[Cryptography] What has Bitcoin achieved?

[ianG]

On 4/06/2014 20:16 pm, Zooko Wilcox-OHearn wrote:
> [disclosure: I'm gnawing on these ideas as a potential new business to launch…]


Welcome!  I've been gnawing at these things for so long I have no limbs
left...


> On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 11:11 AM, ianG <iang at iang.org> wrote:
>>
>> Now, there is another hidden assumption which I must surface:  there is
>> an issuer.  In Bitcoin, there is no 'issuer' of record, nobody who
>> stands behind a contract.  This means that all Bitcoin value (and
>> copies) is limited to supply & demand games;  this is the "copy the gold
>> idea" trick.  It was pulled off once or thrice, but it isn't a trick you
>> can copy more than a few times.
> 
> Have you looked into the "colored coins" and related ideas for using
> an underlying cryptocurrency's anti-double-spending mechanism, and its
> global public ledger, but creating tokens that you can issue as many
> of as you like, and underwrite with an asset of your choice?


Yes.  iiuc, they are IMHO a hack over the top of Bitcoin.  This might be
OK as long as it works well enough, as long as the various flavours play
well together, and if your biz is not sensitive.  But I'm not sure that
these assumptions are reliable.  I've heard the dev team is not
favouring the alternate use of the blockchain.

Also, the token control is not good as yet.  There are one-way pegs
where one destroys bitcoin and gets granted new value, but the idea of
going backwards is a bit fraught or absent.  There is one venture that
is trying to develop the idea of the two-way peg, but I don't know if it
can (again, the core dev team problem).

This is perhaps the reason why Ripple and Ethereum and others decided to
fork entirely;  I also feel that there are many difficulties, and there
isn't the emotional support you would need from the center in order to
base a serious business on.  I know you understand these things because
you saw how much code was in Digicash;  you can't just write a biz
code-base of that size on the hope that the blockchain will let you play
nicely.

It also depends massively on what the business is;  it turns out that
large parts of the market can operate "off-blockchain" which basically
means "we're not doing Bitcoin but we're doing Bitcoin."  Did I mention
signals?


>> (How to take BTC and the Trent-free context and turn that into
>> waste-free zone is a topic of much discussion.  I think I know how to do
>> it, but need to be sure.  This is alchemy, the experiments can blow up.)
> 
> A lot of smart people, and also me, have been chewing on that one for
> a few years now, and I still can't see how to do it. I'd be happy to
> compare notes!


Yeah, I get that.  I've been chewing on it for only a few months ;)  I
recently lost my notes, got them back again, must pick up.


iang