Hi all, Silver Stackers is not the place to really learn about Bitcoin and subsequent cryptocurrencies, IMO. There is more to Bitcoin than the "coin". This is a massive subject, and something people display little to zero knowledge of thus far on Silver Stackers. Indeed, I don't bring the subject up either (are others aware of the further aspects?). To research innovation around Bitcoin, I would suggest people start out viewing videos taken at Bitcoin conferences where a plethora of variant branching technologies are being discussed. Here is excerpt from a research paper. It addresses some of the pros/cons, innovative and disruptive aspects of Bitcoin and more (American environment/centric). Worth a read, IMO. Link: https://equities.wedbush.com/client...ViewerID=1CE41D7D-B184-45DA-AF98-1334A2E3030F Sojust in case people are not aware..there is surely going to be much more to Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies than the "coin". There are obviously more aspects.but it is up to those interested to research themselves. This is a mere primer.
Being able to record legally binding contracts and bill of sale of goods in an open accounts book would be useful, but the negative of doing this on the Bitcoin blockchain would be the tremendous file size each contract would create and ultimately bog down the thing. Idea has merit though, but I'd prefer to see it on it's own chain where it can bog itself down however it pleases without dragging everyone else down with it (if only the Government would follow that example... ).
Sounds great on paper, but it's not all rainbows and unicorns. There are links to child pornography in the bitcoin blockchain.
A given. Bitcoin is not perfect, nor is it competing with perfect. Pedophiles would have used the internet as a utility from day 1, pretty much (the "earliest days of the internet saw a den of pornography" I've heard it uttered). Criminals pervade society and technology every turn. Always have and always will. I have no doubt various politicians and further public servants use tax payers money to frequent various locations around the Earth and partake in pedophilic acts. Just as I have no doubt, that plenty of high profile public figures are pedophiles (a higher percentage as per the amount of priests (that have been convicted) vs the greater populations conviction percentage). Bitcoin will surely make for some conveniences for certain aspects of crime. It may also reduce certain aspects of crime. Notably, crime via Govts and banks on various citizenry. The most prominent criminals. The mass theft in Cyprus (March 2013) is a recent and obvious example. Bitcoin is a personal choice. No one is forced to use Bitcoin.
All this fabulous new technology was in use ten years ago to facilitate the downloading of pirated mp3 files.
That's terrible of course, but it doesn't really make any difference. It's not like anyone is going to be reading the metadata, let alone your kids (If they are, that's the parents fault). The whole idea is for computer programs/scripts to parse the extra information for the services that the article describes. Any other information there that the programs are not looking for will be simply ignored. Has anyone read much about zerocoin ?
The Bitcoin block chain is decentralised (unless you want to refer to Earth as centralised ) although?..those satellite nodes that are being planned.hmm
My point is that the technology to do all this has existed for quite a while and for every new patent application some greedy n00b is in the process of filing there is a long-since abandoned open source project sitting on SourceForge with the code that already does it. There are known limits to what this kind of technology can to as well and there are also limits to what is sensible to do with the technology too. Can you dump metadata about property transactions onto a decentralized network? Of course you can. If you can link metadata like song lyrics to a particular mp3 file (and there are plenty of old protocols for being able to do that), there's no reason why you couldn't bung the transfer docs for a real estate deal into the BitCoin blockchain so there is a permanent record of it. Is that a smart thing to do? No. Trying to make a network which is designed to do a specific thing do many more things generally isn't a good idea. Decentralized networks are designed to be resilient rather than speedy and they are able to achieve that by tapping the resources of the community that uses them. There is only so much you can ask the community to do for you before you start using more than your fair share of network resources. When that happens, people stop being happy to carry your load and the network begins to fragment. From a technical point of view, all of this is possible. The more important consideration is how people use the technology. Frankly, the only thing developers really need to be putting any effort into is UX and designing interfaces that don't suck harder than a toothless hooker so that people can actually use the technology.
Bitcoin with a Capital B. The Bitcoin protocol. bitcoin with a lower case b is the currency. Investor Reggie Middleton is actively developing "programmable money" or "smart money". This vid is bit tedious due to editing but worth a look. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0NXNxo5SiQ[/youtube]
The tragedy of the commons in bitcoin has been discussed in other forums. The blockchain is a public resource. People will use and abuse it if economically feasible. Market disincentives (floating fees) will discourage "metadata" abuse. I will note that "metadata" can often mean trivial small amounts of data that cryptographically represent a much larger data set that sits external to the blockchain. It is no worse than recording the purchase of a pack of chewing gum on the Bitcoin blockchain. P2Pool uses its own blockchain to manage distributed Bitcoin block rewards. Someone wrote some timestamping software which embeds "metadata" within P2Pool's blockchain. Provided you keep a copy of P2Pools proof of work history, when P2Pool solves a Bitcoin block... you have a cryptographic proof/record of your "metadata" (ie contract etc) without actually adding any additional data to the Bitcoin blockchain at all. People want to attach additional functionality to the Bitcoin blockchain to take advantage of the existing (huge) security backing it (miners). It is a win win - new services take advantage of existing security infrastructure, and Bitcoin remains #1 due to the network effect. The point is that "Metadata" can be bolted-on in an intelligent, non-intrusive manner. You purchasing a cup of coffee will unlikely sit directly on the blockchain in the future. Ancillary services (distributed or private) will provide additional layers on top of Bitcoin. These services will solve UX and usability issues. The core devs need to continue working on the protocol itself. The Bitcoin protocol itself will likely become some sort of core reserve money, enabling other higher level financial services and contract instruments.
