[Cryptography] Satoshi's PGP key.

[Phillip Hallam-Baker]

On Sun, Dec 13, 2015 at 11:42 AM, Ben Laurie <ben at links.org> wrote:

>
>
> On Thu, 10 Dec 2015 at 19:33 Phillip Hallam-Baker <phill at hallambaker.com>
> wrote:
>
>> It seems like a very bad situation to be in. Satoshi generated about a
>> quarter of the coins in the blockchain back before the system caught on.
>>
>> He may have generated the coins and destroyed them or he might still have
>> the private key. In either case he would find it impossible to convince an
>> extortionist or kidnapper that he doesn't have the money.
>>
>
> In other words: you don't think bitcoins are actually worth money - at
> least, not sizeable amounts of it?
>

Well plenty of people were killed or kidnapped for cowry shells back in the
day. it was a major currency in the slave trade.

I have come to learn that when people tell me that I am wrong or being
stupid in a very particular tone, it is because I am absolutely, 100%
right. The argument for BitCoin has always been, 'we need a new money
system, therefore BitCoin must be that new system'.

BitCoin is part technology, part wishful thinking and part tulip mania.
Every possible aspect of BitCoin is taken as being positive, all negative
aspects are dismissed on the grounds that the system is still
'experimental'.

It is like those folk who drone on endlessly about how Linux is absolutely
better than Windows in every possible way. This is an absolute fact that
cannot possibly be untrue in any respect. Therefore any facts which
conflict must be false. When I point out that I can buy pretty much any
graphics card from any manufacturer and be confident my Windows system will
boot flawlessly while my Linux box is unable to drive the nVidia Dual-DVI
card I bought to use with it this is an 'nVidia problem' and they are
'known to be problematic' and what I should actually do is to write my own
driver.

A minimal test for BitCoin would be if the amount of real world
transactions in BitCoin actually exceeded the amount spent on mining. I
rather doubt it.

Equally, any sane test of a 'decentralized currency outside government
control' has to require that people don't end up getting ripped off. So far
there has been vastly more BitCoin fraud than actual trade in legitimate
goods.
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