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by anonporridge 1866 days ago
I do see a day when every database that promises immutability periodically checkpoints the root of a hash tree of every piece of data they have into the bitcoin blockchain.

Whether it's the Internet Archive, the Library of Congress, or your personal git repo, if there's some piece of data that you may want to be able to prove hasn't been altered, you check it into the blockchain.
1 comments
quickthrower2 1866 days ago
What is the use? You can’t recover the data from the hash, and the hash doesn’t prove the data is truthful.
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anonporridge 1865 days ago
Of course it doesn't prove truth, but it does ensure that the data hasn't been tampered with since it was published.

For example, some powerful entity might be incentivized to try to change the text of old news stories to better support their current agenda. If you can change our understanding of history, you can potentially manipulate the future. Records that include proof of immutability will go a long way to making this kind of power play orders of magnitude harder and more expensive.

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