Cyprus did not cause the April 2013 rally. I don't know why everyone thinks that... Also, Greece isn't going to impact bitcoins price.
correct. I keep pointing it out myself, but people don't listen to reason a lot these days.
I don't know why everyone thinks that...
I do:
people like a good simple story.There's a part of the brain that is responsible for making sense of everything (after the fact). It's a lazy bastard.
I'm beginning to suspect human history looks a lot different from what is depicted in history books. Maybe we should start putting stuff into blockchains (or _the_ blockchain) so it can't be changed later... is that what factom is doing, btw?
yes factom is hashing for proof of existence
using the blockchain
doesn't the initial insertion/verification of the factom data into the blockchain introduce a centralized, potentially corruptible, weak point in the system?
regarding the centralized, potentially corruptible, weak point in the system that inserting data into the blockchain presents- this is potentially true if we were to take raw data - however, Factom only inserts a hash into the blockchain, not the data itself.
but the raw data from which the hash is derived can contain corruptible data.
as an example; the mountains of mortgage loan docs. someone can insert a fraudulent doc stating your home reverts to them in 5 yrs w/o your knowledge. no one reads all these docs. this gets hashed and inserted to BC thus memorializing that fact.
Yes, the blockchain "proof" just proves that some statement existed at the time the transaction including that statement's digest appears in a block. So people can certainly insert whatever they want. If someone wants to claim they predicted the winner of the Superbowl in 2020, they could create a separate transaction for every team, stating that that team won, and then when 2020 rolls around, just point to the one that worked. Classic proof problem.
Also, Blockchain proof isn't storage. I think some people are misunderstanding this at the moment. If you give a bunch of documents to Factom and they hash them into the blockchain, and then they lose the documents and you don't have a copy, the digest in the blockchain is completely useless since you have no document to verify the digest against.