> > The only 'assertion' of central authority here is people who download and > > run the code and submit to whatever the code asserts they are supposed to > > do. > > > > At least with the 'central authority' of the big-business bitcoin developer > > cabal I can read the code before I submit to it's central authority, and > > this is a significant improvement over amgibuous legislation or proprietary > > high-frequency trading algorithms. > > Standard Disclaimer: Digital asset transfer systems are fundementally > fancy accounting systems; no amount of code can, by itself, make data > represent a physical or legal entity. Only consensus and/or authorities > in the "real world" can do that. Crypto-currencies are only a partial > exception to that rule, and only because a scarce asset that can be > transferred digitally appears to have potential to be broadly useful.
How do I document in the embedded consensus system what the ruling in a small-claims court about the ownership of a contested asset was? Good accounting systems (such as mercurial, and proper double-entry financial accounting tools) allow reverting a bad commit, or bad data entry, while maintaining records of the history. Not as good accounting systems (like git) allow you to re-write history. What's the equivalent user interface, process, and wire protocol for reversing a fraudulent transaction while maintaining a full audit trail? Courts can't legislate our code, and we can't expect them to download and trust our 'distributed de-centralized' digital asset tracking system that will be downloaded from a single centralized developer website unless we meet them at least halfway, and probably need to propose model municipal and county ordinances that go along with our code releases. > Those considering investing in or otherwise devoting resources to the > creation of digital asset transfer systems should be warned that their > value in general remains unproven and losing some or all of your > investment is very possible, even probable. I myself have doubts that > these systems serve real-world business needs, but the only way to find > out is to build them and see. I would agree 100% that we need to build them, test the code, use them, and then *try them in court*, and make sure we can explain in very simple plain language what an 'embedded consensus system' is to the distributed de-centralized local court systems. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Managing the Performance of Cloud-Based Applications Take advantage of what the Cloud has to offer - Avoid Common Pitfalls. Read the Whitepaper. http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=121051231&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk _______________________________________________ Bitcoin-development mailing list Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
