News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:BitTorrent v2 by tracker1 on Tuesday September 08, 2020 @07:39PM (#24414918)
You don't REALLY need something like a bank account (exchange account) except to convert to/from the currency. You only need an electronic wallet. The transactions are where it gets really weird though.

That said, unfortunately, short of a large nation state, or collection of banks also allowing exchange/transactions, I don't think it will ever take off. Even then, transaction times as you mention are not fast, and often are controlled by a limited number of organizations.

What the technology does offer, is a means for multiple parties that don't trust each other to proceed with a transaction. This is often where "smart contracts" come into play, and also why banks are considering a cryptocurrency system(s) for inter-bank exchanges.

In the end, those that win will largely be the incumbents imho.

I setup bitcoin on a few machines really early on... and had a couple coins... but I had no way to "use" them and it was just costing electricity at the time... I deleted it all and didn't look back until they cleared $20k a coin. Kind of wish I at least saved a zip file of the wallets somewhere. Though if I'd kept mining, may have been worth something.

There are no comments on this comment yet.