story: Bitcoin @ Freakonomics

A very interesting view on digital currency solution(s).
A parallel with early web and internet, that was not taken seriously...


Freakonomics » Why Everybody Who Doesn’t Hate Bitcoin Loves It: A New Freakonomics Radio Podcast:

Freakonomics » Why Everybody Who Doesn’t Hate Bitcoin Loves It: Full Transcript

Explanation by Mark Andreessen, a web pioneer:

"The problem Bitcoin solved, says Andreessen, was known as the Byzantine General’s Problem:

ANDREESSEN: The metaphor basically is you have a group of generals in the Byzantine Empire and they’ve surrounded a huge city. And there are these encampments that these generals have all around the city. And at some point they’re going to lay siege to the city. But they have a coordination problem, which is they have to be able to communicate with each other to develop the battle plan and to decide when to launch the attack. And so they’re sending runners back and forth between the cities. The twist to it is some of the generals are traitors. But none of the other generals know which ones are traitors. 

And so the question is how do you coordinate a significant number of people who don’t know each other and don’t trust each other being able to communicate securely and be able to basically establish digital trust. And as you’re probably well aware, digital trust is a concept that’s brand new. You know, one of the huge problems of the Internet over 20 years is who do you trust, which websites do you trust, which people do you trust when you do a transaction, who do you trust? 

And so this idea of the Byzantine Generals Problem turns out to apply directly to the Internet as a whole. One of the things as a consequence that’s been missing on the Internet for 20 years is kind of a native concept of money, right? And so, the ability to very easily pay somebody online, the ability to very easily charge for a piece of content, the ability to very easily exchange a digital title, or a digital key, or a digital contract has just been missing because you have no mechanism for establishing trust. And so Bitcoin basically holds out the promise of being the first solution to establishing trust over an untrusted network."

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Just recently, a solution for "Byzantine Generals Problem" was referenced in relation to Leslie Lamport, Touring award winner, who actually defined the term and proposed solution now commonly used in core network protocols.

The Writings of Leslie Lamport: The Byzantine Generals Problem: