Eliminating trust applies to all centralized databases, not just those for monetary ledgers. The Internet is loaded to the gills with centralized databases whose closed and proprietary centralized control causes grave inefficiencies and retarded social scalability.
Bitcoin is only building a teeny, weeny tiny part of what blockchains are going to revolutionize. And Bitcoin is shooting itself in the foot by restricting itself to only a settlement layer for an archaic fractional reserve banking financial system which was only need in pre-scarcity industrial age.
I don't think you actually read this article. The conclusion of it directly refutes every point you make:
Reverse-engineering our highly evolved traditional institutions, and even reviving in new form some old ones, will usually work better than designing from scratch, than grand planning and game theory. One important strategy for doing so was demonstrated by Satoshi – sacrifice computational efficiency and scalability -- consume more cheap computational resources -- in order to reduce and better leverage the great expense in human resources needed to maintain the relationships between strangers involved modern institutions such as markets, large firms, and governments.
The reason is because humans value other things, not money.
There is no one that will agree with you that humans don't value money, its the most ass-backwards thing I have ever heard someone assert.
Eric Raymond (the creator of the term "open source") wrote:
Yes he wrote a quote that you provided, but you didn't give any reason you provided it.
That is correct. An unlimited transaction scaling on chain design sacrifices some of the security properties, but they remain probabilistic and as Nick has also noted that all security is probabilistic even Bitcoin. There is no such thing as absolute security guarantees as Nick noted.
Nick is not advocating to sacrifice the security he is explaining why Satoshi is a genius for sacrificing efficiently and availability but NOT security.
For $billion transactions, you need Bitcoin's security. But for $10 transactions, society can accept security that is almost as good.
No, no one with pull in the industry is bending on security so you can have a coffee money.
Even Bitcoin had to sacrifice some security.
No it never did, and never will. You are asserting this silly claim.
But Lightning Networks enables fractional reserve banking in BTC, which is a horrific thing that will harm Bitcoin and make it incompatible with the Knowledge age.
The Knowledge age will reject that yoyo of booms and busts, fraud, and bailouts of fractional reserve banking. It would ultimately require a world central bank, which is entirely unacceptable to the meritocracy in the Knowledge age. And besides, money just isn't the most important signal of value any more.
As I linked to in the other thread Szabo "tipped his hat" to me today for bringing to his attention a quote by finney which perfectly refutes your assertion:
https://twitter.com/NickSzabo4/status/846492284036145152Actually there is a very good reason for Bitcoin-backed banks to exist, issuing their own digital cash currency, redeemable for bitcoins. Bitcoin itself cannot scale to have every single financial transaction in the world be broadcast to everyone and included in the block chain. There needs to be a secondary level of payment systems which is lighter weight and more efficient. Likewise, the time needed for Bitcoin transactions to finalize will be impractical for medium to large value purchases.
Bitcoin backed banks will solve these problems. They can work like banks did before nationalization of currency. Different banks can have different policies, some more aggressive, some more conservative. Some would be fractional reserve while others may be 100% Bitcoin backed. Interest rates may vary. Cash from some banks may trade at a discount to that from others.
George Selgin has worked out the theory of competitive free banking in detail, and he argues that such a system would be stable, inflation resistant and self-regulating.
I believe this will be the ultimate fate of Bitcoin, to be the "high-powered money" that serves as a reserve currency for banks that issue their own digital cash. Most Bitcoin transactions will occur between banks, to settle net transfers. Bitcoin transactions by private individuals will be as rare as... well, as Bitcoin based purchases are today.
So Szabo and Finney disagree and you have twisted Szabo's conclusion to be exactly opposite of his conclusion THAT I QUOTED AT THE START OF THIS POST.
Sorry banksters. Your time is over. Goodbye.
Because you say so but every intelligent person that matters disagrees.
Nick got it. Lightning Networks isn't socially scalable.
I took a snapshot of Szabo's twitter that proves you are full of shit.
Amen Nick. Seems you do understand. I was told by some other fools that are dropping your name, that you don't understand. But I see that you do.
It was Szabo that dropped MY name when he tweeted a Finney quote that shows you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.
He implied it by the context and what LN is (and that LN is not trustless):
YOU are implying it, Szabo and Finney both CLEARLY support micro-transactions/2nd layer solutions and a fractional banking style solution.