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What's protected by math is the custody of the coins. The system is a delicate balancing act of incentives, math and social consensus. It's common among detract
by TheBlight 4y ago
What's protected by math is the custody of the coins. The system is a delicate balancing act of incentives, math and social consensus. It's common among detractors to want to flippantly dismiss it as "only having value because of shared belief." That's not entirely accurate. All of the components are necessary to give Bitcoin its interesting properties which allow it to function as the first currency not managed by centralized control and these properties are inherently valuable.
- arka2147483647 4y agoBut there has been changes to the way bitcoin works, and even forks because of it, eg bitcoin cash. Now, irrelevant of what you think of those, the community can, and has changed the way Bitcoin works. And, as such, it can also change what math it uses, if it so wishes. So the math ultimately depends on the community.
- rattlesnakedave 4y agoYou get to decide what fork you run.
- jwestbury 4y agoYes, but if nobody else values the output of your particular fork, it hardly matters. The community ultimately chooses which fork you run if you want to actually participate in a monetary system. Really, that's all this argument is -- any currency exists within a monetary system that is willed into existence by its participants, and no amount of maths will ever change that. It's not like gold had much use for the majority of its history, and yet it became the dominant currency.