
Bitcoin security model: trust by computation - Garbage
http://radar.oreilly.com/2014/02/bitcoin-security-model-trust-by-computation.html
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patio11
This is a neat trick, in that it defines Bitcoin's security model such that
all of the successful attacks are out of scope. Meanwhile, the central actors
Bitcoin doesn't have who received the trust that Bitcoin doesn't require ran
into a smidgen of trouble running the bank that Bitcoin makes obsolete and now
their depositors that Bitcoin doesn't acknowledge are praying that the
government that Bitcoin undermines will hit them with the legal process that
Bitcoin structurally avoids.

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sheldonth
Patio11, I have much respect for your work and _love_ reading your email
digests, but your comments of late about Bitcoin have such a decidedly
negative slant that they become hard to digest at face value.

Yes of course businesses built around the Bitcoin protocol will melt down
occasionally, as many businesses do within the course of operation -- but
don't you see how your attempt to conflate Bitcoin businesses (Exchanges,
specifically) with a discussion about the new model of trust employed by the
p2p network is probably a bit deceptive?

Yes, Bitcoin is scarce and therefore commands a market price. Commanding a
market price has some qualities that suck. One of them is that you have to
deposit assets in a market to keep an order book to discover a price. This is
fallible. But it has nothing to do with how we (the human race) have
discovered a way to create a scarce and transferrable peer to peer asset over
the internet. Perhaps you should stop and consider how you can personally
deconstruct some of the negative bias you have against Bitcoin in your public
discussions of such.

Much love.

[Edited for grammer]

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unclebucknasty
I think what patio11 is saying (and I agree) is that too much is being made of
the _ideals_ behind the Bitcoin protocol and paradigm, but it doesn't really
translate when met with the hard test of practical reality.

I noted your argument, along with many others on the GP's sub-thread which
make this very distinction between Bitcoin as a concept and Bitcoin as an
actual thing. In so doing, you suggest that failure to make the distinction is
misleading and you align yourselves with the idealistic praise heaped on by
the original article.

But, I would agree with patio11's insinuation: i.e. that the real fallacy is
in this praise. It's misleading, because at some point, the protocol must be
implemented in the real world, consisting of exchanges, wallet services,
payment services, etc. These are all points where bad actors can attach. To
say, "well, that's not the Bitcoin protocol" is to point out a meaningless
distinction. When you find a way around these implementation limitations, then
it matters.

TL;DR: as implemented, Bitcoin _in practice_ solves exactly none of the
problems espoused by the article. We need look no further than real-world
events to see this.

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unclebucknasty
I challenge whomever downvoted me to refute at least the tl;dr in my comment.

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roymurdock
Interesting comparison between Bitcoin and the internet. The Umlaut published
an article outlining a similar theory:
([http://theumlaut.com/2014/01/08/bitcoin-internet-of-
money/](http://theumlaut.com/2014/01/08/bitcoin-internet-of-money/)) using the
same terminology (transport layer) and describing Bitcoins as the "internet of
money".

I noticed an interesting comment on the O'Reilly article: "The second problem
is that we have yet to expand bitcoin beyond the control of virtual assets.
Virtual assets do not physically exist and therefore it is the ability to
represent these assets within multiple computers across the network which give
bitcoin its decentralized nature. These virtual assets also have to have real
world value to everyone, without value, there exists no economic incentive
(block rewards and transaction fees) for securing the network through
computation."

This analysis of Bitcoin as the "internet of money/finance" is kind of
reminiscent of the "internet of things" movement, that, according to inept
marketing departments, is guaranteed to revolutionize our lives in short
order.

Do we have the need/infrastructure in place for an "internet of money" or an
"internet of things" to emerge? Do these terms even hold any weight? Would
love to hear any opinions.

~~~
tlrobinson
While there’s an element of marketing-speak to this, I think it’s instructive
to try to apply the idea of “Internet of [whatever]” retroactively. The
internet originally was essentially the “Internet of Communication” (email)
and “Internet of Information” (FTP, then HTTP). Advancements in technology
enable new use-cases over time.

* Internet of Commerce: mainstream adoption of the internet

* Internet of Entertainment: broadband internet

* Internet of Things: ubiquitous network-enabled electronics, with size and cost reductions driven by the smartphone revolution

* Internet of Money: Bitcoin

A corollary to “Software is Eating the World” could be “The Internet is Eating
the World”. Any technology that enables one of these new “Internets” should be
watched closely.

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higherpurpose
> Here’s the most important effect of this new trust model of trust-by-
> computation: no one actor is trusted, and no one needs to be trusted. There
> is no central authority or trusted third party in a distributed consensus
> network. That

That should be the future of the Internet, where we don't have to trust
whether someone is a "good actor" or a "bad actor". This is also what is
needed so we don't have "balkanized Internet" because we can't trust countries
like US or UK to not spy on the rest of us anymore and get our data. If the
network is built in a way that _no one_ can be trusted, then the network can
remain truly global again.

That's why I'm glad to see projects such as the Turing complete Ethereum
picking up steam, and I'm hoping they succeed. I'm starting to believe more
and more that the future of the Internet is going to be "Bitcoin-inspired" in
a major way, and it will bring us a lot more distributed trustless
applications than exist today on the current Internet, making it a lot harder
for "bad actors" to exist in the network, be that for-profit hackers, "cyber
terrorists" or even malicious governments.

It's also what will save us from the evil of certificate authorities, the
OpenSSL monster, and other such patched up security tools that are meant to
protect us right now, yet mostly fail to do so.

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thisiswrong
Andreas is an impressive character. Only by listening to him speak will you
understand the passion [1] and potential this guy has. He is well versed and
articulate and has a background in distributed systems. Like some of us here
he once worked for thieves & sociopaths (banking/defense), and dropped it all
to dedicate himself to bitcoin. He has a strong presence in the bitcoin
communities and visits many meetups.

I strongly recommend listening to some of the early episodes of him,
Stephanie, and Adam on 'Lets Talk Bitcoin'. There's some deep topic
discussions and interesting projections - most which turned out to be true.

[1] [https://soundcloud.com/mindtomatter/e72-powerful-
perspective...](https://soundcloud.com/mindtomatter/e72-powerful-perspectives)

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platz
I think Andreas Antonopoulos said in a video that it takes about half a
billion dollars to fool the blockchain for 10 minutes. Even though that's a
lot, if certain actors (state or otherwise) got interested enough, wouldn't
they manipulate the chain at critical moments for their advantage?

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alwillis
>I think Andreas Antonopoulos said in a video that it takes about half a
billion dollars to fool the blockchain for 10 minutes. Even though that's a
lot, if certain actors (state or otherwise) got interested enough, wouldn't
they manipulate the chain at critical moments for their advantage?

That's out-of-date now; the total computation power of the Bitcoin network is
25,824,939.77 GH/s. It would probably take a lot more than $500 million now.

