
Nasdaq to develop blockchain services in Estonia - jkaljundi
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/14/us-nasdaq-blockchain-estonia-idUSKCN0T301H20151114#YZG4GYQ1mEtXQ72K.97
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zby
Security is always about economy - it is after all about incentives and
disincentives. Bitcoin makes this explicite with the mining process and the
currency. Now it seems that some financial companies like the idea of a fully
decentralized ledger, system where you don't need to trust a central authority
to settle deals. But they don't like the currency part of it. I can understand
them - I for one hate the wastefulness of the mining process - but it seems
like they believe that they can build a decentralized system without the
currency part that supports the economy of incentives and disincentives. Don't
they understand the link between those two parts? Or maybe they think that it
is enough to build some cargo cult system - that just copies the names, but is
not decentralized at all - to lure investors?

Update:s/distributed/decentralized/

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aakilfernandes
You're assuming their using an open POW scheme like Bitcoin's. That may not be
true.

They could set it up so only the blocks of 5 miners controlled by the banks
are "trusted" and only if they each keep under a certain quota.

They could go for a round-robin style consensus.

They could be doing something completely different.

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wtvanhest
To add a little more to this comment...

If you are familiar with how the Blockchain works, there are two short white
papers on the topic at BitFury's site: [http://bitfury.com/white-papers-
research](http://bitfury.com/white-papers-research)

I have consistently written off Bitcoin since I originally read about it on HN
in 2011sh. Now that I have taken the time to understand a lot more about the
blockchain, I am absolutely convinced that it has a high likelihood of being a
really powerful force in technology, finance, data, etc.

Disclaimer: I own roughly $2 USD in Bitcoins.

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aakilfernandes
Its really a shame that the most focused on aspect of blockchain technology
became its price. I think thats going to change really soon.

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cjg
I don't really understand these kinds of initiatives that say they will use
"blockchain technology", but seem to imply that they won't use the bitcoin
blockchain.

It's the amount of computing power that keeps a blockchain secure and an
independent blockchain has no hope of reaching the same level of hashing as
the bitcoin blockchain.

It's the question of how their technology will interact with the bitcoin
blockchain to leverage that hashing power that I'm interested in.

Or perhaps they could just be happy with a blockchain that might be
(relatively) easy to attack.

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lifeisstillgood
Surely we can adjust the protocol to say "has found 8 0's _and_ signed the
value with one of these private keys". Attacks become based around the
security of those keys - as its a private chain anyway, do we mind?

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steckerbrett
Why bother with it at all? Authenticated database sounds like.. postgres.

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anon1mous
Because it's distributed (NasDaq going bankrupt won't kill it) and all changes
are in the open (no rogue employee stealing your shares). Sure you can achieve
more or less the same thing with a relational DB or by drawing sticks on a
piece of papyrus.

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RemoteWorker
So you think Bitcoin is the first distributed database? No. There is no reason
for a private blockchain to exist; it's a nonsensical idea.

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lifeisstillgood
This seems to be a case of "you don't understand" \- what sources / reading
would you suggest covers this issue ?

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ommunist
This is really funny coincidence. Russia bans bitcoins and criminalise its
usage, while the US takes advantage and places blockchain facility on the
Russian border. This is what I call ROTFL.

