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All the thousands of cryptocurrencies are different blockchain artifacts and blockchain cannot exist without issuing a 'currency' the way that TCP/IP cannot exi
by kang 12y ago
All the thousands of cryptocurrencies are different blockchain artifacts and blockchain cannot exist without issuing a 'currency' the way that TCP/IP cannot exist without issuing 'message' to and fro.
It feels as if your real problem is that I am not using technical jargons :)
I understand the meaning of 'protocol' vs 'algorithm' but this is a special case where the protocol is also the algorithm. Suppose you invented making tea and wrote down the recipe for doing so. This constitutes an algorithm for making tea for people who don't care how the ingredients came about, but this can also be called a protocol for making tea involving many algorithms like sugar-making etc.
If you'd say that tea making is strictly an algo and not a protocol then I'd simply agree with you to use that term and move on since whats happening here is more important to me than the technical jargons.
- felixgallo 12y agoWhat I think you may be missing is that he is saying that bitcoin is not, in pragmatic observable fact, a distributed consensus protocol. It is, instead, led and managed by an entity indistinguishable in form if not in intellect from every other governmental federal reserve. This entity responds, 100% correctly for the health of the currency, by issuing fiat mandates, just like the US government did when, e.g., real-world counterfeiters came up with supernotes and began flooding the world with fake $20 bills, mandating a switch to new notes. Although this behavior is correct, it does conclusively prove that the emperor has no clothes, and that bitcoin is a ponzi scheme run for the benefit of the early BTC holders.
- kang 12y agoYou are correct. You are free to trust this entity that is doing this service for you. Or not. Hell you could even be that entity!