Hopefully you people will begin to realise that off-chain transactions are going to be very popular and it is a real threat to bitcoin.
Again, where is your argument, dude?
Why are off-chain transactions
necessarily bound to be very propular?? Why is that popularity
necessarily and inevitably bound to be a thread to Bitcoin?
I've actually made the argument a few times. It's just basic human preference. Off-chain transactions
are cheaper than on-chain ones. They
are faster. Some mechanisms
do not leave public trails of previous ownership.
Since they have these advantages over on-chain ones and the fact that these are commonly wanted properties of a transaction people will choose off-chain in preference to on-chain.
The
only negative that anyone has so far given of off-chain is that it is less secure than on-chain. However, in the case of DRM coin the truth of the matter is that for majority of day-to-day transactions it is good enough-- this is demonstrated by actual real-life practice today: ie, Consumers
do use smart cards to buy stuff and very, very rarely complain about the want of security involved. Smard cards are secured by the same type of technology has DRM (infact you could use smart cards to implement DRM coin). In my home city I use a smart card every time I use the local transport system-- and so do 100's of 1000's of people everyday. This demonstates that for small transactions (say less than $250) smartcard is good enough. For larger transactions you can use more traditional banking systems (eg: similar to how gold is bought or sold-- the gold stays where it is in a vault but a record of what is bought or sold is recorded by the various banks involved.) Not many people complain about the security of regulated banks: it is very,very rare for someone to be personally out of pocket due to a breach of bank security. When was the last time you heard of some having their money stolen from/by a bank and not being set-right again by the bank or the Government? If banks that trade gold/cash etc, can handle their security so well why do you think they wouldn't be able to do the same with bitcoin? Bank transfers of large amounts of bitcoin in this way would be very cheap, the bitcoin network simply couldn't compete with it!
Up to now you have given us very little to take you seriously.
Your point boils down to criticising Bitcoin for being open and extensible, and able to be connected with other economic structures (like off-chain transactions). You say this is a "flaw" in Bitcoin. And, following your line of thought, to repair this flaw, Bitcoin should be locked down and gated, otherwise it could not withstand the competition of TC, DRM and similar gated systems.
Not quite. My point is that bitcoin as-is with the transaction fees model will not be able to maintain network security due to the fact that you can do off-chain transactions. My personal perferred solution to this problem is to change the bitcoin protocol so that miners make money by both transaction fees and by reclaiming old-untouched coin. I actually like the idea that you can do off-chain transactions and believe it is the best way forward since it reduces block size. I definitely do not want it locked down and gated. If you read the OP you would know this. (In the OP I also give other possible solutions to the problem).