And with bitcoin, aren't we trusting somebody? I mean, billions of dollars in bitcoins were recently lost in another epic bitcoin fail, which is presumably because somebody trusted somebody...
Some people put their coins in a bitcoin "bank" or "exchange". You don't have to do that. Bitcoins can live on your own storage (a flash key, for instance).
if your ISP decides "sorry, no more internet access for Adam Goucher." Haven't they just effectively financially largely destroyed you, all by themselves? And aren't you trusting your computer to not have malware on it?
Malware applies to current currencies as well as bitcoins (more or less).
Chaum (subject to reasonable conjectures) had that property. Bitcoin, on the contrary, has the property that I can steal your money by simply outcomputing you, and with no need
You need to get (I believe) some significant fraction of the entire bitcoin computing pool, not just my computing pool.
something that is actually extremely evil. Computers are currently a major chunk of world energy use
Citation? I see reliable estimates of 3-5%. -tom -- -- http://cube20.org/ -- http://golly.sf.net/ --