[salawat]

You... Realize fiat actually has the same property? In fact, Gold changed hands at the speed of data too.

Banking became a thing because merchants realized an IOU was as good as the thing itself. Chuck the bullion in a vault, then maintain a ledger of who it belongs to, and as long as the numbers check out on both sides, donezo. Heck, get your timing right, and you don't even have to move any or wait on the other guy to come get it.

Don't even need an electrical grid or semiconductor fabs. Just a sheet of paper, a vault, and decree something to be a store of value to chuck into it. Then don't think too hard about it, or else your society gets infected by the economics.

All downhill from there... Notbin' worth seein' down that rahd.

The major issue with transactions right now is that a whole lotta people want to be able to track any exchange of value period. Bitcoin actually gives them that wish. Personally? I'll accept wait times for privacy if everyone else would get with the program so we could kick VISA et al. to the curb.

[ur-whale]

> an IOU was as good as the thing itself.

Except it isn't (for many reasons, chief among which is counterparty risk).

But the banks and the merchants sure brainwashed everyone into accepting this as a tenet of the modern economy.

They event went quite a step further with fractional reserve: we all know there's only 25% of the actual stuff in the vaults, but still ... the IOUs are 1:1.

Until, of course, when the "faith threshold" is reached, they aren't anymore.