Topic: The Royal Canadian Mint just announced a new alternative to BitCoin - page 9. (Read 19978 times)

My initial reaction was fear. My current reaction is laughter.

I wonder how this is a whole lot different than the smart card on my university ID I used more than a decade ago in the vending machines?

It seems like this'll make a great complement to Bitcoin, as well as legitimizing it greatly.  I highly doubt it will replace Bitcoin.  Just too much stuff different.

I am guessing if your chip stops working (e.g. takes an ESD hit), you're screwed, your money's gone.

And if someone cracks the chip and extracts even a single chip's private key, seems the whole thing fails.  As I understand it, Canada has got some seriously good reverse engineers of chips, judging by the sophisticated means they use to crack the regular revisions of the US satellite TV smart cards... cracked mainly because that's the only way to get the programming that's simply not offered in Canada.

the thing is mintchip is just not as good as Bitcoin. It lacks some of the most attractive aspects of BTC. 
But when is a movie with "2" in the title ever as good as the first?

The only way to improve upon this image is if you had another Financial Institution image on the far left, move the the other one further right, then link them with a double arrow, thus creating value among themselves.

Just thought of something else. Have a faded dotted line from below, linked to them, representing a bone (donation) tossed their way for provided the rest of us entertainment.

~Bruno~

I believe many here echo the same sentiment, it's just that's there's so much information to currently digest, users are just expressing the myriad aspects of MintChip, some of which involve negative components.

~Bruno~

It just has a serious ring of big brother wanting to know about the small cash I transfer, and about potentially wanting to use that evidence against me (whether I have committed a crime or not). Seems pretty innocuous in Canada. I doubt it would be here in the US. It would go right up there with other choice things like the NDAA and the Patriot Act. Even if the government can't wiretap your financial transactions through MintChip, I'm sure it would be excellent for forensics. I'm sure all the hidden APIs will be super fun for LE.

I am skeptical of the "anonymity" - my normal presumption would be that there is ID involved in the transfer of funds via the Trusted Broker from your bank or from cash to a MintChip.

I really like the fact that it looks like it may be able to be used exactly like cash. I owe you $20K, I bring a microSD card w/ a MintChip w/ the funds, and give it to you by hand.

The other thing that may be a significant issue for this is that if it can be used in the way I describe above, it will start to trade at its own value, which would fluctuate with the value of the currency used in it, but not directly. One of the two (paper or chip) will likely start to trade at a discount to the other. (Depending on the market forces which would be dictated by the preferred means of the vendors, and the ease of anonymous acquisition of the chips).

The chip dollar and the paper dollar may have the same face value, but if you can't spend one much (likely paper) then you'll pay extra to get the other. Right now, Paper USD trades at a premium to digital USD (most of the time)  that credit/debit card money you spend is usually 1:1, if you take the same card  to the bank, there is a fee - the paper is trading a little higher than the digits.

TBH, my negativity is more rooted in the chip than the specifics of the rest of the model, which I said i thought I like. I especially like the psychology of what this type of "authorized" technology does for future bitcoin adoption.

Is anyone thinking about the inevitable mint chip cloning. 

A successful clone would need a private key, but maybe a virus could harvest these. 

Double spending shouldn't be an issue, as there is a random code placed in every transaction, if two transactions have the same random code then only one will be accepted. 

Not sure why there is so much negativity in the comments here. This is great news for Bitcoin. Certainly MintChip is completely different in technical terms, but it shares some attributes with Bitcoin as far as a lay person or a judge or government bureaucrat is concerned. If you look at this picture



you will notice that Bitcoin essentially provides a secure, decentralized way of doing what the top (minting) and bottom (p2p transactions) of the picture represent, while eliminating the centre. If this picture is legal, so is Bitcoin.

The MintChip technology only supports non-reversible transactions.  If you notice in the flow diagram though there is only one arrow on the "Redeem MintChip".   There actually should be another arrow the other direction indicating the redemption payment that is made in CADs or other currency to the MintChip acceptor's bank account.  If "chargebacks" occur, they will come in either blacklisting Acceptors or in clawing back redemptions sent to the bank accounts.

If the merchant gets left holding the bag after accepting "bad" funds in a transaction using MintChip then the merchant is going to adjust and not accept MintChip payments from questionable people, or to start requiring identity information from the buyer, etc.   Then that starts a chain reaction so maybe who knows if they'ld start doing that.

What will make all the difference is knowing if there will be restrictions on how these are issued (i.e., can be bought anonymously) and if there are restrictions on their use.   If the MintChip can be sold from the broker without requiring identification and there are no restrictions on its use (e.g., if you happen to find a MintChip on the sidewalk you are allowed to keep it), then the MintChip becomes a different animal.

Maybe we could offer merged mining for the lulz.

Yep, but opt to pull away for the "got" part since psy wrote the following:


As I've stated, it has a nice ring to it: pull-a-Dwolla or pulla-dwolla or Pull-a-Dwolla.

~Bruno~

Wouldn't that be "got Dwollared"

as in "Trade Hill got Dwollared when their merchant account containing hundreds of thousands was frozen"

Should we add that to the Bitcoin lexicon? First, we had Goxed (and Goxxed), then Zhoutonged, and now, pull-a-Dwolla, or would Pulla-Dwolla have a better ring to it?

Fake Quote

I just want to see if they keep the no-chargeback policy or if they will pull a Dwolla...

Freudian slip...