[deepinsand]

Great sources, in the middle of the YouTube video now. Though I've always had this question about "Bitcoin as a protocol":

Isn't the viability of the distributed ledger predicated on the value of Bitcoin? Workers verify transactions because they get paid in something that they value. If the value of Bitcoin drops (say: government regulation), then the incentive to mine/verify goes away?

Assuming that happens and the miners go away, wouldn't the ledger be open to malicious attack?

[tlrobinson]

Yes, that could be a problem. In an efficient market the total mining costs for the network (and thus the cost to achieve 51% of mining power) will tend to be slightly less than the value received from block rewards and fees. It's also the main reason I don't foresee alt-coins proliferating. People will prefer the most secure network.

There are other ways to "fund" the network security: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Funding_network_security https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=157141.msg1665332#ms... I don't know if these schemes would work if the value drops too low though.