Left the mailing list out of the reply line again...<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">---------- Forwarded message ----------<br>From: <b class="gmail_sendername">Mike Frank</b> <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:michael.patrick.frank@gmail.com">michael.patrick.frank@gmail.com</a>></span><br>
Date: Sat, Jun 18, 2011 at 7:14 PM<br>Subject: Re: [EM] A secure distributed election scheme based on Bitcoin's Proof-of-Work protocol<br>To: Warren Smith <<a href="mailto:warren.wds@gmail.com">warren.wds@gmail.com</a>><br>
<br><br>Well, I suppose it's possible that banks/governments would want to prevent their national central-bank-backed currencies from being overtaken by the Bitcoin, and try to amass the computing power to try to stop it.<div>
<br></div><div>On the other hand, the banks may eventually come to realize that it's simply another currency that they can build their industry upon. For example, </div><div><br></div><div>1) Banks can operate secure online "vaults" with sophisticated computer security to keep their customers' private keys safe (preventing theft, like the case recently in the news where someone with lousy security on their PC got $500,000 in Bitcoins stolen from them).</div>
<div><br></div><div>2) Banks could provide demand-deposit accounts (including consumer & commercial loan accounts) that were denominated in Bitcoins, and rebuild the entire infrastructure of fractional-reserve banking on top of that basis. So, the entire money supply might not end up being "real" bitcoins (any more than than the USD money supply today is in physical bills & coins) but rather Bitcoin-demonated bank accounts. Thus, Bitcoins don't actually usurp banks' de facto power to largely control the money supply - but they do provide a competing mechanism for carrying out secure electronic transfers. Banks may lose some profits in wire-transfer fees, but also gain by not having to handle as much physical currency.</div>
<div><br></div><div>3) Similarly, national governments might lose in terms of not controlling their own currency, but gain in terms of reducing barriers to trade and having the world economy grow.</div><div><br></div><div>
So, it's not clear to me that there is really an incentive for anyone to try to take down the system (after they realize all this).</div><div><br></div><div><font color="#888888">-Mike</font><div><div></div><div class="h5">
<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Jun 18, 2011 at 6:13 PM, Warren Smith <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:warren.wds@gmail.com" target="_blank">warren.wds@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div>> Barring algorithmic breakthroughs (like a discovery of a way to find SHA-256<br>
> collisions that is much faster than brute search), it seems extremely<br>
> implausible to me that any one entity would ever amass enough advanced<br>
> technology to out-compute the entire Bitcoin mining community - or would<br>
> even want to if they could.<br>
<br>
</div>--you say this, and in practically the same breadth you also post you<br>
consider it reasonably likely the ENTIRE WORLD MONEY SUPPLY will be<br>
bitcoins.<br>
I dunno, does that sound like a little incentive to misbehave and<br>
outcompute, to you?<br>
<br>
Not want to?<br>
</blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br></div></div><div class="im">-- <br><span style="font-family:courier new,monospace">Full name: Michael Patrick Frank</span><br style="font-family:courier new,monospace"><span style="font-family:courier new,monospace">Email addr.: <a href="mailto:michael.patrick.frank@gmail.com" target="_blank">michael.patrick.frank@gmail.com</a> (pers. email)</span><br style="font-family:courier new,monospace">
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</div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><span style="font-family:courier new,monospace">Full name: Michael Patrick Frank</span><br style="font-family:courier new,monospace"><span style="font-family:courier new,monospace">Email addr.: <a href="mailto:michael.patrick.frank@gmail.com" target="_blank">michael.patrick.frank@gmail.com</a> (pers. email)</span><br style="font-family:courier new,monospace">
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