HN Explorer

13 comments

[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 41.2 ms ] thread
mtgx
Except for that whole encryption backdoor stuff.
vasilipupkin
“While existing private digital currencies have economic flaws which make them volatile, the distributed ledger technology that their payment systems rely on may have considerable promise,” the Bank of England wrote in February.

So, can someone explain to me, how the distributed ledger ( blockchain ) can be used without necessarily betting on the digital currency itself functioning well ?

peteretep
He's saying that the general concept of digital distributed currency is stronger than he necessarily believes Bitcoin or Litecoin or Dogecoin are.
jackgavigan
You don't need a currency to have a blockchain. A group of counterparties could work together to create their own closed/permissioned blockchain as a decentralised mechanism for recording transactions of, say, securities or real-time gross settlement.

This is what companies like Eris Industries and Hyperledger/Digital Asset Holdings are focused on.

yarrel
They can but I'm very wary of systems that don't have Bitcoin's closed loop of economic incentives for maintaining the blockchain.
martindale
Without a token, a blockchain is just a distributed database. These have existed for a very long time.
dingaling
Ha, that's a laugh given the first two UK banks with whom I dealt ( Santander and Ulster Bank ) refused to transfer my money, from my UK accounts, to Bitstamp's account in Slovenia.

I even went down to the branches to try but the tellers could only say that it was a system-imposed block.

Credit to Halifax for not having blocked that account at the time. Certainly they took their pound of flesh in international 'transfer' fees, though...

jackgavigan
The banks are worried about being hit with multi-$m fines if they end up inadvertently facilitating money-laundering. The application of AML/KYC rules to digital currency exchanges should make them more willing to bank regulated exchanges.
coob
Could you not have used Transferwise?
dingaling
I signed-up for a Transferwise account for that purpose but as noted they also decline to facilitate anything to do with Bitcoin.

They talk the talk about disrupting Big Banking but for many operations they're merely a veneer over the very banks they lambast.

sjtgraham
More or less all the UK banks are at various stages of involvement with blockchain technology. One use case I have seen openly discussed is cross-border, interbank settlement. A large part of the fees you talk about don't even stay in the bank. I forget exactly where they end up but e.g. IIRC both the fed and ECB charge fees for clearing.