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You say that: “Broadly speaking blockchain only solves a singular problem: Trust.” but there is another equally significant contribution that deserves to be ack
by ayewo 6y ago
You say that: “Broadly speaking blockchain only solves a singular problem: Trust.” but there is another equally significant contribution that deserves to be acknowledged: scarcity.
Bits & bytes can be cloned effortlessly by computers which is why a version of Photoshop ripped from a DVD is indistinguishable from the same version downloaded from a CDN as an iso. As long as the hashes match, you wont be able to tell apart the master copy from its 1000th copy.
For money to be valuable, in addition to trust, it also needs to be scarce in the physical sense. Blockchains allow us to engender that illusion of scarcity in the digital world, otherwise it would be impossible to tell apart the binary representation of a $10,000 currency note in one computer node from counterfeits held by other nodes in a network.
- dpc_pw 6y agoThe original poster is right. Blockchain solves distributed trust. Scarcity is a particular rule, and blockchain is solving a problem of trust in that everyone are obeying that rule. You can have a blockchain that enforces completely different rules, where scarcity don't matter. And you can have scarcity in a system where trust is not a problem (trusted central party).
- delecti 6y agoI would argue that scarcity doesn't matter if you have sufficient trust. It's probably fair to say that the majority of global financial transactions are digital. Practically speaking, there's not much stopping any of those institutions from incrementing a few bits here and there, except for trust. The illusion of scarcity matters, but can be maintained with trust.