Bitcoin
Out of context: Reply #557
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- monNom0
The problem with decentralized anything is coordination. When you have a central authority to look to, you can get quick confirmation on the validity of a thing. When you decentralize, you need to check with everyone in the increasingly distributed network to confirm the validity of that thing, which takes time. It's like the military command structure vs the leaderless rabble. In the leaderless rabble, communication is slowed as the group looks for consensus.
I don't know how bitcoin would ever gets past that aspect of its design. Because it is anonymous, and it's only value is its anonymity, you defacto cannot have a central clearing house, or a trust-based last-mile like banks offer. IE: Banks can take 30 days to get their money from another bank on a cheque you cashed, but they'll give you the money right now if they trust you. Would anybody do the same with an anonymous and therefore untrusted network?
Beyond the fact that it's flawed as a real-time transactional currency, it's inherent value is in what you can buy with it... which is basically the things you need anonymity to purchase. When you take capital flight out of the picture (read: Chinese banned from using it), the rest of the market for the currency is pretty small -- small time drug deals, and other vices, but always small because anything large requires both parties to trust and verify the other end of the transaction.
Bitcoin will probably live on for some time, but I don't think it's going to supplant any other currency or commodity. What may do that is a centrally coordinated network, still based on math or some other unadulterable limit, but which builds trust into the system to allow for real-time/meatspace transactions.