| From: | Oliver McDonald oliver@*********.com |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Cash, Credit and Crime |
| Date: | Mon, 05 Jul 1999 16:40:40 -0700 (PDT) |
>> Nice in theory, but the money would have to be at a bank somewhere as
>well. If the _only_ place the money exists is on the stick, nothing is
>stopping people from putting more on it -- have a bank put 100 nuyen on
>a certified credstick, then link it to your computer and add another
>99,900. Hey, the banks won't know...
>>
>> The way a certified credstick works, IMO (and I know this isn't the
>way some SR book (Lone Star?) explains it), is by having a special
>account that "belongs" to the stick, instead of to a person or
>organization. Whenever you pay with the credstick, money is transferred
>from the stick's account to the account of whoever is being paid.
>> Gurth@******.nl
>
>Bugger.
>
>You wouldn't BELIEVE the little essay I just typed up to explain all
>this - and then lost. Fragging machines.
>
>Anyway, the essence was that there are two things to prevent this.
>
>Firstly, each credstick is colour-coded. It can only have a maximum
>amount of money on it that the coding says it can. If you only want a
>stick for 1k, the bank won't give you an ebony stick (which can handle
>1 million, or 5 million or something like that). I reckon it'd also
>have a minimum to prevent someone from getting 5001 nuyen on a 10k
>stick and jacking it up to that 10k mark.
>
>Secondly, credsticks aren't designed to create money. They only
>transfer it. As I said, it's called double-entry accounting. For each
>credit to your stick, there has to be an equal debit somewhere else.
>Until both transactions have been registered to banks somewhere and
>electronically verified, any money that changes hands can't be further
>used. This doesn't apply to personal sticks, as they directly access
>your account. So say you have a cert stick and someone pays you 5k onto
>it. Cool. Say you had 3k on it to begin with. Cooler. Say you then go
>to a shop and buy yourself a PAC for 7,200nuyen. Bzzt! Okay, now we
>check. If your pal who paid you was using his personal account, you're
>in good shape. The transaction has already been registered to his end,
>so you paying the shopowner into his account makes this the 2nd
>registering of the transaction. The bank compares, everything's legit
>and you can buy your PAC. If, on the other hand, your pal used a cert
>stick and hasn't yet registered the transaction, the bank can only see
>your end and says, "sorry, that money isn't yours until the guy you SAY
>you got it from agrees with you". Effectively, you only have 3k on your
>stick and you can't buy your PAC. If, for example, you CREATED that 5k
>by hacking your stick, you have the same situation. There's no
>confirming registration elsewhere in the system, so the bank will never
>acknowledge that money as belonging to you and will never let you spend
>it.
>
>Of course, you could try to foist it off on some other poor shmoe with
>a cert stick, but that's his prob.
>
>*Doc' starts spinning flax into certified credsticks. "Just call me
Rumpled-Kilt-Skin..."*
>==>Doc'
>(aka Mr. Freaky Big, Super-Dynamic Troll of Tomorrow)
>
>.sig Sauer
>_________________________________________________________
>Do You Yahoo!?
>Get your free @*****.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
>
>
>
>
-----------------------------------------------------------
Oliver McDonald - oliver@*********.com
http://web2.spydernet.com/oliver/
-----------------------------------------------------------
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