[Nettime-bold] [IBUC Friends] Geodesic Capital 2002: Call for Participants

["R. A. Hettinga" <rah@ibuc.com>]

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Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2002 15:17:58 -0500
To: Digital Bearer Settlement List <dbs@philodox.com>, dcsb@ai.mit.edu
From: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah@shipwright.com>
Subject: Geodesic Capital 2002: Call for Participants
Sender: <dbs@philodox.com>
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We've been talking about this event for months (if not years, now),
and have asked you to save the dates, rescheduled it, well, twice.
But, finally, here's what you've been saving the date for...



                        CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS

              THE FIRST IBUC SYMPOSIUM ON GEODESIC CAPITAL:
        "GC02 -- Internet Bearer Finance in a Transparent World"

                          April 3-4, 2002
                 The Downtown Harvard Club of Boston
                     Boston, Massachusetts, USA


AN INVITATION

The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation invites its friends in
finance, cryptography, and in internet security, infrastructure, and
commerce to Boston for an informal two-day symposium to discuss
bearer finance on a ubiquitous geodesic .



WHAT IS GEODESIC CAPITAL?

"A Fine Kettle of Fish."

Ever since the bottom fell out of the internet finance and digital
goods markets in the Spring of 2000, and especially since the
terrorist events of the Fall of 2001, there has been a considerable
amount of discussion on the net and in the press about the economic
efficacy, if not the actual political wisdom, of using specific kinds
of putatively anonymous financial cryptography protocols to
instantaneously execute, clear, and settle financial and commercial
transactions on the internet.

And yet, the need for these transactions is greater than ever before:

 -- THE MARKET FOR DIGITAL GOODS AND SERVICES, which require
instantaneous cheap peer-to-peer transactions to survive as
stand-alone businesses, has been left in limbo, if not in absolute
disarray. There are increasingly ruinous fights over digital property
rights, which leave the producers and even distributors of internet
content in the position of not producing or distributing content at
all in a medium where content distribution is orders of magnitude
cheaper than in any other.

 -- In spite of commercial assurances to the contrary, THE VERY RIGHT
TO DECRYPT OR REVERSE ENGINEER ENCRYPTION OR SECURITY METHODS IS NOW
VERY MUCH IN DOUBT, with restraining orders and subpoenas flying like
chaff, and the odd theatrical arrest of conference participants for
publishing any software which does even the simplest crypt analysis
of an ostensibly trade-secret protocol.

 -- We are at the point of REQUIRING AN ACTUAL "FINANCIAL PANOPTICON"
BY THE COMING MARKET FOR INTERNET SERVICES, which, at the moment,
depends completely on on "is-a-person" identification of its users,
primarily because current financial transaction settlement technology
requires the identification and apprehension of people who lie about
a book-entry in a database somewhere instead of failing potentially
fraudulent transactions before they even execute.

 -- INTERNET INFRASTRUCTURE FIRMS like ISPs and co-location
facilities are getting over their dot-com bubble hangovers by merging
and filing bankruptcy, while, at the same time, their administrative
costs, caused primarily by the overhead of the billing and payment
process, and moreover, their marketing costs, caused at least
indirectly by the same, keep going up. An auction priced cash-settled
internet infrastructure market would go a long way to restructuring
these markets into something which would be, by definition,
profitable, efficient, and, more to the point, dynamically scalable
without the waste, fraud, and abuse of the current system.

 -- Most important, ANY REDUCTION IN SETTLEMENT RISK AND TRANSACTION
COST which these protocols could bring to the capital markets
themselves IS NOW AT A COMPLETE STANDSTILL, and at a time when costs
are being severely controlled, even to the point of threatening the
existence of several very good firms, and the increasing possibility
of regulatory scrutiny, including the forced divestiture of various
business units, raising financial firms' cost structures even more.

- -- The paradox is, CONFLICT OF INTEREST ARISES DIRECTLY BY SHARED
OWNERSHIP OF CONFLICTING BUSINESS UNITS, such as professional
services and auditing, or even underwriting, securities analysis, and
market-making. In order to have smaller firms, microeconomics tells
us that we *must* lower transaction costs. If transactions are less
transparent but considerably cheaper, then firms get smaller, become
more specialized, and the need for transaction transparency is
reduced. Reduced, in fact, to the point where TRANSPARENCY WOULD BE,
like privacy now is, completely ORTHOGONAL TO TRANSACTION COST.


Into this chaos steps a class of deliberately *anonymous* transaction
protocols, originally designed by decidedly left/liberal academics to
prevent corporate control of personal data, and championed on the
internet by anarchist/libertarians ideologues as a way to prevent
state control of the same information. Yet, the actual *financial*
use of these protocols is now being advocated by researchers in
financial operations as a way to substantially lower risk-adjusted
transaction costs below those currently available with book-entry
transactions, probably even greater a reduction than that caused by
book-entry transactions themselves.


Book-entry vs. Bearer Transactions

Book-entry transactions originated first between individuals and
firms on telegraphic networks as a way to reduce the physical
handling of physical bearer certificates and execution orders, and is
now done on proprietary networks like SWIFT, FedWire, the various ATM
and EFT networks, NACHA and so on, and cleared through various
member-only clearinghouses, securities depositories, and financial
institutions around the world. Checks, credit cards, bank-wires,
virtually all stock, bond, derivative, and institutional currency
transactions are book-entry transactions.  In other words, all
finance but the bills in your wallet and change in your pockets is
book-entry finance.

And yet, the most popular *internet* equivalent to using book-entry
methods for settlement and clearing (the exchange of consumer debt
for cash, for instance) so far have involved tunneling credit-card
*execution* requests over the net using TLS/SSL, as is done with the
vast majority internet commerce.

Though, on a considerably smaller though growing scale, tunneled
SSL/TLS is also being used for the actual clearing and settlement of
peer-to-peer book-entry transactions using a single
database/clearinghouse, like PayPal does for national currencies, or,
even, for gold-denominated transactions, like GoldMoney and E-Gold
do.


Internet Bearer Finance

For several years now, many researchers in financial operations,
cryptography, security and internet architecture have come to believe
that that Moore's Law, coupled with internet financial cryptography,
creates something at the same vastly simpler, but capable of
significantly more complex and efficient results: an economy based on
increasingly smaller, cheaper and highly distributed *bearer*
transactions; executed, cleared and settled by increasingly smaller,
cheaper, and highly distributed financial intermediaries.

Instead of a hierarchical system of interlocking book-entries,
requiring law, and force, to clear and settle without fraud, these
researchers see a *geodesic* system of single-use bearer
certificates, cash for debt, equity, and derivative instruments, from
statistically-tested streaming millidollars to single-certificate
gigadollar currency derivatives, all of which would execute, clear
and settle instantaneously, but only if cryptographic and internet
protocols are adhered to by the buyer, seller, and underwriter of a
given bearer certificate.

Not only is the actual transaction risk of such internet bearer
protocols probably reduced to near zero, but, paradoxically, the
resulting the lack of audit trails -- the lack of existence of the
book-entries themselves -- would reduce the mechanical costs of
transactions using these protocols on the internet by more than
book-entry settlement did in replacing physical delivery of paper
bearer certificates starting a century ago.

And so, use of these protocols to underwrite financial instruments,
on what Peter Huber observed is an increasingly geodesic global
communications architecture itself caused by increasingly falling
switching prices, observed at least indirectly by Gordon Moore, is
what IBUC has come to call "Geodesic Capital", and the research in
and development of markets which use Geodesic Capital is the theme of
this Symposium.


THE SYMPOSIUM

Participants are requested to send their suggestions for content,
proposals to talk, etc., to Robert Hettinga of the Internet Bearer
Underwriting Corporation at <mailto://rah@ibuc.com>. What follows is
a brief outline of the Symposium's agenda as it now stands.


CURRENT AGENDA

 THE FIRST IBUC SYMPOSIUM ON GEODESIC CAPITAL:
"Internet Bearer Finance in a Transparent World"


Wednesday Morning, April 3, 2002

08:00 Breakfast/Registration

09:00 Welcome and Keynote
Welcome, Introduction: Robert Hettinga, IBUC
Keynote: (TBA)

10:00 Break (Coffee, Tea, snacks)

10:15 Morning Session: The Origins of Geodesic Finance

History of networks, finance, cryptography. The invention of internet
bearer transaction settlement. The promise -- and consequences -- of
bearer settled capital markets. Experience so far in researching and
developing these markets.

12:15 Lunch

13:15 Early Afternoon Session: First Steps -- Simple Bearer Markets

Depository and Custodial Receipts. Simple debt instruments. Simple
Cash.

15:15 Break (Coffee, Tea, snacks)

15:30 Late Afternoon Session: Internet Finance

Markets for internet content and services, bandwidth, etc. Recursive
auctions for content and software. Streaming Cash. Machine to Machine
markets.

17:30 Reception, Cocktails and finger-food

19:00 See You in the Morning...

- -------------------------------------------

Thursday Morning, April 4, 2002

08:00 Breakfast

08:30 Early Morning Session: Advanced Capital Markets

Equity. Derivatives. Price Discovery. Exchange Protocols.
Intercustodial Settlement Networks. Managing bearer market trading
staff. Paying Stamp Duty and  other taxes.

10:00 Break (Coffee, Tea, snacks)

10:15 Late Morning Session: Advanced Capital Markets, cont'd

12:15 Lunch

13:15 Early Afternoon Session: Regulation and Governance

Regulatory Issues. Policy implications. Internet-Based Market
Governance.

15:15 Break (Coffee, Tea, snacks)

15:30 Late Afternoon Session: Getting There From Here

Market Analyses. Development Planning. Market Entry Scenarios.
Meeting the regulatory burden. The market for capital. What's next?

17:30 Conference Close, Reception, Cocktails and finger-food



ADMINISTRIVIA

What to Bring:

Your laptop: We've managed to have at least bonded dial-up access to
the net in the past. It's possible we'll do better than that this
time.

Your talking points: We're leaving plenty of air time for people to
present their ideas and opinions. Contact Robert Hettinga
<rah@ibuc.com>, about your proposed presentations and any collateral
material you would be bringing. In addition, the chair will probably
recruit some attendees to present some of a session's content and
moderate the discussion.

Your ideas, and, most important, your enthusiasm and energy: After
the events of  the last year, we have a lot of work to do.
Fortunately, like the apocryphal Chinese ideograph, disaster and
opportunity are very closely related, and, like the troubles we've
had recently, the opportunities we now face are quite considerable.

Dress Code

The dress code at the Harvard Club of Boston is Business Casual, but
the suit ratio approaches 100% these days in light of the dot-bomb...


REGISTRATION AND FEES

Fees

The Symposium includes Breakfast, breaks, lunch, and a reception in
the evening.

The Symposium fee is $875 if received by IBUC before March 1st, 2002.
Between March 1st and 15th, the fee is $1062.50. After March 15th,
the fee is $1250.

Payment

Payment should be in the form of a bank wire, or a corporate or
cashier's check payable to The Internet Bearer Underwriting
Corporation sent to:

IBUC
44 Farquhar Street
Boston, MA 02131

Contact Mr. Hettinga, <rah@ibuc.com>, for wire instructions.

Include the registrants' names and email addresses. Confirmation of
receipt will be sent by digitally signed E-Mail.


Discounts and Scholarships

Depending on circumstances, there may be discounts and complementary
admission for services rendered in kind, and for students and
academics, at the discretion of the Symposium Chair.

SPONSORSHIP OPPORTUNTIES

In addition, sponsorship opportunities are available, in particular
for a keynote speaker, or dinner on either evening. Sponsors would
receive two complementary symposium seats, and reserved table space
for promotional material. Email Mr. Hettinga for details.


SEE YOU IN BOSTON!

If you would like to help create world where the internet
dramatically reduces the cost of moving money, of the transfer of the
ownership of financial assets, digital goods, and internet services,
then Boston is where you should be on April 3rd and 4th, 2002.

We hope to see you there.

Cheers,
Robert A. Hettinga,
Chairman/CEO,
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation



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-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

--- end forwarded text


-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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