The Economist: You’re getting it wrong
Bitcoin, not Blockchain
The Economist is having the Blockchain (the technology that underpins Bitcoin) in the cover of its weekly issue.
Inside, the article “The trust machine”.
Its thesis, its main idea, is that:
The real innovation is not the digital coins themselves, but the trust machine that mints them — and which promises much more besides.
We should focus -they say- on these “shared databases”. The Blockchain is just one of them, being Bitcoin its “product”. It is not a new idea.
They, you, can focus on whatever you want, but the real change will not come from someone’s private or semi-private (or also completely public, we already tried altcoins) “shared database”, but from THE “shared database”, THE Blockchain, (THE) Bitcoin.
No better way to reason why than as put by Reddit user “americanpegasus”:
No Blockchain without Bitcoin, as simple as that. It is a matter of design. And design is about choice and, most of all, about sacrifice.
Bitcoin’s Blockchain is a ledger designed to avoid censorship by avoiding centralization. In doing that, it sacrifices efficiency. A decentralized solution will never be more efficient than a centralized solution.
But those who designed Bitcoin, and those who understand it, embrace this sacrifice. We need it. The world needs it.
The only clear and useful -as far as I can think of today- use case for a ledger that sacrifices efficiency to avoid censorship is a government-independent monetary system: Bitcoin.
Why, then, are traditional financial institutions so attracted to these “shared databases” lately? Doesn’t anyone in there understand that A) they wouldn’t be powerful enough and B) they are not an efficient design, in any case? Are they getting it wrong?
Or are they trying for us to get it wrong?
Who owns this media? Let’s not waste our time going all paranoid about it.
Let’s go buy some bitcoins and, more importantly, let’s go build some products and services based on THE “shared database”, THE Blockchain, (THE) Bitcoin.
And in doing so, let’s not forget we are making a sacrifice, and let’s not forget that it is worth it.
