<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div>On Dec 16, 2013, at 4:33 PM, Greg wrote:</div></div>...completely missing the point of Ben's paper. It really comes down to the following:<div><br></div><div>"<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: CMR10; font-size: 13px; ">So now we have either an existence proof of an efficient solution, or a proof that
Bitcoin doesn’t work."</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: CMR10; font-size: 13px; "><br></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: CMR10; font-size: 13px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Courier; font-size: medium; ">All the criticisms of the "efficient solution" are irrelevant, as the point of the paper was that *no one knows of an efficient solution (to the group consensus problem) and few believe there is one*. The paper is offered as a proof by contrapositive that "Bitcoin doesn't work" - though you have to read that phrase in context. What's being denied is that "Bitcoin is a decentralized currency" in the sense described in the paper.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: CMR10; font-size: 13px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Courier; font-size: medium; "><br></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: CMR10; font-size: 13px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Courier; font-size: medium; ">Note the title of the paper! Or just read the last paragraph of the abstract:</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: CMR10; font-size: 13px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Courier; font-size: medium; "><br></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: CMR10; font-size: 13px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Courier; font-size: medium; ">"</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: CMR10; font-size: 13px; ">Both Bitcoin and my alternative proposal suffer from a problem for which there
is no known solution: creating consensus in a group with open, changing membership. But at least my proposal fails in an energy efficient way, unlike Bitcoin."</span></div><div><div> -- Jerry</div></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div></body></html>