Martien van Steenbergen wrote: ><i> Very interesting. Is this akin to David Chaum's anonymous digital money? </i>><i> His concept makes sure money is anonymous unless it is compromised, i.e. </i>><i> the same money spent more than once. As soon as it's compromised, the </i>><i> ‘counterfeiter’ is immediately publicly exposed. </i> It's similar in that it uses digital signatures for coins, but different in the approach to privacy and preventing double-spending. The recipient of a Bitcoin payment is able to check whether it is the first spend or not, and second-spends are not accepted. There isn't an off-line mode where double-spenders are caught and shamed after the fact, because that would require participants to have identities. To protect privacy, key pairs are used only once, with a new one for every transaction. The owner of a coin is just whoever has its private key. Of course, the biggest difference is the lack of a central server. That was the Achilles heel of Chaumian systems; when the central company shut down, so did the currency. ><i> Also, in bitcoin, is there a limited supply of money (that must be </i>><i> managed)? Or is money created exaclty at the moment of transaction? </i> There is a limited supply of money. Circulation will be 21,000,000 coins. Transactions only transfer ownership. Thank you for your questions, Satoshi <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">http://www.bitcoin.org</a>
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