Before bitcoin, what did DigiCash buyers get, and who set the cash price?

"In 1994, DigiCash launched a public trial and gave out one million dollars in "cyberbucks" to people online."

"you could mint coins, spend them, and the bank could verify them without being able to trace them back to you."

"Similar to credit cards, the system was free to purchasers, while merchants paid a transaction fee."

"The company’s product, Ecash, was implemented by several banks in the 1990s, including Mark Twain Bank in the United States."

"so the user could later spend the token and prove it was valid without revealing which token had been issued to which person."

"The user could spend the digital money at any shop accepting eCash, without having to open an account with the vendor first, or transmitting credit card numbers."

"DigiCash was a form of early electronic payment, which required user software to withdraw notes from a bank and designate specific encrypted keys before it can be sent to a recipient."

"Blind signatures allowed a bank to sign a digital token without seeing its serial number, preserving user anonymity while still preventing counterfeiting."

"In Australia, ecash was implemented by St.George Bank and Advance Bank, but transactions were not free to purchasers."

"Members respected Chaum's cryptography but saw one main issue: eCash still needed a bank."

"This allowed for the withdrawal of notes from a bank via the use of designated encrypted keys."

"DigiCash utilized a digital currency called "cyberbucks.""

"users could withdraw money from a bank in the form of cryptographically blinded tokens, spend them anywhere, and have them redeemed by the bank later, with no way for the bank to link withdrawals to expenditures."

"Chaum's proposal allowed users to obtain digital currency from a bank and spend it in a manner that is untraceable by the bank or any other party."

"For each signed, scrambled banknote that she sends back, Alice Bank subtracts one dollar from Bob’s bank accoun"

"From his adopted home city of Amsterdam, Mr. Chaum founded a company, Digicash Inc., to license the system to banks."

"The user would have privacy. The bank would have certainty."

"Banks could acquire a license from DigiCash to use the technology."

"In keeping with his deep concern for privacy, payments made under the system were anonymous - as with cash, buyers and sellers never needed to know one another's identity."

"users would download the Ecash software, which would store their money digitally by having a bank cryptographically sign it."

"The first electronic payment was sent in 1994."

"By late 1995, eCash was licensed to its first bank: the Mark Twain Bank in St. Louis."

""coins" were exchanged through a closed system: a merchant had to have a depository relationship with same bank the consumer used."

"Of key importance, Alice Bank will see the unscrambled banknotes for the first time only when Carol deposits them!"

"when it began offering an eCash account to every new customer of the Yahoo-Deutsche Bank cobranded credit card."