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>By analogy to the original problem as stated, that's like saying you don't need an intermediary to confirm that a message with particular content was delivered
by eurleif 13y ago
>By analogy to the original problem as stated, that's like saying you don't need an intermediary to confirm that a message with particular content was delivered between two generals.
No, that's not analogous. Bitcoin prevents double-spending. It doesn't just deliver messages.
You're talking about a whole other level of cooperation. It's true that Bitcoin doesn't guarantee that, but no one said it did, and that doesn't imply it doesn't really solve BGP.
Bitcoin does have a built-in feature, multisig transactions, that makes a more-trustworthy form of escrow possible.
- riemannzeta 13y agoWell I found a partial answer to the question I asked right in Andreessen's essay, but it's not the one you give here. I guess I think of the authentication of sender and content for recipients as being equivalent to the elimination of double-spending, and I don't see either as being responsible for the failure modes of fraud in digital payment systems. As a practical matter, recipients don't have has to question whether a particular person actually has the credit to complete a given transaction right now, and I'm not aware of double-spending credit as being a big problem for credit card payment systems. Who cares about solving that problem when we have a perfectly workable solution right now? But sure, I get the point about other forms of fraud might be harder -- namely, stealing account information necessary to initiate transactions. The question there is whether that problem too goes away in a world in which credit numbers are kept as private keys on a physical device (like a smartphone) and exchanged with merchants via something like SSH. Is the overhead of Bitcoin still worth it?