[Cryptography] Bitcoin Royale: Peer-to-Peer No-Theft Electronic Gold

On Thu, Aug 29, 2019 at 1:11 AM Ian Duoteli Fleming via cryptography < cryptography at metzdowd.com> wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA512 > > Bitcoin Royale is a protocol based on Bitcoin focused on a specific goal - > designing the best store of value and addressing the problem of theft. > > GitHub project: https://github.com/bitcoinroyale > Design paper: https://bitcoinroyale.github.io/bitcoinroyale.pdf > > Some overview: > > Satoshi Nakamoto’s original vision for Bitcoin was to create a > peer-to-peer version of electronic cash. The majority of successful forks > of the protocol try to improve on this vision further and provide a more > scalable and efficient system for payments. ... > Yet another payments proposal that misses the point: People were using payment systems long before cryptographic systems were developed. Payments are a social construct first and foremost. The role that cryptography can play in any such system is really very small. The first thing that any system has to get right is the social constructs and the idea that any scheme can provide a 'long term store of value; before it can solve the problem of paying for cups of coffee is utterly fantastical. I have been tracing crypto-currency payment schemes since I wrote the survey paper while I was at MIT 24 years ago and the field hasn't moved since. Proof of work is an application of the peppercoin scheme Adi Shamir developed with Ron Rivest. Blockchain is the Haber-Stornetta hash chain notary. The only thing that has changed in all that time is that we have moved from the store of value moving from the promise that someone has chunks of gold in escrow to the promise that if we all clap our hands and say we believe in tinkerbell, we all become rich. Ten years on, BitCoin still defends itself from all criticism with the bald statement that it is early days and nobody can know how the system will adapt to meet the challenges. That is total hogwash. We know how the system will adapt because we have been watching for ten years - it won't adapt at all. Ten years after the financial crash, BitCoiners still splutter about the corruption of the global financial system while the BitCoin float is stolen over and over again. Fraud accounts for much less than 1% of actual value transfers in real world payment systems. Actual value transfers account for much less than 1% of the fraud in the BitCoin system. Ten years ago, the largest online retailer of note to accept BitCoin for payments was Overstock.com. Ten years later the largest online retailer of note that accepts BitCoin for payments is Overstock.com. And they will be dropping BitCoin in the coming months as the CEO has had to resign after having an affair with a woman now in jail for being a Russian spy and then posting bizarre rants about the deep state. Give it up folks, BitCoin has a carbon footprint that is ridiculous and as soon as Cheto Christ is out of the White House, the war on carbon is going to be the best way that the US and the UK have to get back at Putin. The value of BitCoin depends on the hope that it is possible to redeem large numbers of Tethers at par. If Tether is a fakecoin, it is game over for BitCoin and game over for every other crypto currency. And like Trump, the one thing BitFinex will never ever do is to allow a forensic audit of their accounts. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <https://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/attachments/20190831/b9cb8398/attachment.htm>