what makes it powerful is 1) finite money supply 2) permissionless, unstoppable peer-to-peer transactions The rest is just technical hurdles to overcome. If more anonymity is demanded, Bitcoin core code will change, or an alternative will become adopted organically.
When this kind of thing can happen because of a programming error by unknown peoples during an upgrade, I'm not the regular person out there is going to think it's the safest asset: https://bitcoin.org/en/alert/2015-07-04-spv-mining Especially when combined with anonymity that makes it a nightmare to chase down someone if you were the one that ended up with invalid bitcoins.
1) finite supply actually underpins one of bitcoin's critical vulnerabilities: transaction fees and the corresponding correlation with the blockchain's security, a story that has still not been fully sketched out. Increasing the former is inevitable, which clashes with your point 2) if you mean permissionless or unstoppable to imply the lack of onerous transaction fees. 2) this is exactly the problem I described with vague hyperbole. what do "permissionless" and "unstoppable" even mean in this context. if I transact in USD in cash form with a drug dealer that is "permissionless" and "unstoppable" unless the guy comes back and tries to kill me for the money. Do you mean decentralized trustless transactions for permissionless? i.e no theoretical need for banks and government to build and validate the overarching financial infrastructure? because, certainly, for components of it (especially exchanges) regulation is already becoming an issue. do you mean no transaction reversibility for "unstoppable", because the lack of time-sensitive reversibility is something Wikileaks and a whole bunch of people are flagging leading to the need for new cryptocurrencies like http://www.reversecoin.org/. An alternative already exists for anonymity (Darkcoin), I highly doubt core will change to fit that need because an open public ledger is one of the cornerstones of Bitcoin. "the rest is just technical hurdles" --> I really think both sides of the bitcoin debate could benefit from understanding the core technology and mathematics behind the blockchain, and debating in substance rather than vim. This whole "unstoppable,impenetrable,the bestest in the life" rhetoric from some bitcoin cheerleaders is really devoid of the thoughtfulness many of the technologists behind new blockchain applications routinely display.
Bitcoin is the opposite of anonymous. It is an open public ledger that shows every transaction between addresses. your own link links back to the miners who ended up with invalid bitcoins. also, this wasn't a "programming error", it was a standards enforcement mistake--one that was quickly documented and caught.
permissionless/unstoppable does not mean free "permissionless" meaning no third party clearing house for electronic payments "unstoppable" meaning the transactions cannot be intercepted or reversed Meh, the technical challenges are problems to be solved, opportunities to make money. They said the Internet couldn't do voice, couldn't do video, would run out of addresses. People find a way. A permissionless environment like the Internet (and the Bitcoin network) finds solutions to these problems. Satoshi discovered a way to achieve consensus on a trustless distributed network that before require costly/risky central parties. That's the invention. That's the value proposition. That's why people are investing in it.
It's an open ledger by address, but not by person. Unless I have a lot of resources and knowledge, I'm not going to be able to track down the person behind the random address I got invalid bitcoins from. It was quickly documented and caught after an upgrade that caused the problem to emerge - and a problem that has yet to actually be fixed. "Standards enforcement mistake" is no better than programming error. It means that some random people that you have no knowledge or access to have the ability to mess up the functioning of the currency system. If people are expected to put their faith in the currency, that shouldn't be possible. You're putting your faith in a lot of unknown entities doing unknown things with apparently unpredictable consequences to the ability of the system to work properly. It's really no different than putting your faith in the government.
But if I want someone to send me bitcoin, I have to provide them my public address, and they can then trace all spending from that address and tie it back to me. If Clutch solicits bitcoin donations, he will have to broadcast an address, and all spending from that address will be public.
You could easily create 200 bitcoin addresses and route invalid bitcoins in circles and essentially launder your money, though. The bitcoin address you received the bitcoins from could be 50 steps removed from the actual originator of the invalid coins. Or, if I understand correctly, I could actually buy bitcoins offline by just getting a bitcoin code - so if I bought the invalid bitcoin offline unknowingly and then used it in a transaction with you, neither of us track down the identity of the original source. We'd have a bitcoin address, but that's it. And even then, we don't have any enforcement mechanism to do anything about it. Since it's not a legal currency, I'm not sure you can call the police to arrest a guy for playing with Bitcoin code and mining false coins. Part of the "full faith and credit" aspect of currency is that you're putting your faith in a government entity. Here, you're putting your faith in a system that's showing that it can fail through the actions of random unknown people.
When you talk about the effects of the protocol, you're not talking about the technical implementation of TCP/IP but the ramifications of the web that builds on it. You don't have to contribute to the core team to be able to be able to understand and properly communicate the features of bitcoin and to understand how it is not anonymous (for example). It's a discussion between bitcoin adopters and detractors. If you don't understand what is going on or don't bother to properly explain it everybody loses.
Finding people with bitcoin addresses is easier than most people assume. Also, that's irrelevant to your original argument. Tracking down the invalid bitcoin blocks is very easy with an open ledger by address. That's what really matters in this case for people looking to not transact in invalid blocs, not the people behind the mining (whose identity is by design irrelevant in this discussion). User error != programming/design/architecture error. The former is more easily resolved, detected, and isolated. It's the difference between shipping every laptop with malware, and infecting your laptop with malware because you went to the wrong website.
My original point was that it would take lots of resources to track someone down that gave you invalid coins. It entirely has to do with tracking down people. Knowing their bitcoin address does no good for the person who was defrauded. If you want the world to trust and use your currency, then some random person should not be capable of breaking the whole thing through user error. You can say it's easily resolved, but we're going on a week now and the problem still exists. That's not something that builds confidence in a currency where people are asked to just trust the technology.
As far as easily detected, as of right now, here's what the Bitcoin.org alert says from the July 5th fail: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/July_2015_forks#Invalid_Block_Hashes From the July 5th fork: 000000000000000003ae1223f4926ec86100885cfe1484dc52fd67e042a19b12 mined by MegaBigPower (255 non-coinbase transactions) 0000000000000000063f97f292fb559773437fb3558c474efec6053a7b0d5a2 mined by an unknown miner (0 non-coinbase transactions) 000000000000000012dbd422d7bf1c4b55982c37b390d4613dcee00d31741c6a mined by an unknown miner (1,597 non-coinbase transactions)
Bitcoin needs two things. 1. Price stability. Currencies don't really work without that. 2. Some sort of equivalent to the Credit Card PCI standards with card associations like Visa or Mastercard. I work in building payment integrations and we've had discussions with Bitcoin exchanges but until those two issues are resolved, bitcoin won't take off. The latter issue will get resolved eventually. I realize bitcoin thrives on being decentralized but some sort of private association like a Visa or Mastercard will be required to enforce standards that will ensure confidence in bitcoin as a payment. I imagine it'll happen eventually and exchanges will start forming a common association to manage all of this.
this lecture by Andreas is perhaps his best yet <iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/130761491" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe> <p><a href="https://vimeo.com/130761491">The Bitcoin Opportunity - Andreas Antonopoulos, Author of “Mastering Bitcoin”</a> from <a href="https://vimeo.com/user38243222">IDEO Futures</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>
