[goykasi]

If you plan to start a company that centrally hosts content (which you said below the user's would do.. now Im confused), whats the point of even using bitcoin? What role does it play besides some sort of integrated pay to post and tipping system? Both of these things can be done without bitcoin -- and far simpler too.

Sure the load could be distributed to a p2p network, but how are you really going to prevent malicious users/nodes? It seems like it would be a nightmare to develop a fair system. A fair system where a user's post is actually propagated (included in mining) to the network and not silenced by a large installation that doesnt want the content on the network. It would seem that if youre using some sort of bitcoin system (or some derivative), a node would just need to contribute enough hashing power to exclude specific content that they don't like (or have been paid to exclude) a significant amount of time to frustrate users. Your centralized resources would always have to be able to provide more hashing power to keep control of the network. Seems silly to chase after big mining installs. Maybe I dont understand your idea... "Fix reddit with bitcoin! [[insert story about being let go and why what you were working on was actually valuable]]" doesnt really explain anything. Maybe this could be a good idea, but it just sounds like vaporware at this point.

Just create an altcoin that you have more control over. But I guess that no one (you?) would benefit enough, because its not tied to bitcoin's value being inflated.

Disclaimer: I own some bitcoin. So dont think Im just trashing on bitcoin.

[yafujifide]

> If you plan to start a company that centrally hosts content (which you said below the user's would do.. now Im confused), whats the point of even using bitcoin?

The point of using bitcoin is so that users are rewarded both for sharing content, and for hosting the content.

> What role does it play besides some sort of integrated pay to post and tipping system? Both of these things can be done without bitcoin -- and far simpler too.

Although the idea I sketched out is for a decentralized reddit, a centralized reddit that just integrated payments is also totally valid idea. Imagine if Changetip were integrated directly into reddit so that upvoting tipped people. That would still be really valuable and a lot of people might use such a thing. But it doesn't solve the other problem of what to do when the owners of the service have different ideals than the users. (Note that I actually worked with the guys at Chain.com to produce a proof-of-concept of something like this.)

> Just create an altcoin that you have more control over. But I guess that no one (you?) would benefit enough, because its not tied to bitcoin's value being inflated.

A new altcoin would not be as useful as bitcoin outside of the system. Using bitcoin makes karma as real as possible. Using an altcoin would just be annoying and a lot fewer people would want to use the system.

[goykasi]

> A new altcoin would not be as useful as bitcoin outside of the system. Using bitcoin makes karma as real as possible. Using an altcoin would just be annoying and a lot fewer people would want to use the system.

But is that really true? The overwhelming number of users that would participate (at reddit's scale or a couple of magnitudes less) have 1) never heard of bitcoin, 2) dont own bitcoin, 3) think its scammy or for buying drugs. Almost all of the potential users would have to purchase bitcoin just to participate. The only people that would be annoyed by using an altcoin are the ones that currently own bitcoin and would not receive a benefit from an increase in value.

Lets be real. This type of application could definitely be developed with some sort of decentralized/p2p token system where tokens are earned, posts are paid for them and maybe the tokens gain some sort of value, but it doesnt require bitcoin. It could literally just be pebbles picked up off the ground if enough people believe that that is correct. Bitcoin isnt valuable enough and doesnt have enough utility for it to be an absolute requirement.

[rhaps0dy]

Are users going to pay for decentralized Reddit? I'm not sure they will care much about the possibility of the company's interests being against them, especially the majority of users who don't speak much of politics.