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Why corruption?

• skybrian 8y ago
  Money attracts thieves. Especially combined with irreversible transactions and at least partial anonymity.
  • andrenth 8y ago
    But isn’t this an argument both against (any) currency and privacy?
    • skybrian 8y ago
      It's an argument for being cautious about handling money and avoiding it if you can. Of course, Internet commerce deals with it a lot, but sometimes it's an unnecessary dependency and removing it simplifies the problem.
    • geofft 8y ago
      Basically yes - if your application needs neither currency nor privacy (e.g., signing Go packages), linking it to a data structure that inherently deals with both would be a mistake. Currency and privacy are both difficult, so avoid bringing in dependencies on them if you don't need them. (Again, the Bitcoin paper is specific in how the data structure is only secure because the consensus algorithm creates financial incentives that hopefully outweigh the incentive to misbehave. If you drop that from a blockchain, it isn't secure any more.)