Electronic money

[Ben Laurie]

On Fri Dec 05 2014 at 7:35:16 PM Charles Lindsey <chl at clerew.man.ac.uk>
wrote:

> On Thu, 04 Dec 2014 16:31:09 -0000, Ben Laurie <ben at links.org> wrote:
>
>
> > I think it is fundamental that if you want to prevent double spending you
> > have to have reference to some central body.
> >
> > If you think Bitcoin avoids that then you should read my writings on
> > Bitcoin - because it doesn't. :-)
>
> But Bitcoin Does have a central body. It is just that it is a distributed
> Body - anybody can participate as a member of it, and the cryptography is
> cunningly arranged that all copies of the "ledger" are provably identical.
>

Consider the following thought experiment. I am an Evil Genius, with a Lot
of Computers.

I go away for a year and mine bitcoins on my own version of the chain.
Because I have a LoC, I can do this faster than the rest of you.

When the year ends, I present my longer chain, and under the Holy Rules of
Bitcoin, all of the last year of mining and transactions goes away.

Clearly this situation is untenable. The solution? Checkpoints.

Those who set the checkpoints are the central authority.

In short.
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