Financial Cryptography

The8thAnnualFinancialCryptographyConferencewasheldduring9-12Feb- ary 2004 in Key West, Florida, USA. The conference was organized by the - ternational Financial Cryptography Association (IFCA). The program committee, which comprised 25 members, reviewed 78 subm- sions, of which only 17 were accepted for presentation at the conference. This year's conference di?ered somewhat from those of previous years in its c- sideration of papers devoted to implementation, rather than purely conceptual research; one of these submissions was presented at the conference. This rep- sented a movement in the conference toward practical problems and real-world perspectives as a complement to more traditional academic forms of research. In this spirit, the program included a number of excellent invited speakers. In the opening talk of the conference, Jack Selby threw down the gauntlet, - scribing some of the achievements of the PayPal system, but also enumerating reasons for the failures of many elegant e-cash schemes in the past. Ron Rivest, in contrast, described an emerging success in the cleverly conceived Peppercoin micropayment system. Jacques Stern enlightened us with his experience in the cryptographic design of banking cards in France. Simon Pugh unveiled some - tailsofanewgenerationofwirelesscreditcard. Finally,indeferenceto themany consumers in the world lacking either techno-savvy or technological resources that we often too easily take for granted, Jon Peha described a ?elded banking system that avoids reliance on conventional ?nancial infrastructures. Thanks to all of these speakers for rounding out the conference with their expertise and breadth of vision.