Trust Minimization

Trust Minimization

“#Bitcoin is P2P electronic cash that is valuable over legacy systems because of the monetary autonomy it brings to its users through decentralization. #Bitcoin seeks to address the root problem with conventional currency: all the trust that’s required to make it work . Not that justified trust is a bad thing, but trust makes systems brittle, opaque, and costly to operate. Trust failures result in systemic collapses, trust curation creates inequality and monopoly lock-in, and naturally arising trust choke-points can be abused to deny access to due process.

Through the use of cryptographic proof and decentralized networks #Bitcoin minimizes and replaces these trust costs. With the available technology, there are fundamental trade-offs between scale and decentralization. If the system is too costly people will be forced to trust third parties rather than independently enforcing the system’s rules. If the #Bitcoin blockchain’s resource usage, relative to the available technology, is too great, #Bitcoin loses its competitive advantages compared to legacy systems because validation will be too costly (pricing out many users), forcing trust back into the system. If capacity is too low and our methods of transacting too inefficient, access to the chain for dispute resolution will be too costly, again pushing trust back into the system.”

-- Greg Maxwell