Author: Gareth Williams 2014-04-27 12:53:08
Published on: 2014-04-27T12:53:08+00:00
In an email conversation, Christophe Biocca and Gareth discussed the trustlessness of Bitcoin. Gareth argued that Bitcoin is a perfect trustless mathematical machine built on the foundation of mushy humans. He explained that the system depends on three assumptions: 1) more than 50% of hash power will not cooperate to rewrite history, 2) the economic majority will not cooperate to reinterpret history, and 3) enough people believe in the illusion of artificial scarcity to give it real value. Assuming these three points hold, the system operates completely trustlessly with predictable security parameters. However, some individuals may argue that this isn't a trustless system, but a democratic one. They advocate for replacing the second assumption with the statement that the economic majority will only reinterpret history against bad guys, which moves away from a pure trustless system built upon a small democratic foundation and toward a democratic system. Gareth believes that this shift is a fundamental violation of the social contract and not splitting hairs.
Updated on: 2023-06-08T20:58:19.542478+00:00