Topic: Idea for physical BTC bills - page 2. (Read 308 times)

This is same idea as Physical coin like Casascius and Bitbills that hiding the private key under the hologram sticker intact in the coin/paper bills.

Refer here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/inforeference-master-makeraddresslists-of-lists-2022902

And now, we have successfully created totally unnecessary problems because of this.

How about we just stick to Bitcoin as a digital currency or an Electronic Cash System as defined by Satoshi himself?


At this point, I think cash still has a valuable role to play. We have way more to go as a digital world. As a matter of fact, there are still people who do not know how to use the very rudimentary versions of cellphones. But it does not mean that the future technologies will be the ones to stoop down and adjust to the old way of living. The old way of living is the one that has to do the catching up.

If someone is living with the barest of technologies, he/she better be using the existing fiat currency rather than get involved in a digital currency turned into a bill. That's just a hassle to him/her. If one does not even have a credit card, a smart phone, and a wifi access, I doubt if he/she has the capacity to validate whether a Bitcoin bill is legit or has balance or not.

Also, a bill that has to be destroyed every time it is used up will cost more to our mother nature than our existing fiat bills which could last up to a few years in usage.

Cash is really good. It gives freedom. You don't need technology or wifi acces to validate.

I live in the farm & the majority don't use technology or credit cards. They only use cash. Is easy and practical.

The cool thing about this idea, is that the paper is the settlement. It can't be printed at the will of a government or a centralized institution. It would have the same atributes, but allowing people to transact it as physical cash.

It doesn't need an institution to validate it. You can validate it by scanning the QR or getting the private key by destroying the bill. There are no third parties involved.

The only problem here is how to create the trust mechanism to manufacture it. So people are confident that the QR code displayed in the bill is the one associated with the private key inside the bill.

Thanks for the links.

Gavin talks about a bill which doesn't force people to destroy it if they want to move the funds digitally. & this is a problem because the piece of paper can keep moving with no funds in it.

This idea solves that problem. By giving the user two choices:

1) They can continue to transact or save the piece of paper without the need of verifying it or knowing how BTC works.

or

2) They can desrtoy it to get the private key & move the funds into a digital form.

The main idea here is that value is validated by the integrity and physical condition of the bill. And so, you can have different bill values to solve the change problem.

I am not sure whether this idea is really good or not. But it seems to me it is a step backward to be honest. Just when the world is doing away with notes and physical versions of fiat currencies, you have here pushing it forward as if it is the better way to use something which is the perfect currency to match a digital future. We have started to enter into a cashless society.

A topic from a decade ago by none other than Gavin Andresen that discusses about physical bitcoin - Printing bitcoins : could it work?

There are also plenty of topics about Bitbills here
Bitbill Patent Published - Encompasses Physical Bitcoins and Paper Wallets

Before you read below, let me tell you that this is not my area of expertise & I don't know much about the technical aspects of BTC. I'm more interested in the economic side. But, I was doing some research on bills & couldn't find anything interesting.

If this has technical issues or if I'm wrong in a newbie way, you where adviced. Or even worse, maybe this has already being created & im just repeating. I don't know.

Ok so, after thinking for a while, I had an idea in which everyone, specially people who know absolutely nothing about BTC can hold it physically as a bill. And transact it without verifying the funds. At the same time, if the user wants to transform this physical BTC into digital form he also is able to do so.

¿So how those this logic work?

The only way to do this, is by hidding the private key inside the bill in such a way that you must destroy the bill to get digital acces to the funds. Otherwise it can continue circulating physically as a valid store of value & as a medium of exchange.

This piece of paper would show only two things:

1) A QR to verify founds.
2) The value of the bill in sats or btc.

In case someone has bad intentions & wants to repair the bill, so he can continue to use it without funds. Then as it was destroyed, the aspect of the bill would have an estrange look to it. This would lead to suspicion & by consequence the receiver would check the funds by scanning the QR code. Detecting it as fraudulent.

The only weak point I see in this idea is that the verify QR could not be the same as the private key with access to the funds. So, the only way I think it could be manufactured, is by a trust mechanism.