• Corpus ID: 50528633

How to Make a Mint: The Cryptography of Anonymous Electronic Cash

@article{Law1997HowTM,
  title={How to Make a Mint: The Cryptography of Anonymous Electronic Cash},
  author={Laurie Law and Susan Sabett and Jerome A. Solinas},
  journal={The American University law review},
  year={1997},
  volume={46},
  pages={6}
}

• L. Law, Susan Sabett, J. Solinas
• Published 1997
• Computer Science
• The American University law review

With the onset of the Information Age, our nation is becoming increasingly dependent on network communications. Computer-based technology is impacting significantly our ability to access, store, and distribute information. Among the most important uses of this technology is electronic commerce: performing financial transactions via electronic information exchanged over telecommunications lines. A key requirement for electronic commerce is the development of secure and efficient electronic payment systems. The need for security is highlighted by the rise of the Internet, which promises to be a leading medium for future electronic commerce. Electronic payment systems come in many forms including digital checks, debit cards, credit cards, and stored value cards ("SVC"). The usual security features for such systems are privacy (protection from eavesdropping), authenticity (identification and message integrity), and nonrepudiation (prevention of later denying having performed a transaction).

This Essay focuses on electronic cash. As the name implies, electronic cash is an attempt to construct an electronic payment system modelled after our paper money system. Paper money has such features as: portability (easily carried); recognizability (as legal tender), and thus readily acceptable; transferability (without involvement of the financial network); untraceability (no record of where money is spent); anonymity (no record of who spent the money); and the ability to make "change." The designers of electronic cash focused on preserving the features of untraceability and anonymity. Thus, electronic cash is defined to be an electronic payment system that provides, in addition to the above security features, the properties of user anonymity and payment untraceability.