[p2p-research] Bitcoin open source implementation of P2P currency
Martien van Steenbergen wrote:
Very interesting. Is this akin to David Chaum’s anonymous digital money? His concept makes sure money is anonymous unless it is compromised, i.e. the same money spent more than once. As soon as it’s compromised, the ‘counterfeiter’ is immediately publicly exposed.
It’s similar in that it uses digital signatures for coins, but different in the approach to privacy and preventing double-spending. The recipient of a Bitcoin payment is able to check whether it is the first spend or not, and second-spends are not accepted. There isn’t an off-line mode where double-spenders are caught and shamed after the fact, because that would require participants to have identities.
To protect privacy, key pairs are used only once, with a new one for every transaction. The owner of a coin is just whoever has its private key.
Of course, the biggest difference is the lack of a central server. That was the Achilles heel of Chaumian systems; when the central company shut down, so did the currency.
Also, in bitcoin, is there a limited supply of money (that must be managed)? Or is money created exactly at the moment of transaction?
There is a limited supply of money. Circulation will be 21,000,000 coins. Transactions only transfer ownership.
Thank you for your questions,
Satoshi
Martien van Steenbergen wrote:
Would love to also see support for not having to supply and managing money. Would make it easier and cheaper to maintain and results in have sufficient money, always and everywhere. No scarcity, no abundance, exactly the right amount all times, self-organizing.
That’s do-able. It can be programmed to follow any set of rules.
I see Bitcoin as a foundation and first step if you want to implement programmable P2P social currencies like Marc’s ideas and others discussed here. First you need normal, basic P2P currency working. Once that is established and proven out, dynamic smart money is an easy next step.
I love the idea of virtual, non-geographic communities experimenting with new economic paradigms.
Reminds me of: * AardRock >> Wizard Rabbit Treasurer; and * AardRock >> Pekunio
Indeed, it is much like Pekunio in the concept of spraying redundant copies of every transaction to a number of peers on the network, but the implementation is not a reputation network like Wizard Rabbit Treasurer. In fact, Bitcoin does not use reputation at all. It sees the network as just a big crowd and doesn’t much care who it talks to or who tells it something, as long as at least one of them relays the information being broadcast around the network. It doesn’t care because there’s no way to lie to it. Either you tell it crypto proof of something, or it ignores you.
Are you familiar with Ripple?
As trust systems go, Ripple is unique in spreading trust around rather than concentrating it.
Is bitcoin also available as a protocol spec (facilitating differen language bindings and implementations; unite on specs, compete on implementation).
It would be best to refer to the C++ source code. I plan to implement interfaces for using the software to send and receive transactions from any language, so server side code can easily use it for web based e-commerce sites.
Satoshi
Michel Bauwens wrote:
how operational is your project? how soon do you think people will be able to use it in real life?
It’s fully operational and the network is growing. If you try the software, e-mail me your Bitcoin address and I’ll send you a few coins.
We just need to spread the word and keep getting more people interested.
I’ll forward the release introduction in the next message.
Satoshi