As Satoshi explained in November 2008, and as I outlined here and on several other occasions, there's strictly no need "for poor people to run a full non-mining node".  You run a full node only if you're a mining pool (you have to), or if you have a very large vested interest in bitcoin and in the ability for a lot of people to connect their light wallets to you.  Also if you're a geek, and want to analyse aspects of bitcoin's system on your own.  But running a full node doesn't add much to the power decentralization aspect of bitcoin.   To be a bitcoin user, and to be secure, you only need a SPV wallet (like electrum).   An SPV wallet proves that all transactions you're looking at, are part of the one and only block chain out there, produced for you by an industry of miners.  You cannot screw someone with an SPV wallet in thinking that a transaction was part of the block chain while it isn't.  That's all you need, and Satoshi explained that already in November 2008.

Given the stakes of the bitcoin system, big players can afford big blocks and big block chains.  Small players have in any case nothing to say concerning the actual block chain, they can only VERIFY that they are using the "right" one.  An SPV wallet does that perfectly for them.


Yes, but that is the idea.  Bitcoin is a very highly speculative asset, and a dangerous unstoppable paperclip maximizer.  It is not a currency at all.  So poor people have nothing to do in bitcoin in any case.  This is deadly finance, not "money on the internet" in any case.

There was a very lucid analysis posted here long ago: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=57.msg390#msg390

However, what that person failed to see is that bitcoin continues to bubble.   It doesn't die.  It goes from one bubble to the next, bigger and bigger ones: 2011, 2013, 2017.  Bubble -crash - bubble -crash - bubble - crash.  Of course, this will run out of greater fools and once all potential greater fools have been in the game, it is over, as the poster suggested.  What he didn't realize is that if there's a multitude of such systems in competition, you don't have a single greater fool game, but a "speculative market".  A speculative market can continue to bubble and burst indefinitely.  That's called "finance".

The 1 MB limit in bitcoin, that harmed it sufficiently last year to lose its monopoly position it held until then (rarely less than 80% of whole of crypto), opened up the market.  If bitcoin would have been on its own, it would have ended in a big final bubble as that poster explained, once we've run out of greater fools.  But if there's a market, where one asset rises while the other falls, the game can be played indefinitely.

So the 1MB limit, destroying bitcoin's monopoly, has also made this giant paper-clip maximizer indestructible, by turning it into a highly speculative market no big player will be able to resist.


Bitcoin has nothing to do with the "unbanked".  It's not money.  It could have been, if the suggestions in the post I quoted, had been followed.

Ask yourself the question: suppose that I was an evil genie wanting to destroy the world with a paperclip maximizer, but I only have myself and my  computer, how could I possibly do it ?  

I could spend my modest savings into trying to build a robot doing so, but I would be ruined, the army would come in, and bomb it.  Game over.  No.  I have to invent something that will trick people into putting themselves a lot of resources in making paperclips.  How ?  I could try to make people make "paperclips" (that is, something totally useless that eats up economic resources), and reward them for it.  But I don't have the world's finances to reward them for it.  I'd be ruined before doing any bit of damage.    I can't ask them to sell there useless stuff to ME.  But if I can trick them in selling their useless stuff BETWEEN THEM, it might work.  

However, how to trick people into thinking they can sell useless stuff to their neighbour ?  By letting them think it is going to grow in value !  If I can trick people in using more and more resources to make something that is useless, but which they can sell to their neighbour for a higher price than the cost of what they made, I'm done !  Now, what could that useless thing be ?  It can't be something physical.  This has already happened, gold rushes did happen, and did a lot of damage, but not enough.  Something virtual then.  How can I have people use a lot of resources to make something virtual ?  It must be the result of a difficult calculation.  If I could trick people in selling one another results of a difficult calculation, in such a way that people need more and more resources to do those calculations, and can sell these results for a higher and higher price, I'm done. But how can I get people to get to think that the results of there difficult calculation will be worth more than the price of the resources they put into it ?  If I could present those results of difficult calculations as a kind of rare jewel that, for the moment, is still a bargain, that might work.  I can bootstrap people's greed into using more and more resources, to make less and less of these rare jewels.  I only have to find a regulating mechanism so that people will always get rewarded sufficiently for the resources they use up.  How can this be done ?  By organizing a competition of difficulty of calculation of course.  If I can have people compete, and bid up in resources, to solve more and more difficult calculations, using more and more resources, their competition will always be such that they spend almost as much value on the calculations as they expect to obtain by selling them.  In return, if they use more and more resources to make less and less of these jewels, the first holders of these jewels that got it against very little expenses, will now be rich.  That will inspire more and more people to join the rat race, because they also want to be rich.  This will only stop if we're running out of resources to make these rarer and rarer jewels.  I'm done.

Now let's invent a story that sells this to idealists that will do the honest mouth-to-mouth service in the beginning and who are above all suspicion.  Mmm.  We could say that we want a "freedom money".  Ok, here we go:
  
"I've been working on a new electronic cash system that's fully peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party..."