Bitcoin: a protocol for the distributed maintenance of a ledger? | Libertarian Home

Blog: Bitcoin: a protocol for the distributed maintenance of a ledger? via @LibertarianHome #tlot

The major feature of the Bitcoin protocol is to effect transfers of wealth, but it’s primary domain object – the primary noun of importance in the system – is not coins or vouchers but an accounting ledger. The maintenance of that shared public record is the primary task and the competitive challenge addressed by the participating nodes, the computer systems owned by users and service providers who take part. It’s like one big trackerless BitTorrent, a network with no centre and no boundaries, co-operating to store copies of some data to which new blocks are conststantly added. The content of these blocks, the ledger, is not something you would be familiar with. I understood it by analogy: if the Dollar were only handled by a single Federal bank, and there was no cash, then the Fed would need to record the transactions of every US citizen and every other user of the curren...

Full article: http://libertarianhome.co.uk/2012/08/bitcoin-a-protocol-f...