Just to be clear... On 03/01/2014 04:19 PM, Jed Rothwell wrote:
James Bowery <jabow...@gmail.com <mailto:jabow...@gmail.com>> wrote:What I expect to happen next is a new cryptocurrency protocol will be put in place that distributes the network effect along with the underlying cryptocurrency protocol.So not only will be it be God-knows-what algorithm, it will be stored God-only-knows where. My guess? The servers will all be found in Russia.
You realize that the servers running the bitcoin network exist everywhere, right? There are hundreds of thousands of them. And that the entire bitcoin project is open-source? All the code is available for everyone to review, modify, and run? So distributed networks use algorithms which are known-by-all, running everywhere.
Bitcoin was developed by a person (or group of people) named Satoshi Nakamoto. No one has met him. It is probably a pseudonym. I suppose the code is in the public domain, but seriously, why would anyone trust a system developed by someone who wants to remain anonymous?!? It seems like the extreme opposite of what you look for when you want to entrust large sums of money to an institution.
There's no reason to trust Satoshi Nakamoto. It doesn't matter who he is, or what his character is like; for the same reason it would not matter who Jonas Salk was, or what his character was like, or whether you could trust him. Bitcoin is trusted for the same reason that Salk's vaccine is trusted -- because it presents a solution to a problem. It's the open source solution that's trusted; not the man.
Craig
