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See, I can respect the experiment of it. The problem I have is that it is still going to be money, and it will still be subject to money's flaws. Meet the new

See, I can respect the experiment of it. The problem I have is that it is still going to be money, and it will still be subject to money's flaws. Meet the new investment bankers, same as the old ones. Ask yourself: if we had a global currency backed by the UN that was regulated a la NASDAQ (remember that guy complaining that mtgox was, essentially, unregulated), would that truly be less preferable to Bitcoin or similar? Official things have a purpose. Someone, some entity to be accountable provides more of an indication of our affirmed agreement.

SkyMarshal 14y ago
>would that truly be less preferable to Bitcoin or similar? No idea without more detail on what that would look like. But the ultimate goal of BTC and hopefully its forks and descendants is to replace that centralized (corruptible) human authority with a decentralized, transparent, fair, robust and reliable system instead. It's not there yet, and may ultimately be impossible, formerly undecidable even, but it's opened a new avenue for research and experimentation that has never been possible before. Whether Bitcoin itself succeeds or fails, that alone is a huge win imho.
- Helianthus 14y ago
  I can understand that difference in opinion, even as I'm firmly convinced it will be ultimately impossible. Money is, in some sense, a contract between people; or perhaps a better way of saying it is that it's within the public concern. So there _must_ be some human authority backing it.
  - BrianEatWorld 14y ago
    There is a fair amount of literature in the field of economics on effective,self regulating and contracting groups that don't require a third party human authority to enforce contracts. In fact, the 2009 Nobel Laureate for Econ was actually in said field. Many of the solutions aren't perfect, but neither are the human authority alternatives. The question to ask is, on the margin, is having a human authority more efficient than the self-regulating alternatives?

SkyMarshal 14y ago

>would that truly be less preferable to Bitcoin or similar? No idea without more detail on what that would look like. But the ultimate goal of BTC and hopefully its forks and descendants is to replace that centralized (corruptible) human authority with a decentralized, transparent, fair, robust and reliable system instead. It's not there yet, and may ultimately be impossible, formerly undecidable even, but it's opened a new avenue for research and experimentation that has never been possible before. Whether Bitcoin itself succeeds or fails, that alone is a huge win imho.

Helianthus 14y ago
I can understand that difference in opinion, even as I'm firmly convinced it will be ultimately impossible. Money is, in some sense, a contract between people; or perhaps a better way of saying it is that it's within the public concern. So there _must_ be some human authority backing it.
- BrianEatWorld 14y ago
  There is a fair amount of literature in the field of economics on effective,self regulating and contracting groups that don't require a third party human authority to enforce contracts. In fact, the 2009 Nobel Laureate for Econ was actually in said field. Many of the solutions aren't perfect, but neither are the human authority alternatives. The question to ask is, on the margin, is having a human authority more efficient than the self-regulating alternatives?