[Cryptography] Digital currencies

[Benjamin Kreuter]

On Sat, 2016-06-18 at 00:42 +0200, mok-kong shen wrote:
> How far advanced are the developments in digital currencies?
> Would they ever be able to replace the classical currencies?

I am not sure any electronic payment system or even a combination of
systems could replace paper money completely.  Paper money supports
offline and anonymous payments, but does so without requiring any
particular identification, registration, or secret keys.  An electronic
system likely cannot properly support this:  without identification,
"truly" offline payments cannot be secured, and identification requires
both a secret key of some kind and some kind of registration.

Really though, I do not see why the goal of any electronic payments
system should be to replace paper money.  There are some problems that
can be solved with electronic payments; other problems can be solved by
a paper money system; some can be solved by either.

-- Ben
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