Prior discussion of this same link can be found at this other thread (which I had in my list of links below but it felt useful to surface it).

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15700718

So, something maybe-fascinating to people is that Rivest--who designed this scheme--helped start a company to use it on the web to pay for things like news articles and generally replace ads. It was called Peppercoin, and was sufficiently before its time that not only did it fail (well, in the usual YC-sense: it got acquired by something boring and failed to change the world) but a lot of the people working on this technology today have never heard of it ;P.

Here are a million references I have in a note I was collecting back in December on the rise and fall of Peppercoin (which I intended to show to my team at Orchid--where we are trying to apply this technology to a decentralized market for bandwidth and other Internet services: see orchid.com--and then honestly never have as I have been busy; and I considered that, maybe even "best case", this was likely to be a distraction to them as much as it was to me ;P).

background

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=989020

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15272944

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9837380

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17533350

papers

https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.44...

https://people.csail.mit.edu/rivest/pubs/Riv97b.pdf

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.5.1...

https://people.csail.mit.edu/rivest/pubs/Riv04c.slides.slide...

wikis

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppercoin

https://en.bitcoinwiki.org/wiki/Peppercoin

https://ebrary.net/88179/business_finance/micropayments

funding

http://web.archive.org/web/20031002123349/http://www.paidcon...

https://www.buyoutsinsider.com/peppercoin-banks-on-4-3m-in-c...

http://www.econtentmag.com/Articles/News/News-Item/Peppercoi...

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB112430543406915783

launch

https://bizwest.com/2003/10/31/peppercoin-solves-download-pa...

https://www.technologyreview.com/2003/12/01/233570/the-webs-...

https://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/07/technology/circuits/a-vir...

https://nextbillion.net/cashless-transactions-at-the-bop-pep...

"2.0"

https://www.finextra.com/pressarticle/1492/peppercoin-releas...

2004-2005

https://www.digitaltransactions.net/peppercoin-scores-anothe...

https://www.digitaltransactions.net/moneris-signs-up-pepperc...

https://www.bizjournals.com/boston/blog/mass-high-tech/2005/...

https://thepaypers.com/payments-general/peppercoin-small-pay...

banking

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20050112005057/en/Pep...

https://thepaypers.com/payments-general/chase-merchant-servi...

mastercard

https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/14621/peppercoin-and-ma...

https://www.cbronline.com/news/mastercard_and_peppercoin_to_...

https://www.insidearm.com/news/00025887-mastercard-supports-...

https://www.networkworld.com/article/2316448/mastercard-team...

https://www.pressreader.com/usa/san-francisco-chronicle/2005...

"3.0"

https://www.digitaltransactions.net/is-peppercoin-eyeing-opp...

https://www.digitaltransactions.net/peppercoin-3-0-debuts-wi...

operations

https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2006/04/24/charles-casert...

https://www.securetechalliance.org/secure/events/20061003/T0...

2006-2007

https://www.bizjournals.com/boston/stories/2006/07/24/story1...

https://www.insidearm.com/news/00015050-suntrust-merchant-se...

https://www.allwirelessnews.com/features/heartland-payment-s...

acquirement

https://www.americanbanker.com/news/peppercoin-sold-to-orego...

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20070416005392/en/Cho...

https://mashable.com/2007/04/17/peppercoin/

postmortem

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070417/012124.shtml