Also, we are only talking about a delay long enough to satisfy the longest circuit so you could not push your timestamp very far back and would have to get the fake one done pretty quickly in order for it to be worthwhile. The real question is could you fake a cryptographic timestamp fast enough to actually gain time on the system. Possibly but it would be a very tall order. Steve -----Original Message----- From: Chu, Yi [NTK] [mailto:Yi.Chu@sprint.com] Sent: Wednesday, August 08, 2012 9:01 AM To: Naslund, Steve; nanog@nanog.org Subject: RE: raging bulls What prevents someone to fake an earlier timestamp? Money can bend light, sure can a few msec. yi -----Original Message----- From: Naslund, Steve [mailto:SNaslund@medline.com] Sent: Wednesday, August 08, 2012 9:53 AM To: nanog@nanog.org Subject: RE: raging bulls It seems to me that all the markets have been doing this the wrong way. Would it now be more fair to use some kind of signed timestamp and process all transactions in the order that they originated? Perhaps each trade could have a signed GPS tag with the absolute time on it. It would keep everyone's trades in order no matter how latent their connection to the market was. All you would have to do is introduce a couple of seconds delay to account for the longest circuit and then take them in order. They could certainly use less expensive connections and ensure that international traders get a fair shake. Steven Naslund