| It's not worth understanding because the goalpoast shifts every 5 minutes. Bitcoin is like a religion. Every point you tear down they come back and say ah but wait! The princess is in another castle! Because there's nothing there. The whole thesis of Bitcoin is that it's trustless, decentralized and permissionless. It's also obvious that it doesn't scale beyond a single Costco or a mid-sized flea market. The only way to scale it is "Layer 2" networks which fundamentally are trustful, centralized and/or permissioned. Because that's the only way to scale. You can back those L2 networks with anything. Gold. Shoes. Dollars. GME shares if you ask Bittrex in any non-US market. There aren't even any guarantees these un-audited, un-accountable, un-regulated exchanges aren't selling more bitcoins than exist the way you oversell seats on a plane. Should be fine unless there's a run. If all you want is a one-way message for net settlement between banks, I recommend you investigate SWIFT and ACATS. The system doesn't do what it says on the sticker. The only reason anyone cares is number go up. And number only goes up if you go through the kind of crazy mental gymnastics Nic did. [edit: ACH is dead, long live RTP [1], and guess what, RTP doesn't use one Argentina of electricity either somehow] [edit: My argument isn't about scaling, it's about Wh per transaction, which Nic is strictly, totally and completely wrong about; let's stay on topic] [1] https://www.theclearinghouse.org/payment-systems/rtp |