Many proposals for the design and implementation of digital wallets assume that the purpose of the wallet is to enable offline payments via custodial accounts, ignoring the real problems faced by individuals and businesses that engage in retail payments, such as the anticompetitive behaviour of payment platforms and the decline of cash. More importantly, the proposals ignore the raison d'être of digital currency as a kind of digital money that can be held independently of custodians. Finally, the proposals demonstrate a profound lack of imagination about the nature of digital money and the devices that could be used to hold, manage, and exchange it. From these presumptions flows a set of architectural requirements that stifle the promise of digital currency to deliver novel and efficient ways to exchange value in the digital economy. In this article, we critically assess the essential problems that digital currency solutions are being proposed to solve, particularly with respect to the future of payments and the future of cash. We assess the validity of common justifications for account-based payments and certified hardware in the context of alternative designs, limitations, and trade-offs. We conclude that the interests of consumers would be better served by design approaches to digital currency that anticipate that digital assets would be held outside accounts, stored offline, but transacted online, without requiring the use of trusted hardware.

翻译：当前许多数字钱包的设计与实施方案均假定钱包的核心功能在于通过托管账户实现离线支付，却忽视了个人与企业进行零售支付时面临的实际问题，例如支付平台的垄断行为与现金使用的式微。更重要的是，这些方案忽视了数字货币作为一种可独立于托管方持有的数字货币这一根本存在意义。最后，这些方案对数字货币的本质及其存储、管理与交换设备展现出严重的想象力匮乏。基于这些预设，衍生出一系列架构性要求，扼杀了数字货币在数字经济中实现创新高效价值交换的潜力。本文批判性地评估了数字货币方案旨在解决的核心问题，特别是在支付未来与现金未来方面的考量。我们在替代设计方案、技术限制与权衡取舍的背景下，检验了基于账户的支付与认证硬件的常见论证依据。我们的结论是：若采用预期数字资产可脱离账户存储、离线保存但在线交易，且无需依赖可信硬件的数字货币设计思路，将能更好地服务于消费者的利益。