Anonymous electronic money (was: CAPTCHA over smtp...)

[Joachim Kupke:]
>>> Anonymous electronic money exists.  Oh, it involves C/R, though.
[R. Armiento:]
>> Do you have a reference? I do not know of any existing solutions
>> that let my purchase be anonymous both to the the buyer and all
>> third parties (i.e. "the bank").
[Martin Cosgrave:]
> http://www.jya.com/nsamint.htm

Nice report. Thank you for the link!

The report brings up several cryptographic schemes for the kind of 
anonymous money systems we were discussing. However, it also makes a 
good case to why we will not see this up and running any time soon [see 
Section 5.4 and Conclusions]. For one thing, law enforcement agencies 
around the world will not allow a money system that is completely 
untraceable.

So, ok, in the weakest possible sense of "exists" I accept the statement 
"Anonymous electronic money exists"; that is: the cryptographic 
mathematics needed for such a system has been developed.

However, there is a big step from this kind of "exists" to the kind that 
means that you can go ahead and give me an anonymous electronic money 
token that I can trade in for cash today at an already up-and-running 
paypal-like corporate entity. (But feel free to prove me wrong ;-)

Best regards,
Rickard