Electronic Currency-DigiCash

DigiCash Inc. was a pioneering electronic currency corporation founded by David Chaum in 1990. DigiCash transactions were unique in that were anonymous due to number cryptographic protocols developed by its founder. DigiCash declared bankruptcy in 1998, and subsequently sold its assets to ecash Techologies, another digital currency company which was acquired by InfoSpace on Feb, 19, 2002.

There were some reasons I searching on the internet DigiCash failed:

DigiCash is the techno-determinist view, more fashionable version according to which technology is developing according to some inherent, independent route. Thus, DigiCash was too good a technology, it did not wish it to be used by certain people and they refused, different to the requests of the banks, to allow accountless operation. This meant that to use DigiCash effectively, everyone has to have an account with a DigiCash supporting bank. This disadvantaged the customers of the privacy DigiCash was supposed to provide and created simulated to people who wished to use DigiCash.

Furthermore, DigiCash was too good a technology, too high-tech and over-developed. When it encountered real on-line behaviour this made it impossible to change the technology to reflect those different interests, not because it wasn't good enough, but because it was so well constructed that nobody dared to use with it.

Many of the major new technologies have undergone series of deep changes under the influence of multiple non-technical and just think of history. But, the micro-payments are being promoted by IBM and Digital/Compaq, companies that can also mobilize very significant resources. By the time when these technologies appear on the 'market' most of the major decisions will already been made.