With the history of web-wallet hacks and bitcoin-exchange heists, culminating in the recent MtGox fiasco, I decided it was time to put all this thievery behind us!
I came up with something that would not only solve our problems but also help the victims of capital controls in the Ukraine, depositors in Cyprus, and those suffering due to high-inflation Argentina:
What we need is a trustless way to store, transport, and exchange funds with anyone in the world, without the help of a third-party or the permission of an authority. It would be great if we just had to protect one piece of information to keep our funds secure--something like a 78-digit number that no one could ever guess.
I think something like that could really take off.
I think you may be on to something here! You could prove the transfer of value using the secret number to sign a receipt of sorts, instead of revealing it. That way others can verify the receipt, yet can't produce forgeries. The receipt would then give the receiver irrefutable proof that funds have been transferred and anyone could verify that transfer. The main obstacle that has thwarted other systems in the past is that a person could sign two different receipts spending the same funds twice. If only someone could invent a network, maybe consisting of a large number of anonymous peers, secured by a method of proof that would finally solve this two-spend problem. Then we would have a system which allowed any individual to engage in commerce with any other individual without the need for a central authority. The days of having wealth stolen while under the control of a third party would finally be over.
Well we can hope someday someone will invent it. Whoever he ends up being, I would like to shake his hand, or maybe buy him a beer with these "unforgeable irrefutable receipts of wealth".
It'll never work.
Wouldn't it be better to have a centralized authority issue some sort of physical token to represent the currency. That way whoever is holding the token would be undeniably the "owner" of it. These tokens could be secured using well established physical security practices. We could give the issuing authority significant resources (guns, training, manpower, buildings, vehicles, high tech equipment, enforceable laws, etc) which they could use to punish anyone that attempts to physically remove the tokens without proper authorization as well as anyone that attempts to create and pass unauthorized copies of the tokens. No need for a digital signature or a network of anonymous peers to prevent duplication of digital "receipts" when you have the fear of incarceration or death to accomplish the same task.
Sure it would be a huge waste of resources to keep the system running, but the cost of those resources could be proportionally shared by everyone involved. We could allow the centralized authority to simply create new tokens that they could assign to themselves whenever they need it. And the inflationary effects would distribute the cost across the entire currency base. I'm sure we could trust them not to create more tokens than necessary.
I'm sure that if we just let the majority choose a group of people to be in charge of staffing the organization, that the organization would always look out for the greater good of everyone involved. Right?