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> What is left is keeping track what everyone has put in, and what they have taken out. And that's exactly what Bitcoin is; a secure digital ledger. It's a way
by lambda 12y ago
> What is left is keeping track what everyone has put in, and what they have taken out.
And that's exactly what Bitcoin is; a secure digital ledger. It's a way to securely and globally record "person A has 10 BTC, gave person B 5BTC, then person B gave persone C 3 BTC" in a way that doesn't allow person A to simultanously have given those same 5 BTC to person D (who, given the anonymity of the internet, may also be person A).
That's all Bitcoin does; it provides a secure way to record such transactions without having a trusted third party who must trust to increment and decrement the right accounts in the right way.
- lifeisstillgood 12y agoSo is that not an impressive solution - if Alice wants to move 100 USD to France and Bob wants to move 100 USD out of France (let's say both want to buy a new textbook) then one could envisage a peer to peer money transfer system. A site allows bob and Alice to find each other, agree a shared amount to transfer, agree to which end point they will onwards transfers (hmmm this might be the breakdown point) and then record that in the block chain I think oddly there is still an enormous amount of trust involved - trust that Alice will complete the final important step of giving the money to Bobs silver haired grandmother or whatever
- Natanael_L 12y agoYou can actually achieve the same thing with Coinjoin if all involved parties agree. Instead of a bunch of individual transactions, they collectively generate and sign one.