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No, Bitcoin was never supposed to be "against Davos meetings". These consensus meetings are all and only about increasing network capacity, that is all. You see
by mrb 10y ago
No, Bitcoin was never supposed to be "against Davos meetings". These consensus meetings are all and only about increasing network capacity, that is all. You seem to conflate different concepts without understanding them. I suggest you read the Introduction of Satoshi's famous whitepaper¹. In short Bitcoin is about: (1) providing non-reversible electronic transactions, (2) reducing transaction costs, and (3) enabling micro-transactions:
"Commerce on the Internet has come to rely almost exclusively on financial institutions serving as
trusted third parties to process electronic payments. While the system works well enough for
most transactions, it still suffers from the inherent weaknesses of the trust based model.
Completely non-reversible transactions are not really possible, since financial institutions cannot
avoid mediating disputes. The cost of mediation increases transaction costs, limiting the
minimum practical transaction size and cutting off the possibility for small casual transactions,
and there is a broader cost in the loss of ability to make non-reversible payments for nonreversible
services. With the possibility of reversal, the need for trust spreads. Merchants must
be wary of their customers, hassling them for more information than they would otherwise need.
A certain percentage of fraud is accepted as unavoidable. These costs and payment uncertainties
can be avoided in person by using physical currency, but no mechanism exists to make payments
over a communications channel without a trusted party."
¹ https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
- argonaut 10y agoCommerce on the Internet has come to rely almost exclusively on financial institutions serving as trusted third parties to process electronic payments. While the system works well enough for most transactions, it still suffers from the inherent weaknesses of the trust based model The problem with [a trusted central authority] is that the fate of the entire money system depends on the company running the mint, with every transaction having to go through them, just like a bank. Sure, it's hard to say exactly what Bitcoin is for or against, given that it's a multi-faceted community with many different goals. But to deny that decentralization and lack of central planning is a huge motivation / driver / goal of both the original inception of Bitcoin, and also the community that developed around Bitcoin, is pretty hard to believe.
- mrb 10y agoYes it is hard to say what Bitcoin is for or against. But to be clear: it is not "central planning" in general that the Bitcoin community is against. The community wants no central planning of the MONETARY POLICY (eg. they want no long-term inflation). That is why there is a fixed 21 millions coins (therefore no policy to decide about), which is arguably one of the most liked property of Bitcoin. The original poster insinuated Bitcoin needed all-powerful policy planners ("Davos meetings"), which is false. All that is taking place is community discussions about scaling (block size increase), but it would be absolutely incorrect to compare this to "Davos meetings".
- argonaut 10y agoAll you've repeated is that they're not the same. You haven't actually given any reasons why this is the case.