Bitcoin: TRIPLE ENTRY CROWD ACCOUNTING - page 3.

sadpandatech

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Quote from: casascius on November 20, 2011, 06:48:57 PM

Quote from: sadpandatech on November 20, 2011, 06:43:25 PM

hmm, why not 'Triple Entry Peer Accounting', or 'Triple Entry Relay Accounting'?
The rest clicks pretty well in my mind.

The answer to that, that comes to mind, is that "crowd" conveys that the ledger is public, out there, and collectively maintained by everybody. When you say "peer", I think of two people of the same approximate age and social status. When you say "relay", I am thinking of relay races, or delivering messages or things.

Exactly. ;p But in my mind, 'crowd' makes me visualize random people, maybe ones I don't trust. Where as 'peer', as you say makes you think of people of the same age, social status, in my mind, people 'like me'. It makes it seem mroe trustworthy. And with relay, thats exactly what we are doing, delivering messages to the ledger. =)

Cheers

k

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After a bit more googling I found this paper by Ian Grigg http://iang.org/papers/triple_entry.html which appears to be the "triple entry accounting" that is most like the bitcoin system.

Quote

Abstract: The digitally signed receipt, an innovation from financial cryptography, presents a challenge to classical double entry bookkeeping. Rather than compete, the two melded together form a stronger system. Expanding the usage of accounting into the wider domain of digital cash gives 3 local entries for each of 3 roles, the result of which I call triple entry accounting.

This system creates bullet proof accounting systems for aggressive uses and users. It not only lowers costs by delivering reliable and supported accounting, it makes much stronger governance possible in a way that positively impacts on the future needs of corporate and public accounting.

Maybe something like "public ledger accounting" or "distributed multiple entry accounting" might be better, as there are more than 3 parties in the block chain and it would avoid the confusing with the other definition of "triple entry bookkeeping" which has something to do with the momentum or change in revenues.

casascius

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Quote from: sadpandatech on November 20, 2011, 06:43:25 PM

hmm, why not 'Triple Entry Peer Accounting', or 'Triple Entry Relay Accounting'?
The rest clicks pretty well in my mind.

The answer to that, that comes to mind, is that "crowd" conveys that the ledger is public, out there, and collectively maintained by everybody. When you say "peer", I think of two people of the same approximate age and social status. When you say "relay", I am thinking of relay races, or delivering messages or things.

In fact, I would almost boldly propose that the term "block chain" be renamed to "public ledger". This would be a jargon change to use a term familiar to anyone with anything to do with banking and accounting, rather than a term that only has meaning to computer scientists. It would encourage non-engineers to make many more useful assumptions, such as the fact that entries are only added to the end of it, and that it's available to everybody.

sadpandatech

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hmm, why not 'Triple Entry Peer Accounting', or 'Triple Entry Relay Accounting'?
The rest clicks pretty well in my mind.

casascius

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Quote from: k on November 20, 2011, 06:31:18 PM

Is there another recognised definition of triple entry accounting that I'm missing?

Best I can tell, all of it is theoretical and academic and doesn't refer to any sort of actual commonplace practice.

By changing the name and putting the word "crowd" in there, it's suddenly a new term we can use however we want, as long as it's based on a triple-entry scheme (which of course Bitcoin is).

k

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I've seen the term triple entry accounting mentioned with regards to bitcoin before and I would guess that the term has something to do with the way all transactions are recored in the blockchain (public ledger) but when I googled "triple entry accounting", the top links seem to refer to something different.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momentum_accounting_and_triple-entry_bookkeeping

Quote

In momentum accounting, changes in balances are the recognized events. For example, an acceleration in revenue earning, such as a $1,000 per period increase of revenues from $10,000 per month to $11,000 per month, is a recordable event that would require three entries to implement.

Is there another recognised definition of triple entry accounting that I'm missing?

casascius

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I came up with the term TRIPLE ENTRY CROWD ACCOUNTING as a way to abstractly describe Bitcoin in as few words as possible. I wanted to solicit feedback. This term would make sense to those who are familiar with banking but not with technology.

Slightly expanded (EDIT: and revised):

"Bitcoin is a payment network based on triple-entry crowd accounting. A crowd of computers - run by ordinary Bitcoin users - observes the transactions, produces a single common ledger, and keeps everyone honest. The magic that came from Bitcoin's inventor - the thread that holds the whole thing together - is a documented and published process by which the entire crowd can always agree on what transactions it observed, despite differences in timing and perspective, and even despite varying levels of honesty among participants. Bitcoin's design ensures that no matter how big the crowd, its collective efforts always produce exactly one consistent transaction ledger."

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