Digital Cash

Money is important for us since we can use it to purchase the desired goods and services in a convenient and anonymous way. However, carrying paper cash may be a little annoying sometimes, since the paper cash could be stolen by thieves and become a media for bacteria. So, using the existing cryptographic tools and security measures, can we replace paper cash with digital cash? In this lecture, we will discuss this topic. Digital cash refers to an format of electronic data that mimic the functionalities of paper cash, such as anonymity and transferability. Basically, digital cash is supposed to be stored, transferred, paid, and verified electronically via use of different digital devices (computers, mobile phones etc.) and computer networks, like the Internet. As you know, some forms of money are already in digital formats.