On March 30, 2014 at 04:47 jo...@iecc.com (John Levine) wrote: > >When people talked of "virtual currency" over the years, often arguing > >that it's too hard a problem, how many described bitcoin with its > >cryptographic mining etc? > > None, but it shouldn't be hard to look at the way bitcoin works and > realize why it'd be phenomenally ill suited for e-postage, just for > technical reasons. I told Satoshi so in 2009.
I wasn't suggesting bitcoin was a model for e-postage, only that a lot of papers were written saying systems like bitcoin were more or less impossible (usually based on the double-spending problem.) But bitcoin seems to have gained quite a bit of traction nonetheless though it may well still be a bad idea. The problem is the world is a very sloppy place and tends to function in spite of proofs that "bumblebees can't fly" etc. when there's a need. > R's, > John > > PS: Sometimes a WKBI really is a WKBI. -- -Barry Shein The World | b...@theworld.com | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 800-THE-WRLD | Dial-Up: US, PR, Canada Software Tool & Die | Public Access Internet | SINCE 1989 *oo*