An electronic asset system mints a stick of electronic assets that can be spent
by the user with multiple vendors. Assets sticks are issued anonymously or non-anonymously
in a way without requiring dedication to a particular vendor, hence allowing the
user to spend one or more assets from the stick with different vendors. The auditor
randomly audit samples of the spent assets to detect whether the assets have been
fraudulently used. The electronic asset system employs tamper-resistant electronic
wallets constructed as dedicated hardware devices, or as devices with secure-processor
architecture. The electronic asset system also facilitates handling of electronic
coupons in a manner that enforces compliance between the user and the vendor. The
user and vendor each maintain a stick of corresponding coupons with pointers to
the most recent and oldest coupons available for expenditure. When a coupon is
used or granted, the user and vendor both update the appropriate pointer to their
respective sticks and then exchange signed data describing placement of the pointer
to verify a correspondence between the referenced coupons.