[A-List] Fwd: Re: Fwd: Creating New Money (2000) by James Robertson

Tue Aug 31 01:15:04 MDT 2010

Ian Grigg is one of those unique, truly freakish 1-in a million people.
at least 20 years now he has been coding, and writing, about
digital cash, settlement, .creatioin of digital money.. and the
essential nature of money... and SSL, etc which are possible
tools for individuals to conduct transactions with each other.

I first ran across him in the 1990s in cypherpunks, digital cash lists,
which, you can hardly imagin if you weren't there...Robert
Hettinga (philodox.com) was a huge contributor to all this
(with his idea of digital bearer certificates)

Earlier in life, Grigg was a developer, a programmer of low level
code and database code for some banks... quitting or getting fired,
wjho knows.. he ended up an independent contractor... When we
wer most engaged he lived on some tax haven islands.. this was
the heyday of eGold digicash and all kinds of exciting digital cash
sites... Robert Hettinga, James Turk, Lynn Wheeler, so many others
posted everyday. and this was WAYYYYY late. The cypherpunk
era was in the early 1990s. Philip Zimmerman and PGP...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy
Somebody should write a book.
They were so brave.  One of the main developers of WebFunds
died mysteriously in London of "an overdose"   Small wonder,
The wireless networking people were also courageous and bravel
here was a typical wireless networking meeting Seattle 2001.
We were going to build our own network around the city!!  LOL
Could a done it, too.  But we said 'nah....'

Growing more interested I went to one of Ian's financial cryptography
conferences in Edinburgh in 2001, met many of them.... one after
another they talked about software for money transactions, and ways 
to develop a
community, ways to get the hardware and software companies
to do it.... in the evenings, drunk I walked the streets...or up the mountain
They have a huge mountain overlooking the place, remnds me of
Heidelburg or Rio or so many other places.
Todd

>Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2010 11:05:25 +1000
>From: Ian G <iang at iang.org>
>To: Todd Boyle <toddfboyle at gmail.com>
>Subject: Re: Fwd: [A-List] Creating New Money (2000) by James Robertson
>
>On 31/08/10 9:25 AM, Todd Boyle wrote:
>>Ian,
>>You missed a trick back in the early 2000s when you could have
>>put the server code into the webfunds client, thus enabling *everybody*
>>to operate as a bank (as well as client). Another thing you could have
>>done would have been publish all the code as open-source.
>
>
>Yeah, I know, I agonised over this a lot.
>
>In answer to the first, yes, we were doing that, over time.  The 
>first server was all Perl, in 1996.  The second was 50% Java 50% 
>Perl, this was 1998 onwards.  In 2002-2004 I was steadily moving 
>more code from the server Java across to the WebFunds side, as well 
>as rewriting the architecture.  But I never made any headway in 
>turning the accounts engine from Perl to Java.
>
>In the period 1995 to 2000 I relied on a conscious decision not to 
>offer WebFunds-as-Issuance-Server because I felt that with anyone 
>issuing their own money, it would have scared the authorities so 
>witless that we would have got in a real mess...  But around 2000 I 
>was changing my mind, and I was more keen on developing any market, 
>as long as it was sustainable and made money for us.  To eat.
>
>And, another issue was that writing it all into WebFunds so it could 
>be a server as well was a huge effort.  Recall, it was only a 
>client. Also, it had architectural implications that required a lot 
>of thought ... because what I really wanted was for WebFunds to be a 
>client and server-of-issuance at the same time;  not to have a 
>"switch" in it at all where it operated in server mode OR client 
>mode but not both.
>
>The final issue was simply about money.  In all my time, I spent a 
>lot of money moving WebFunds forward, and I and my team had to 
>eat.  The entire open source world demanded it be open source .. but 
>offered nothing in the way of rewards.  So I was following the 
>hybrid model, because there was some interest in paying for servers.
>
>Around 95% of those who had interestwere primarily interested in 
>taking away the value from us;  the open source was just an argument 
>from them to get it given over.  We saw this time and time again, at 
>any one time I had 2-3 supposed people who talked the language of 
>partnership but wanted it given away.
>
>Meanwhile, the developers had another attitide ... because WebFunds 
>was about money, they felt we should pay them for any code.  So 
>again, it was always money going out.  I could pay people to write 
>code, but only that.  I could not get open source developers interested.
>
>BTW, we did publish the entire code in the early days.  People 
>really didn't respond.  I think they wanted instant 
>gratification.  Some like RAH weren't interested because it wasn't 
>"blinded coins" and when I paid for blinded coins to be added, he 
>still wasn't interested.  Some like Doug Jackson couldn't figure out 
>what to do with it, they didn't understand the whole scene.  At one 
>point, back in 1997, he was arguing that Ricardo didn't make sense 
>to him because he didn't know what he should be paying for......
>
>None of these people understood that the value was in the team, the 
>community of people in action.  The source code was a red cape that 
>they charged at.  Sometimes they even got the red cape in their 
>hands, and didn't know what to do next.  They never understood that 
>the man holding the red cape was the real issue.  Or more 
>fullsomely, the entire team, of which you were a part at one time.
>
>
>>Now look what's happened. The whole world is using that loathsome
>>Paypal and other stuff, even worse stuff totally locked in by the
>>mobile device providers and cellphone operators.
>
>
>Yup.  See, the bug is, no big corporate will touch a money from 
>anyone else.  They will either invent it themselves, or buy it in 
>from a well known, bigger trusted player.  In order to break that 
>deadlock, we needed lots of luck, insider help, bribes, and other 
>crimes.  Probably all of them.
>
>
>>At least, if the entire code was public, it would be sitting there
>>as an exhibit of how things *could* have been,
>>http://www.systemics.com/docs/ricardo/execsummary.html
>>and how things very likely *will* be in the future.
>
>
>Frankly, I gave up waiting.  But funnily enough someone turned up 
>recently who seems to have understood, and re-written webfunds into 
>C++.  Looking at the blurb, I concluded that is what he had 
>done.  However, I don't know who it is, or what his intention was.
>
>Good luck to him, but I'm a bit scared to recommend he follow the 
>yellow brick road.  Thousands lost their future that way.
>
>>Todd
>>
>>Print-screens of my Webfunds client, used in creation of funds:
>>http://www.rosehill.net/ledgerism/dbcTrustModel.htm
>
>nice!  You know, picogold was an important experiment for me.  It 
>convinced me that doing everything properly, up front, was simply 
>too expensive.  It could never succeed, and it never did.  There had 
>to be some corners cut somewhere.  When I issued the Systemics 
>dollar, this was an experiment in cutting corners:  it didn't 
>reserve in anything, it was a pure fiat currency!  It was 
>tremendously successful :)
>
>
>iang
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