[Cryptography] What has Bitcoin achieved?

tpb-crypto at laposte.net tpb-crypto at laposte.net
Thu Jun 5 16:47:09 EDT 2014


> Message du 04/06/14 20:40
> De : "John Levine" 
>
> >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.
> 
> It's certainly true that people don't understand crypto or Bitcoin
> very well, but it's not just that. Bitcoin differs from ordinary
> online payments like credit card or Dwolla in a few significant ways.
> 
> 1. Bitcoin payments are irreversible.
> 2. Bitcoin's value is unmanaged.
> 3. Bitcoin payments are somewhat more anonymous.
> 4. Bitcoin payments are, for now at least, very cheap.
> 
> Everyone agrees that #4 is an improvement, but for most people, #3 is
> indifferent and #1 and #2 are actively worse. It is not a bug that my
> credit card transactions can under some circumstances be reversed, and
> it is not a bug that central banks manage currency values to avoid
> large fluctuations. 
> 

Numbers 1 and 4 are tightly coupled, it is cheap exactly because it is irreversible. If you don't have the cost of executing reversions, neither the infrastructure to do it, that makes Bitcoin-like systems as a whole cheaper.

I dare say we would be better off without transaction reversions, because in the end reversions give people a false sense of security that makes them irresponsible and demands a huge infrastructure to deal with it. The only ones gaining from it are those charging to execute the service itself.


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