John Christensen on Nostr: Here’s a thought: Gold served as a great form of money for many reasons, and most ...

Here’s a thought: Gold served as a great form of money for many reasons, and most people would agree. The main issue with gold, however, is its size and weight, making it difficult to transport. To solve this, paper certificates redeemable for gold were introduced. The problem was that the issuers of these certificates could issue more than the gold they actually had, leading to a lack of trust.

The real issue wasn’t the idea of issuing paper certificates but the inability to verify that the number of certificates matched the gold held by the issuer. Instead of focusing on scaling Bitcoin, perhaps we should focus on solving the verification problem. If we could easily verify that the number of issued certificates corresponds exactly to the Bitcoin held by the issuer, scaling wouldn’t be an issue, and we could trust third parties because we could verify their claims.