Hybrid Forms
There are some interesting hybrid forms of token money. Chaumian blinded coins is a form of financial cryptography invented to achieve privacy and thus safety in money over the Internet. In this form, a digital packet is a token that can be passed from hand to hand over a network. However, to defend against infinite copying, the coin should be rolled over at the server in an exchange for a fresh coin, so these forms of token money are at best a simulation of physical tokens, as they permit traffic analysis.
Another simulation of token money is that of smart card money. In this system, the smart card is a token that can be carried, and the money is on the card. However the underlying system has account money on the card, and most smart card money systems employ sophisticated tracking software in order to ensure the safety of the system at the expense of the privacy of the transactions.
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Famous quotes containing the word forms:
“And what avails it that science has come to treat space and time as simply forms of thought, and the material world as hypothetical, and withal our pretension of property and even of self-hood are fading with the rest, if, at last, even our thoughts are not finalities, but the incessant flowing and ascension reach these also, and each thought which yesterday was a finality, to-day is yielding to a larger generalization?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)