alt Hacker NewsUntraceable is your invention and obviously absurd and unworkable.
No scheme is going to issue cards/tokens that can be traded between people, that's obviously unworkable.
Untraceable is for the consumers of the cards obviously, but in order to have trust they need to be traceable for somebody to verify them. The government can already determine who you are and already requires you to prove that at certain points, this is not a new invention of government it is required for governments to function.
It’s not my invention. It’s in the article. The physical card proposed contains nothing traceable. “They issue a card that says only one thing: "over 18". The card carries official seals, signatures, and anti-forgery features.”
If you put an id on the card, then it’s a layer of indirection, but you’ve still handed them a unique personal identifier.
Traceable credentials are fundamentally not privacy preserving, because that’s what traceable means.