[Cryptography] What has Bitcoin achieved?

[ianG]

On 4/06/2014 05:33 am, Brian M. Waters wrote:
> On Mon, 02 Jun 2014 18:10:14 +0100
> ianG <iang at iang.org> wrote:
>> We've seen this 'marketing-stretch' in other aspects of successful
>> crypto systems as well.  Same today with the magic blockchain and PoW.
>>
>> Now compare your 32 notaries design.  Where's the light?  The bang?
>> Compared to smartcontracts, blockchains, p2p, silk road .. you've got
>> nothing.
> 
> I'd like to respond to the subject of your email ("What has Bitcoin
> achieved?"), moreso than the content...
> 
> Last year IEEE published a two-part article called "What Happened to
> the Crypto Dream?" on why cypherpunk/Chaum-esque crypto protocols
> haven't caught on in the mainstream. He contrasts the relative failure
> of those ideas in the privacy realm to the success of encryption and
> digital signatures in the security realm:
> 
> http://randomwalker.info/publications/crypto-dream-part1.pdf
> http://randomwalker.info/publications/crypto-dream-part2.pdf
> 
> He cites a lot of reasons, but the one that stuck with me is the fact
> that it's so difficulty for laypeople to grasp those kind of protocols.
> (See "Human Factors" in Part 2.) It's easy enough for laypeople to wrap
> their heads around the ideas of encryption ("scrambling" data) and
> digital signatures ("just like on paper"),


If there is one thing that SSL got right (and I'm pointing here to
success comment above) it was that it was a simple upgrade to the TCP
concept/interface.  There was nothing *directly new* to grasp.  All the
implications were submerged.


> but to most folks, something
> like distributed timestamping *just shouldn't work.* It somehow warps
> the mind and defies one's notion of the laws of the universe! As a
> result, businesses and lawmakers are less likely to invest in
> technology they don't understand, and customers won't buy in because
> they can't even understand how it can help them.


Cash issued by anyone except the government is beyond most people's
minds, but it works and exists, it has existed for a long time, and you
don't have to go far to find it.

The point I think that you're missing here is that people accept that
which works.  In Kenya they have a thing called mPesa which is mobile
money on the phone.  It works.  It is issued by a telco.  Nobody there
really questions it (except the banks) ... because it works.

If there is any mystification, it surrounds why Kenya has it and few
other countries seem to.  But that doesn't matter, not to them.


> One of the most important results of Bitcoin, for me, is that it's
> pushing us back the other way. Distributed digital cash is something
> that should be *impossible* to most people, and yet it's in the news
> every day now. Whether they realize it or not, folks are slowly starting
> to understand that this "crypto" thing means more than just scrambling
> and unscrambling data.


I'm hoping it is the other way around, crypto-technologists are slowly
starting to understand that this "user" thing means more than just
scrambling and unscrambling data...


> With this, we might be in a better place than ever to push forward the
> so-called "cypherpunk dream" and get some of these technologies into
> widespread use, even if we never get to use Bitcoin at the grocery
> store.


There's some sort of twitter competition on the top 5 retailers they
want for Bitcoin.  They've already lost;  retail is by far the worst
idea and sector for a digital money.



iang