9 ms·

The first cryptocurrency using proof-of-passport

46 points by kseistrup 6y ago

vzaliva 6y ago
the web site is very brief on the passport verification mechanism. Anybody can explain how it works? I understand they are compatible with passports with a chip. How do they read them? NFC? OCR a string of letters inside the passport? I would love to hear a report from somebody who tried it.
- striking 6y ago
  > This is done by reading the unique digital signature the government apposed in the NFC chip included in your passport. Your personal data such as your name or facial image are not read out during this process and your identity remains hidden from the other UBIC participants.
- haal 6y ago
  Technical details can be found here: https://github.com/UBIC-repo/Whitepaper/blob/master/README.md#non-transferable-proof-of-signature-knowledge https://github.com/UBIC-repo/Whitepaper/blob/master/README.m...
- Animats 6y ago
  Forget the cryptocurrency stuff. Being able to verify online identity with a passport and phone is valuable and has many other uses.
- Aaargh20318 6y ago
  > How do they read them? NFC? OCR a string of letters inside the passport? I actually work on software that does this. To read a passport you first need to OCR the two lines of text at the bottom of the data page, the machine readable zone or MRZ (actually: you only need the document number, date of birth and date of expiry, but OCRing the MRZ is the easiest way to input these without error). These 3 pieces of data form a kind of password to access the chip, this is so someone can't skim your passport, they have to already be looking at the data page with all your info before they can access the same info in the chip. (Note that there is an additional way on some passports, which uses a PIN code printed on the passport but this isn't very common yet). Once you got the key, you can authenticate yourself towards the chip and read its data. The data is digitally signed by the government of the issuing country and if you have the root certificates you an verify the data is genuine and not tampered with. Then there is also a mechanism to detect if the chip is not a copy, which is what the cryptocurrency seems to use, called 'active authentication'. You basically send an 8-byte challenge to the passport, which signs it and returns the signature. The passport's public key is readable, the private key is not and stored in a secure way in the chip. By verifying the response against the public key you verify the chip is not a copy. This public key is part of the signed data so you can form a chain-of-trust back to the signing authority. Notice that what this cryptocurrency is doing (signing data using a passport) is considered a problem by some governments (specifically Germany) and thus a new standard was created called EAC-CA (Extended Access Control - Chip Authentication) that specifically prevents this from happening. Both AA and EAC-CA are optional features.
  - NotSammyHagar 6y ago
    Is there any danger is using the app and exposing the information in your passport to this app? I'd think so, otherwise why all that effort to keep the information from being skimmed.
    - Aaargh20318 6y ago
      Obviously the potential for abuse is high; if you don’t trust the author of the app then I certainly wouldn’t use it. Passports contain personal information, a color photo of the holder, and optionally can contain a copy of your signature or fingerprints. Note that some information can be behind an additional level of access control called EAC-TA (Extended access control - terminal authentication). For example the fingerprints in Dutch passports are protected like this. Accessing them requires a certificate which is so closely guarded that hardly anyone has access to it.
      - NotSammyHagar 6y ago
        That is why I was concerned. But if you read through the technical descriptions in this hacker news discussion, some people say you are only verifying that the information in it is a valid and unique passport, effectively. I want someone with more information than me to state a definitive answer of the dangers here. Let my try asking the questions: 1. The user info that leads to that 'key' or hash, they get that name and number on the inside, and that's a hash to verify that its a passport issued by a real authority? 2. Isn't there a danger in leaking that internal information in #1? If there was no danger, then they wouldn't put it on the inside, right? 3, Do they have access to further information when they get that hash and verify what else is contained? Is this access to everything that is encoded? It seems not. I think that you are leaking that information on the inside cover, that is of little use to outside people who don't have your passport. They'd know of your existence, and they'd maybe be able to use it if they ever got your passport? I don't want to speculate on important information like your passport credentials.
        Aaargh20318 6y ago
theamk 6y ago
By why? Cryptocurrencies used to at least claim to be useful, but this one does not even try to? Is there a need it fulfills, or some advantage over one of the thousands of existing ones?
- fungos 6y ago
  This is useful.. to someone. They are just collecting a lot of passport information.
  - kylebenzle 6y ago
    Would love to know why HN is so blindly anti-crypto.
    - arcticbull 6y ago
      I realize the appeal of it: it's just complicated enough it makes normal people think there's something to it. It's just full enough of tough technical challenges engineers have something to bite into. It's just futuristic enough to make everyone believe it's the future. And it's just ancap enough to inspire those fearful of the government and the world. Then it made a handful of people wealthy and inspired fomo. But at the end of the day it's just a negative-sum solution in search of a problem, riddled with holes big enough to drive a dump truck through, wasting the world's resources, likely created by a Bond-villain-esque racist narcotics trafficker to move his money around [1]. And all the "pricing" of every single coin is controlled by a giant fraud perpetrated by Bitfinex and Tether that bagholders are intrinsically disincentivized from exposing -- all to avoid anti-money laundering / AML/KYC regulations. It's twelve years of solution in search of problem, with nothing legal to show for it. Except Sia, I guess, I dunno, that's what some people have told me, but that still seems better solved by AWS to me. [1] https://www.wired.com/story/was-bitcoin-created-by-this-international-drug-dealer-maybe/ https://www.wired.com/story/was-bitcoin-created-by-this-inte...
      - unethical_ban 6y ago
        I have never seen someone dismiss the ideas behind cryptocurrency or the failings of modern banking as blindingly as this post. Your criticisms are a tautology - any defense put against it will be disarmed by your pre-rejection of anarchism, decentralization, applied cryptographic research, or real-world improvements to banking and the exchange of currency. Some of your assertions could even be correct (who invented it, problems with architecture, energy consumption) and you would still be out of line with the wholesale dismissal of all its concepts.
greyface- 6y ago
Recent, related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23066477 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23066477
toomanybeersies 6y ago
It's a universal basic income. It requires a passport. Those two assertions are contradictory. Not everyone has a passport, a lot of people (especially lower-income, which UBIs tend to be pitched as being the most beneficial for) don't own passports. I suppose it's more a proof of concept than an actual serious attempt at creating a cryptocurrency.
- kylebenzle 6y ago
  If people want the UBI they need to get a passport. Are there people that are not eligible for a passport?
  - striking 6y ago
    In the US, it's not mandatory that you get one. Many people don't get one unless they plan to leave the country. This is especially true given that many driver's licenses are valid as a form of federally recognized ID here (i.e. you can fly domestically or whatever). The people "not eligible" for a passport are those too poor to afford the process or those without any other reason to get one.
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    That's just not true. Only 42% of Americans have passports. A passport is not in and of itself required to live in a country, just to leave one. It's also expensive -- out of reach for many lower income folks. All you really need to get UBI is proof of citizenship, like a birth certificate.
  - mannykannot 6y ago
    Many refugees have no feasible means of obtaining a passport. Many people are too poor to pay the bribes that would be necessary to get a passport they are nominally entitled to. Others may find it impossible in practice on account of being of the "wrong" ethnic minority.
  - DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
    Never-mind that passports tend to be expensive (relatively speaking, for the average person), many countries don’t issue passports for a variety of reasons: the UK will refuse to issue - or confiscate - passports of football hooligans specifically - or suspected terror-tourists, I’m sure other democracies have similar policies, let alone more authoritarian regimes.
anm89 6y ago
I guess this is kind of interesting but what's the value in holding the coins? I do all of this to hold monopoly money?
- espoir666 6y ago
  Prices are pushed by consensus
Gys 6y ago
It does not say anything about loosing your pasport. I wonder what that might do. I am assuming they at least cover the case of replacing your pasport when it expires as it is a known date.
- arcticbull 6y ago
  Just like any other cryptocurrency: you lose your keys, you lose your coins, end of story. That's one of the many reasons crypto is utterly worthless.
  - elil17 6y ago
    I mean, you also lose your money if you lose paper bills. Makes it difficult to use as a store of value, but not as a medium of exchange.
    - arcticbull 6y ago
      It's possible to store your paper somewhere that's not the case. It's not possible to do the same with crypto. There is no workaround for crypto -- intentionally so. Not to mention, mediums of exchange aren't supposed to fluctuate 10% in value in minutes, for reasons that should be immediately obvious, and it certainly shouldn't be priced in USDT / Tether Funbux.
      - elil17 6y ago
        Anywhere you can store a dollar bill, I can store a piece of paper with my private key written on it. Yes, it absolutely is rendered less useful by the fluctuation of exchange rate.
        arcticbull 6y ago
        Not in a real bank, which is insured by the FDIC so in the event it becomes insolvent I get my money back. Unlike an exchange where I get a big ol' SFYL.
joeblau 6y ago
I just checked their block explorer[1] and it looks like 98% of the passports are Chinese. https://ubic.network https://ubic.network
- haal 6y ago
  The chinese UBIC coin reached a very high OTC price there. A passport would generate about 4$ of daily income. This attracted a lot of people. Now that figure has halved.
  - joeblau 6y ago
    That’s interesting. I need to spend more time and look into how this works.
  - sfj 6y ago
    Do you have a source for this? It's not listed on any exchange, so I wonder how people are using it.
wyldfire 6y ago
This is no better than Libra or Fortnite VBucks: if you have to trust someone or some group, it's not a cryptocoin, it's just entries on someone else's ledger.
- josh2600 6y ago
  I don't understand what you mean... Even in bitcoin you're still trusting some group with a K of N majority agreeing on some software.
  - wyldfire 6y ago
    No, to verify the ledger you only need to trust the genesis block.
elil17 6y ago
The iPhone app can't actually scan passports - they should make this clear on the website
- daenz 6y ago
  Even if they did, would you trust it?
  - elil17 6y ago
    Yeah actually - if you know anything about how passports work, you can't actually do anything when interacting with the passport besides confirm its validity.
    - iancarroll 6y ago
      This is dangerously incorrect. Based on the level of authentication the reader is able to establish (this is likely only basic authentication), you can read the person's photo and other PII, and at higher authentication levels you can read out their biometrics. Good luck rotating your fingerprints.
      - elil17 6y ago
        Oh shit I looked up the e-Passport specification and you're totally right. Well, at least I have my imaginary internet points :/
- haal 6y ago
  It does work, by putting the smartphone on the inner cover of the passport because some have an Aluminium shell in the cover. The chip can be on the first or the last page. Here is a video link: https://youtu.be/NqRPXYNtq7M https://youtu.be/NqRPXYNtq7M
  - elil17 6y ago
    Oh that worked - thank you!
dogcomplex 6y ago
"Buy why?" If you have proof of passport, you have proof of identity (at least up to the difficulty of obtaining a counterfeit passport - pretty expensive). If you have proof of identity, you have secure private online voting. You also have solved the astroturfing bot problems, and multiple-accounts problems on most communication platforms. Want to get into cryptocurrency-specific applications? If you used that proof-of-passport design and issued an inflationary currency around it such that inflation was issued one-coin-per-passport, then you have a currency that auto-taxes the rich and auto-distributes a UBI (parameterized however you like). Could be governed via online voting. Would need to have considerable penalties (or bounties) to those who are found with fake passports though. This currency could be quickly substituted with effectively no usable difference to most people for anything currently purchasable with Bitcoin/Ethereum/etc. It could also be used as a decentralized asset registration system for non-cash assets. If enough people simply held and used this currency as opposed to other crypto or USD/etc, and enough started requiring buyers/sellers to use it (for political reasons at first, then later practical reasons) then its price would quickly stabilize and make it a reserve currency, and there's not much any other party could do to stop it. Participation in the economy could then effectively require use of this currency, which means effectively registering your assets and your accounts under a single identity and exposing those assets to automatic taxation in their effective value due to inflation. It is simply built into the system at that point. Though this inflation relationship could be set to be a net benefit users up to a net worth of e.g. 2 million USD equivalent. This also opens the doors for automated anonymous auditing of assets, anonymous proof-of-ownership, etc. Enter "but we could do this already without cryptocurrencies!" - sure, probably. But now you can do it without centralized control of the system by anyone.
- notahacker 6y ago
  > But now you can do it without centralized control of the system by anyone Except ICAO's short list of centralized bodies issuing the passports you need to participate, an exclusive club of the same sort of government bodies that regulate traditional currency...
  - dogcomplex 6y ago
mofeien 6y ago
I am kind of shocked and glad to see someone has already built this -- for the last few years I have been thinking on and off about an electronic ID based crypto currency UBI. I see the biggest challenges to the succes of such a project in: - hardware difficulties: many android phones do not support the extended APDU commands necessary to use the digital signing application of the chip on the passport. If UBIC is not immediately usable on almost every phone, it may not find wide adoption. And an UBI like this only gains value through adoption. - government restriction of passport use: afaik, the German ID card can only be used to digitally sign data from sanctioned sources, i. e. your service that uses the ID card to sign data must first authorize itself to the ID card using a valid certificate issued by a government certificate authority. - government sabotage: while flooding the system with fake passport certificates might mean bad PR, the government ultimately controls all the trust anchors and will do this if UBIC gets dangerous. It's good to have different UBICs per country, this way the power of a single government is limited. - privacy: since reliable passport revocation is not available, proof of passport is not enough to prevent multiple passport use. I think, aside from schemes where people meet in person and check each other's passports, only a non-anonymous proof of identity system will work.

46 points by kseistrup 6y ago

the web site is very brief on the passport verification mechanism. Anybody can explain how it works? I understand they are compatible with passports with a chip. How do they read them? NFC? OCR a string of letters inside the passport? I would love to hear a report from somebody who tried it.

striking 6y ago
> This is done by reading the unique digital signature the government apposed in the NFC chip included in your passport. Your personal data such as your name or facial image are not read out during this process and your identity remains hidden from the other UBIC participants.
haal 6y ago
Technical details can be found here: https://github.com/UBIC-repo/Whitepaper/blob/master/README.md#non-transferable-proof-of-signature-knowledge https://github.com/UBIC-repo/Whitepaper/blob/master/README.m...
Animats 6y ago
Forget the cryptocurrency stuff. Being able to verify online identity with a passport and phone is valuable and has many other uses.
Aaargh20318 6y ago
> How do they read them? NFC? OCR a string of letters inside the passport? I actually work on software that does this. To read a passport you first need to OCR the two lines of text at the bottom of the data page, the machine readable zone or MRZ (actually: you only need the document number, date of birth and date of expiry, but OCRing the MRZ is the easiest way to input these without error). These 3 pieces of data form a kind of password to access the chip, this is so someone can't skim your passport, they have to already be looking at the data page with all your info before they can access the same info in the chip. (Note that there is an additional way on some passports, which uses a PIN code printed on the passport but this isn't very common yet). Once you got the key, you can authenticate yourself towards the chip and read its data. The data is digitally signed by the government of the issuing country and if you have the root certificates you an verify the data is genuine and not tampered with. Then there is also a mechanism to detect if the chip is not a copy, which is what the cryptocurrency seems to use, called 'active authentication'. You basically send an 8-byte challenge to the passport, which signs it and returns the signature. The passport's public key is readable, the private key is not and stored in a secure way in the chip. By verifying the response against the public key you verify the chip is not a copy. This public key is part of the signed data so you can form a chain-of-trust back to the signing authority. Notice that what this cryptocurrency is doing (signing data using a passport) is considered a problem by some governments (specifically Germany) and thus a new standard was created called EAC-CA (Extended Access Control - Chip Authentication) that specifically prevents this from happening. Both AA and EAC-CA are optional features.
- NotSammyHagar 6y ago
  Is there any danger is using the app and exposing the information in your passport to this app? I'd think so, otherwise why all that effort to keep the information from being skimmed.
  - Aaargh20318 6y ago
    Obviously the potential for abuse is high; if you don’t trust the author of the app then I certainly wouldn’t use it. Passports contain personal information, a color photo of the holder, and optionally can contain a copy of your signature or fingerprints. Note that some information can be behind an additional level of access control called EAC-TA (Extended access control - terminal authentication). For example the fingerprints in Dutch passports are protected like this. Accessing them requires a certificate which is so closely guarded that hardly anyone has access to it.
    - NotSammyHagar 6y ago
      That is why I was concerned. But if you read through the technical descriptions in this hacker news discussion, some people say you are only verifying that the information in it is a valid and unique passport, effectively. I want someone with more information than me to state a definitive answer of the dangers here. Let my try asking the questions: 1. The user info that leads to that 'key' or hash, they get that name and number on the inside, and that's a hash to verify that its a passport issued by a real authority? 2. Isn't there a danger in leaking that internal information in #1? If there was no danger, then they wouldn't put it on the inside, right? 3, Do they have access to further information when they get that hash and verify what else is contained? Is this access to everything that is encoded? It seems not. I think that you are leaking that information on the inside cover, that is of little use to outside people who don't have your passport. They'd know of your existence, and they'd maybe be able to use it if they ever got your passport? I don't want to speculate on important information like your passport credentials.
      - Aaargh20318 6y ago

theamk 6y ago

By why? Cryptocurrencies used to at least claim to be useful, but this one does not even try to? Is there a need it fulfills, or some advantage over one of the thousands of existing ones?

fungos 6y ago
This is useful.. to someone. They are just collecting a lot of passport information.
- kylebenzle 6y ago
  Would love to know why HN is so blindly anti-crypto.
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    I realize the appeal of it: it's just complicated enough it makes normal people think there's something to it. It's just full enough of tough technical challenges engineers have something to bite into. It's just futuristic enough to make everyone believe it's the future. And it's just ancap enough to inspire those fearful of the government and the world. Then it made a handful of people wealthy and inspired fomo. But at the end of the day it's just a negative-sum solution in search of a problem, riddled with holes big enough to drive a dump truck through, wasting the world's resources, likely created by a Bond-villain-esque racist narcotics trafficker to move his money around [1]. And all the "pricing" of every single coin is controlled by a giant fraud perpetrated by Bitfinex and Tether that bagholders are intrinsically disincentivized from exposing -- all to avoid anti-money laundering / AML/KYC regulations. It's twelve years of solution in search of problem, with nothing legal to show for it. Except Sia, I guess, I dunno, that's what some people have told me, but that still seems better solved by AWS to me. [1] https://www.wired.com/story/was-bitcoin-created-by-this-international-drug-dealer-maybe/ https://www.wired.com/story/was-bitcoin-created-by-this-inte...
    - unethical_ban 6y ago
      I have never seen someone dismiss the ideas behind cryptocurrency or the failings of modern banking as blindingly as this post. Your criticisms are a tautology - any defense put against it will be disarmed by your pre-rejection of anarchism, decentralization, applied cryptographic research, or real-world improvements to banking and the exchange of currency. Some of your assertions could even be correct (who invented it, problems with architecture, energy consumption) and you would still be out of line with the wholesale dismissal of all its concepts.

greyface- 6y ago

Recent, related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23066477 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23066477

toomanybeersies 6y ago

It's a universal basic income. It requires a passport. Those two assertions are contradictory. Not everyone has a passport, a lot of people (especially lower-income, which UBIs tend to be pitched as being the most beneficial for) don't own passports. I suppose it's more a proof of concept than an actual serious attempt at creating a cryptocurrency.

kylebenzle 6y ago
If people want the UBI they need to get a passport. Are there people that are not eligible for a passport?
- striking 6y ago
  In the US, it's not mandatory that you get one. Many people don't get one unless they plan to leave the country. This is especially true given that many driver's licenses are valid as a form of federally recognized ID here (i.e. you can fly domestically or whatever). The people "not eligible" for a passport are those too poor to afford the process or those without any other reason to get one.
- arcticbull 6y ago
  That's just not true. Only 42% of Americans have passports. A passport is not in and of itself required to live in a country, just to leave one. It's also expensive -- out of reach for many lower income folks. All you really need to get UBI is proof of citizenship, like a birth certificate.
- mannykannot 6y ago
  Many refugees have no feasible means of obtaining a passport. Many people are too poor to pay the bribes that would be necessary to get a passport they are nominally entitled to. Others may find it impossible in practice on account of being of the "wrong" ethnic minority.
- DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
  Never-mind that passports tend to be expensive (relatively speaking, for the average person), many countries don’t issue passports for a variety of reasons: the UK will refuse to issue - or confiscate - passports of football hooligans specifically - or suspected terror-tourists, I’m sure other democracies have similar policies, let alone more authoritarian regimes.

anm89 6y ago

I guess this is kind of interesting but what's the value in holding the coins? I do all of this to hold monopoly money?

espoir666 6y ago
Prices are pushed by consensus

Gys 6y ago

It does not say anything about loosing your pasport. I wonder what that might do. I am assuming they at least cover the case of replacing your pasport when it expires as it is a known date.

arcticbull 6y ago
Just like any other cryptocurrency: you lose your keys, you lose your coins, end of story. That's one of the many reasons crypto is utterly worthless.
- elil17 6y ago
  I mean, you also lose your money if you lose paper bills. Makes it difficult to use as a store of value, but not as a medium of exchange.
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    It's possible to store your paper somewhere that's not the case. It's not possible to do the same with crypto. There is no workaround for crypto -- intentionally so. Not to mention, mediums of exchange aren't supposed to fluctuate 10% in value in minutes, for reasons that should be immediately obvious, and it certainly shouldn't be priced in USDT / Tether Funbux.
    - elil17 6y ago
      Anywhere you can store a dollar bill, I can store a piece of paper with my private key written on it. Yes, it absolutely is rendered less useful by the fluctuation of exchange rate.
      - arcticbull 6y ago
        Not in a real bank, which is insured by the FDIC so in the event it becomes insolvent I get my money back. Unlike an exchange where I get a big ol' SFYL.

joeblau 6y ago

I just checked their block explorer[1] and it looks like 98% of the passports are Chinese. https://ubic.network https://ubic.network

haal 6y ago
The chinese UBIC coin reached a very high OTC price there. A passport would generate about 4$ of daily income. This attracted a lot of people. Now that figure has halved.
- joeblau 6y ago
  That’s interesting. I need to spend more time and look into how this works.
- sfj 6y ago
  Do you have a source for this? It's not listed on any exchange, so I wonder how people are using it.

wyldfire 6y ago

This is no better than Libra or Fortnite VBucks: if you have to trust someone or some group, it's not a cryptocoin, it's just entries on someone else's ledger.

josh2600 6y ago
I don't understand what you mean... Even in bitcoin you're still trusting some group with a K of N majority agreeing on some software.
- wyldfire 6y ago
  No, to verify the ledger you only need to trust the genesis block.

elil17 6y ago

The iPhone app can't actually scan passports - they should make this clear on the website

daenz 6y ago
Even if they did, would you trust it?
- elil17 6y ago
  Yeah actually - if you know anything about how passports work, you can't actually do anything when interacting with the passport besides confirm its validity.
  - iancarroll 6y ago
    This is dangerously incorrect. Based on the level of authentication the reader is able to establish (this is likely only basic authentication), you can read the person's photo and other PII, and at higher authentication levels you can read out their biometrics. Good luck rotating your fingerprints.
    - elil17 6y ago
      Oh shit I looked up the e-Passport specification and you're totally right. Well, at least I have my imaginary internet points :/
haal 6y ago
It does work, by putting the smartphone on the inner cover of the passport because some have an Aluminium shell in the cover. The chip can be on the first or the last page. Here is a video link: https://youtu.be/NqRPXYNtq7M https://youtu.be/NqRPXYNtq7M
- elil17 6y ago
  Oh that worked - thank you!

dogcomplex 6y ago

"Buy why?" If you have proof of passport, you have proof of identity (at least up to the difficulty of obtaining a counterfeit passport - pretty expensive). If you have proof of identity, you have secure private online voting. You also have solved the astroturfing bot problems, and multiple-accounts problems on most communication platforms. Want to get into cryptocurrency-specific applications? If you used that proof-of-passport design and issued an inflationary currency around it such that inflation was issued one-coin-per-passport, then you have a currency that auto-taxes the rich and auto-distributes a UBI (parameterized however you like). Could be governed via online voting. Would need to have considerable penalties (or bounties) to those who are found with fake passports though. This currency could be quickly substituted with effectively no usable difference to most people for anything currently purchasable with Bitcoin/Ethereum/etc. It could also be used as a decentralized asset registration system for non-cash assets. If enough people simply held and used this currency as opposed to other crypto or USD/etc, and enough started requiring buyers/sellers to use it (for political reasons at first, then later practical reasons) then its price would quickly stabilize and make it a reserve currency, and there's not much any other party could do to stop it. Participation in the economy could then effectively require use of this currency, which means effectively registering your assets and your accounts under a single identity and exposing those assets to automatic taxation in their effective value due to inflation. It is simply built into the system at that point. Though this inflation relationship could be set to be a net benefit users up to a net worth of e.g. 2 million USD equivalent. This also opens the doors for automated anonymous auditing of assets, anonymous proof-of-ownership, etc. Enter "but we could do this already without cryptocurrencies!" - sure, probably. But now you can do it without centralized control of the system by anyone.

notahacker 6y ago
> But now you can do it without centralized control of the system by anyone Except ICAO's short list of centralized bodies issuing the passports you need to participate, an exclusive club of the same sort of government bodies that regulate traditional currency...
- dogcomplex 6y ago

mofeien 6y ago

I am kind of shocked and glad to see someone has already built this -- for the last few years I have been thinking on and off about an electronic ID based crypto currency UBI. I see the biggest challenges to the succes of such a project in: - hardware difficulties: many android phones do not support the extended APDU commands necessary to use the digital signing application of the chip on the passport. If UBIC is not immediately usable on almost every phone, it may not find wide adoption. And an UBI like this only gains value through adoption. - government restriction of passport use: afaik, the German ID card can only be used to digitally sign data from sanctioned sources, i. e. your service that uses the ID card to sign data must first authorize itself to the ID card using a valid certificate issued by a government certificate authority. - government sabotage: while flooding the system with fake passport certificates might mean bad PR, the government ultimately controls all the trust anchors and will do this if UBIC gets dangerous. It's good to have different UBICs per country, this way the power of a single government is limited. - privacy: since reliable passport revocation is not available, proof of passport is not enough to prevent multiple passport use. I think, aside from schemes where people meet in person and check each other's passports, only a non-anonymous proof of identity system will work.