Re: Virtual currency without block chain

the double spend and counterfeit problems are solved, yet the problem of ensuring consistent data in the DHT remains to be solved.

One of the key realizations to be had is that these are essentially the same concern.

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(The coins in my proposal are minted by a central authority but after having been minted the coins are fully decentralized and peer-to-peer.)

Also (arguably) undesirable, for many good reasons.

So just Ripple. Minted by a central authority, maintained by a few trusted nodes of their own. Changing their marketcap whenever they feel like it.

No, the idea is to have the system without a block chain to be trustless once the coins are in circulation. The central authority would be a government or something like that. For example the U.S. government could issue the virtual currency with the same value as the USD. And then those coins would be like digital peer-to-peer cash with very fast transaction times. And the transactions can have zero transaction fees with servers run by the government as a public service. So it would be a limited use case but it could be used in competition with existing cryptocurrencies.