Quote from: brg444 on December 02, 2014, 08:42:26 PM

Quote from: Erdogan on December 02, 2014, 08:39:54 PM

Quote from: Peter R on December 02, 2014, 05:17:48 PM

Quote from: thezerg on December 02, 2014, 02:47:27 PM

Yes but there are still advantages to decentralizing the transaction even if redemption must be centralized, because redemption happens rarely. Also, if stocks, bonds or mortgages are directly offered on the blockchain (as opposed to representing certificates stored in a vault) they simultaneously represent something but also are themselves property.

I agree that decentralizing the transactions of stocks, bonds and mortgages may have advantages. I guess I'm just slightly annoyed by the meme that "currency is only the first app of blockchain technology." What needs to eventually be understood by the media is that:

(1) Currency is the foundational application of blockchain technology; without a valuable currency, no other apps are possible.
(2) The native blockchain units (bitcoins) are the only asset with no counterparty risk.

Quote from: justusranvier on December 02, 2014, 03:15:21 PM

Many people have a problem conceptually separating the need to trust a counterparty to fulfill a contract, and the need to trust a ledger system to accurately record ownership information.

It's possible to make the latter arbitrarily small, but there's no technological solution to the former as it's inherent to the problem space.

Yes, well said. We need to stress the distinction between trust of the ledger system and trust of the counterparty (and then point out that bitcoin is fundamentally different as it has no counterparty [or perhaps the counterparty is the ledger system itself]).

Justus, I see you're giving a talk via telepresence in Vancouver on Thursday. What will you be speaking about?

Other uses of blockchain technology (and not the bitcoin blockchain, it is easy to construct blockchains with less security) is where the good is only information, for example the right to access a theater (a ticket). You can show up at the entrance with a ticket "coin" (a better word needs to be invented) and send the ticket to the ticket office for admission. It could be done with an association of theaters where each theater runs a miner, and no block reward is necessary.

I fail to see why you would need a blockchain for that though... Any centralized server model could do.

That is what we have, but this one would have tickets which are transferable, and the uptime of a distributed system. Ticket sale could therefore be distributed without the need for agreement for the distributor (he just buys tickets and resell them).