Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Coinbase reallocation to discourage Finney attacks

From: Gareth Williams <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Apr 2014 09:10:43 +1000

Agreed. I'm a pragmatist, certainly not anti-change (or even anti-zero-conf.) Useful and non-controversial hard forks don't keep me awake at night :) I support your general position on zero-conf payments (that they're useful and we should make them as reliable as practical.)

But the very essence of Bitcoin, to me, is trustlessness. Satoshi's great invention isn't just another payment network - it's /ecash/. Bearer-negotiable, whoever-controls-the-private-keys-owns-it, **ecash**.

If not that, what do you think it is? :-)

I like trustless systems for purely pragmatic, cost-benefit reasons. They allow us to avoid all the costs associated with imperfect humans, while reaping the benefits of reliability and predictability :P

On 28 April 2014 12:31:05 AM AEST, Mike Hearn <[email-masked]> wrote:
>>
>> That moves us away from a pure trustless system built upon a small
>> democratic foundation (as something of a necessary evil in an
>imperfect
>> world where humans run our computers and use our system) and toward a
>> "democratic system".
>>
>> You don't have to agree, but I hope you can understand the point I'm
>> making :-)
>
>
>Yep, your point is well made.
>
>I don't have much more to say about this proposal specifically, but I
>think
>this whole question of what changes are OK and what would be a
>violation of
>the social contract will get discussed endlessly over the coming years.
>Put
>another way, what do Bitcoin's users expect and want - a system that
>evolves or a system that remains exactly as they found it? There will
>be
>good arguments on both sides, and the answer will probably be different
>on
>a case by case basis. But personally I'm skeptical of any argument that
>argues against change for its own sake. It has to be an argument rooted
>in
>a careful analysis of costs and benefits.

-- 
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