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by DrJokepu
3656 days ago
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> That remains to be seen. Isn't this a somewhat meaningless statement? Is it possible to prove that "no matter what system you create to transfer goods, resources, services or value representing those, it will be exploited"? Is it possible to prove the contrary (that there is or could be such a system)? It will never be seen because we will never know for sure one way or the other. Best we can do is to make educated guesses based on past experiences. |
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So until these systems reach reliability parity with 'ordinary' banking we'll see reduced trust. But once a system gets launched that has staying power and that appears to have made the right decisions in the founding phase you can expect more and more commerce to ride on them.
When more commerce is involved the 'bounty' on finding a flaw increases and so any system that carries a substantial amount of commerce and that keeps on standing can be presumed audited to that level.
So it really remains to be seen, which group comes up with a system solid enough to carry a substantial fraction of the worlds commerce. Bitcoin is interesting because even after a couple of years it is still standing, which all by itself is impressive.
Will we ever know for sure? I suspect we will not because this is akin to proving a negative, just like you can never be 100% sure that you've found the last bug in a system. But at some point the premium will be so high that failure to exploit the system should give good confidence that all avenues for exploitation have been exhausted and that even if the system still contains flaws those flaws may not be exploitable. It's an asymptotic curve.