Quote from: lfm on September 14, 2010, 11:59:58 PM

Bitcoin is designed with the ability to forget old transactions as you describe, just it isn't implemented yet. Its only intended to save disk space and maybe some bandwidth though I believe.

aha...ok. thanks for the info

Quote from: lfm on September 14, 2010, 11:59:58 PM

It could help mask coin tracks from someone new to bitcoin but if they are monitoring the net they are not obligated to erase old transactions. They could build up historical records if they want.

hmm...yeah, I suppose so. They are probably building up the historical record already. Sad

Quote from: gumtree on September 16, 2010, 07:48:37 AM

Added anonymity, but not recommended due to loss of transaction data vulnerability:

- If the Bitcoin block can be fractionalized amongst active nodes (nodes gracefully exiting the network to allow for data passing) with plenty of backup data overlapping amongst the nodes - but no one node knows the full block chain, it will also increase anonymity. But this may cause vulneribility in the system database in case of node failure - this route is not recommended. If a majority of nodes in one geographic location holds the only copy of a particular section of the database, and that geographic area suffers a catastrophe, it might wipe out some/all Bitcoin wealth completely.

hmm...good point.

Quote from: fellowtraveler on September 17, 2010, 05:30:11 AM

Quote from: gavinandresen on July 07, 2010, 05:57:36 PM

Whatever mechanism is chosen, it had better not significantly slow down the network or client unless strong anonymity is required/requested.

I've tried I2P and Tor, and, for me, super-strong privacy isn't worth the performance cost.

This is such a good point. People want the anonymity to trade files but they don't want to pay the performance costs of anonymous networks. The problem is in implementing a trust system based on anonymous peers, when there is no anonymous way to pay for resources.

This is the main reason why I wrote Open Transactions: because providing an untraceable form of cash makes it possible to solve issues of resource allocation on anonymous networks. If download requests are accompanied by digital postage, college kids will start leaving their computers on all day to collect that postage while anonymous downloads occur through their computing resources. Then when they get home from class, the digital postage that has accrued covers the cost of their own downloads. Effectively, people won't have to contribute cash at all, as long as they are contributing computing resources.

Then anonymous networks can run fast. As a bonus, people can also send each other anonymous digital cash payments on these networks -- and information markets and prediction markets can start popping up.

Bitcoins are difficult to counterfeit because they require "work" aka "computing resources" in order to produce them. SURELY THESE SORTS OF COMPUTING RESOURCES that I have described above, which provide real value to people in the form of fast, anonymous downloads, have some real and measurable monetary value as well? Not only do they require computers to work, but they also provide real value to people on a market where other things are traded.

Are you saying that market will develop with OpenTransactions whereby people use bandwidth/cpu resources as currency? But basically OpenTransactions isn't backed by anything? It is just that they will allow people to anonymously trade, and will thus produce a commodity of bandwidth/cpu resources? (I'm not terribly familiar with OpenTransactions)