AgoristView on Nostr: Well, that's kinda like saying what would happen to air travel if we could all ...
Well, that's kinda like saying what would happen to air travel if we could all teleport. I guess air travel might not be needed, but it's kind of a ridiculous question.
If settlement assurances could be guaranteed in some other way then maybe that new system would do to bitcoin what bitcoin will do to gold & what gold did to glass beads. But maybe not, because bitcoin's energy use makes it a buyer of last resort & a way to bootstrap & laod balance energy infrastructure. It is energy money.
The energy cost required to make a change to the ledger is the only real form of insurance against transactions being reversed. If it doesn't cost more than a billion dollars to reverse a transaction, then the network can't really secure a billion dollar transaction. This is why exchanges & others often wait for 6+ blocks to be sure that the transaction is secure. How else do you eliminate the need to trust people?
If settlement assurances could be guaranteed in some other way then maybe that new system would do to bitcoin what bitcoin will do to gold & what gold did to glass beads. But maybe not, because bitcoin's energy use makes it a buyer of last resort & a way to bootstrap & laod balance energy infrastructure. It is energy money.
The energy cost required to make a change to the ledger is the only real form of insurance against transactions being reversed. If it doesn't cost more than a billion dollars to reverse a transaction, then the network can't really secure a billion dollar transaction. This is why exchanges & others often wait for 6+ blocks to be sure that the transaction is secure. How else do you eliminate the need to trust people?