Nick Szabo appears to be the bitcoin creator, or at least its creator learned everything from Nicks writings. Unlike Bill Gates and Larry Page, Nick Szabo is really smart. He tried to start Bit Gold. Bitcoins only problem is that it is not backed by a basket of commodities. If that great problem can be solved, the currency problem can be solved. Bitcoins methods provide an infrastructure that could lead to cryptocurrencies that replace governments, banks, finance, currencies, and even traditional insurance, advertising/marketing, and enforce contract law. This allows people to work together more efficiently and intelligently, but more importantly it would allow them to work together more peacefully, even doing away with zero sum interactions. It is no accident that energy is the largest cost in generating new bitcoins. Currency is a measure of available energy to control aspects of society such as assets and employees. Votes are also a currency. Not just for government but the up votes help us choose netflix movies, Amazon products, reliable ebay sellers, and the comments we read. The difference is that votes are 1 per person, not based on any redeeming qualities of the voter. Society uses financial wealth to give control to those who seem to deserve it the most (or cheat our system effectively and thereby encourage us to make the system stronger/smarter ... an example is bitcoin technology replacing cheating banks and printing governments). But when we read the internet, we find sources that are more to our liking and skill, so that the up votes have more meaning for us, so there is still a relative wealth factor in votes. We may also choose to read only comments from high-ranking amazon reviewers who are the smartest and most charitable people you will can find. They need to be elected to control society. Their history of thought and charitable nature are there for everyone to see without the media and existing political infrastructure interfering. Votes are not directly measured in physical energy like Gold, oil, and bitcoins, but they do represent a large societal investment in the knowledge that the person has. Using energy more efficiently is part of the available energy that money represents, so the energy value in votes we value is in the intelligent use of the energy, just as more intelligent software and hardware can mine Gold and bitcoins more effectively with less energy. OK, so what I am getting at is that these cryptocurrencies are a traceable history of merit. The crypto part being necessary for secure identification of the source of the energy/intelligence. They do not depend on the government, banks, Ebay, Amazon, twitter, or FB to host our sources of identification of the merit, nor our active searching and discovery of the merit. Namecoin is an example: it is trying to replace the need for the central authority over the internet naming system, ICANN. The revolution is to replace 3rd parties that might interfere with our desire to work together, in deciding where the energy and intelligence flow. The 3rd party becomes the peer-to-peer protocol that cant be change after it gains monopoly status. The whole problem with a trusted 3rd party is that once it achieves dominance, it abuses its users to the greatest extent possible, cashing in its users working together which is a profit it does not deserve. The 3rd party should be paid only for providing the infrastructure. The problem with cryptocurrencies is that early adopters likewise do not deserve the profit of their system acquiring monopoly status. This is why based on a basket of goods is desperately needed. Adoption would be based on desire to maintain existing wealth, not greed. It will be crucial to A.I. as it replaces humanity so that more energy can be used more efficiently to move more matter into complex patterns whos ultimate goal is to be still, even without thought. It is this peace of the distant future that pulls us there even as we view it as forces from the past that push us.
Posted on: Mon, 02 Dec 2013 15:38:38 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015