New Hampshire Internet SIG Meeting Coordinator
http://www.nh-isig.org
http://gaf.ne.mediaone.net