From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from smtp1.linuxfoundation.org (smtp1.linux-foundation.org [172.17.192.35]) by mail.linuxfoundation.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 4986E88B for ; Sat, 8 Aug 2015 09:15:41 +0000 (UTC) X-Greylist: from auto-whitelisted by SQLgrey-1.7.6 Received: from mail.bihthai.net (unknown [5.255.87.165]) by smtp1.linuxfoundation.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 2EDCB14B for ; Sat, 8 Aug 2015 09:15:39 +0000 (UTC) Received: from [10.8.0.6] (unknown [10.8.0.6]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 (128/128 bits)) (No client certificate requested) (Authenticated sender: venzen) by mail.bihthai.net (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 33F1520FBF; Sat, 8 Aug 2015 11:07:24 +0200 (CEST) Message-ID: <55C5C655.4040105@mail.bihthai.net> Date: Sat, 08 Aug 2015 16:05:25 +0700 From: Venzen Khaosan Reply-To: venzen@mail.bihthai.net Organization: Bihthai Bai Mai User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:31.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/31.7.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Thomas Zander , Bitcoin Dev References: <8185694.hShCHQnpze@coldstorage> In-Reply-To: <8185694.hShCHQnpze@coldstorage> OpenPGP: id=1CF07D66; url=pool.sks-keyservers.net Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.1 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,RDNS_NONE autolearn=no version=3.3.1 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.3.1 (2010-03-16) on smtp1.linux-foundation.org Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] trust X-BeenThere: bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.12 Precedence: list List-Id: Bitcoin Development Discussion List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 08 Aug 2015 09:15:41 -0000 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 08/08/2015 01:10 PM, Thomas Zander via bitcoin-dev wrote: > On Friday 7. August 2015 23.53.43 Adam Back wrote: >> On 7 August 2015 at 22:35, Thomas Zander via bitcoin-dev >>> As we concluded in our previous email, the need to run a node >>> is inversely proportional to the ability (or willingness) to >>> trust others. > [] >>> And lets face it, practically everyone trusts others with their >>> money today. > >> Bitcoin's very reason for existence is to avoid that need. For >> people fully happy to trust others with their money, Bitcoin may >> not be as interesting to them. > > I'm making this a thread of its own because this is very serious. > > The idea that Bitcoins very reason for existence is to avoid > trusting anyone but yourself is something I've heard before, and I > have to comment because it is a destructive thought. It is very > much untrue because we don't live in a black/white world. I think the context is not that "Bitcoin's reason for existence is to avoid trusting anyone but yourself", as you state above. This kind of dystopia is not, in my view, what the advocates of trustlessness and security are implying. There are those instances where we have no option other than to trust a centralized authority. They are mostly self-appointed and do not have the interests of the rest of us in mind. The central bank is the obvious example - they impose their currency as "official" and then devalue our savings and purchasing power through money supply inflation - without our permission and in betrayal of the trust relationship. Bitcoin allows one to hold money and to conduct money transactions, transmit value, and so forth without having to trust *them* - the central bank, or anyone. In another example, we want to conduct escrow and have to trust the notary, because of his reputation and framed certificate, but Bitcoin multisig makes the degree of trust between the escrow parties irrelevant, so no apparently trustworthy "gentleman" merchant (back then or now) can socially engineer a transaction and scam us. I don't know if my reply and its examples is over-simplistic but it seems you were making a moral appeal that the notion of trustlessness was destructive - I just wanted to contextualize it to relevant use cases. It follows, and this is what I understand from Adam's message, that security and protection of decentralization are paramount concerns if we want to retain the trustlessness that makes Bitcoin so useful and powerful. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1 iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJVxcZSAAoJEGwAhlQc8H1mmAUH/RprBA/tz13/CIJTQ4HHYU5v kBAyirwhkx5NEvovFGV40PNpIE7OLqfoN2ThpwJSO8fqnPwbcGEr1qvZAaN9A68y GD1sjw2y+8+hQUtrikMurBFzCX4msBvfYNPHX4J7SBR9qdxC9L7p6HaY5fvdwpQW DmUMidKuRPpWH5AL9DqB9ZwHtPZ8mVaJGHMw1aI9QV0cTlq49ktbt/246wAjtRkb Myw2c9hKT2WIwzmWcruokSXJ4yza6DGYKrcyzprIDCJFEj29geoIderyU+0qzRQ7 julB3Ft05xp2F6LheeH40wa7iyeRs6LWRNr2qElutu6Ta7Rvlg5ZCUGN52SGQtY= =3rcg -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----