Quote from: aigeezer on May 05, 2016, 01:19:43 PM

Quote from: toknormal on May 05, 2016, 12:38:00 PM

Quote from: AlexGR on May 05, 2016, 10:49:22 AM

There is no change in the nature of money. There is no "multiplication" of bitcoins or fractional reserve. There is no trust or counterparty risk. All you have is "locked" funds between two parties

That is a typical programmer's answer because programmers make little distinction between theory and practice. To them, theory IS practice.

Unfortunately, real life doesn't work like that Wink

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Tok, your position was quite persuasive and the discussion was very useful before it took that turn. I have the impression that you and AlexGR shared the same axiomatic starting points, but I'm fuzzy as to where exactly you differ, other than your respective opinions. Dismissive generalizations about "programmers" are unhelpful but hard evidence or irrefutable logic to support the opinions would be valuable.

Any online forum is a very "hot" and awkward discussion medium, and of course this troll-infested thread can be hotter than most. Let's not make their lives any easier: http://www.nowandfutures.com/spew_tools.html

You and Alex are discussing really important issues, imho.

Don't worry about what Tok said. I'm not a programmer, so... I do tend to think algorithmically, but other than that, no - I'm not a programmer in any serious or competent degree. I could if I focused on it, but I'm not particularly excited by the way most programming languages are designed and this prevents me from convincing my mind to even bother with their complexity.

Now, on the topic at hand, trying to explain that payment channels are designed to be trustless is kind of similar to trying to explain that masternodes do not have access to people's coins. A lot of people think that money goes from person A to masternode to person B when the masternodes never really take possession of one's coins. Just because they perform the mixing part with other transactions doesn't mean they have to be trusted with one's coins. Payment channels are similar. Nobody has your coins but you. Yes, they are in the channel. Does that allow you to doublespend them as to practice fractional banking? No.

Philosophical issues on whether the monetary properties remain the same while the money are in the channel are kind of trivial in the larger scheme of things. The real life problem is that you need decentralized scaling and you have a trustless and decentralized solution that can provide that, along with faster and cheaper txs. You can leave it on the table or you can take it. Bitcoin will take it. The alternative scaling "solutions" are quite ugly.