5 ms·

I think ultimately it will serve the role of "specie gold" I agree with this. (I don't understand the blinded token idea.) I think it is quite easy to imagine

I think ultimately it will serve the role of "specie gold" I agree with this. (I don't understand the blinded token idea.) I think it is quite easy to imagine that banking services are build on top of BTC. These would be account receivables against banks, much like current accounts and CDs in USD or EUR work today. The transaction features of bitcoin are amazing, in my opinion, if you compare them with gold bullion. Granted it can take up to hours for a payment to become fully confirmed, but this is the cryptographic specie being transfered from one individual party to the other. It is a lot more direct on this account than even a fast bank transfer, because in that you still only have a receivable against your bank, much like equivalent ones in todays credit system denominating in USD, etc. Plus you have the safety that no-one can inflate much value out of the currency, because it is specie-based. At least not for a very long time. (Unless the "closing of the bitcoin window" trick is pulled again. "Closing of the gold window" was the language the was used euphemistically, when redeemability of USD into gold was ended in 1973.) If you wanted instant transactions, that is just as easy as today, with a lot more pressure on banks to make transfers real-time, because one main business model would be to beat transaction speed. And that has an upper bound of max. a few hours in plain BTC.

rdl 14y ago
Blinded tokens are basically a form of public key operation where an issuer of currency (mint or issuer) signs a unique "coin" (random string) essentially through a sealed envelope with carbon paper. The end user can remove the envelope and the coin then isn't linkable by the issuer of currency to the original signing transaction, except that he can check that the signature is valid. So there's real, cryptographic anonymity. The system has a central entity issuing the currency initially AND reissuing it on every change of ownership (to make sure your trading counterparty didn't keep a copy). But, this can be a purely automatic action, and there are technical ways to keep it operational even if there is serious effort put into shutting it down (it doesn't have to be an identifiable business entity, it could be a bot which sees coins posted to a pool somewhere, operates on them, and returns them; or goes over a tor hidden service, or whatever. The advantage is you have real anonymity on each transaction and you can issue arbitrary currencies (e.g. I could do an rdl-issued-USD currency, which is $10k in tokens issued against a pile of $100 bills I have proven I control on camera, and where there are multiple independent audits to prove I still have the $10k. Or a corporate/personal debt or equity currency, like offering 1% of a startup...you can do arbitrary instruments, just like paper; all this does is make it easy to exchange shares of those agreements.)

rdl 14y ago

Blinded tokens are basically a form of public key operation where an issuer of currency (mint or issuer) signs a unique "coin" (random string) essentially through a sealed envelope with carbon paper. The end user can remove the envelope and the coin then isn't linkable by the issuer of currency to the original signing transaction, except that he can check that the signature is valid. So there's real, cryptographic anonymity. The system has a central entity issuing the currency initially AND reissuing it on every change of ownership (to make sure your trading counterparty didn't keep a copy). But, this can be a purely automatic action, and there are technical ways to keep it operational even if there is serious effort put into shutting it down (it doesn't have to be an identifiable business entity, it could be a bot which sees coins posted to a pool somewhere, operates on them, and returns them; or goes over a tor hidden service, or whatever. The advantage is you have real anonymity on each transaction and you can issue arbitrary currencies (e.g. I could do an rdl-issued-USD currency, which is $10k in tokens issued against a pile of $100 bills I have proven I control on camera, and where there are multiple independent audits to prove I still have the $10k. Or a corporate/personal debt or equity currency, like offering 1% of a startup...you can do arbitrary instruments, just like paper; all this does is make it easy to exchange shares of those agreements.)