<oembed><type>rich</type><version>1.0</version><author_name>npub1jkdfcglr59lwnhek94l393g0hhhaj0v5yzz3n5s3p0r9u0576sgs7373ck</author_name><author_url>https://nostr.ae/npub1jkdfcglr59lwnhek94l393g0hhhaj0v5yzz3n5s3p0r9u0576sgs7373ck</author_url><provider_name>njump</provider_name><provider_url>https://nostr.ae</provider_url><html>📅 Original date posted:2014-04-27&#xA;📝 Original message:Agreed. I&#39;m a pragmatist, certainly not anti-change (or even anti-zero-conf.) Useful and non-controversial hard forks don&#39;t keep me awake at night :) I support your general position on zero-conf payments (that they&#39;re useful and we should make them as reliable as practical.)&#xA;&#xA;But the very essence of Bitcoin, to me, is trustlessness. Satoshi&#39;s great invention isn&#39;t just another payment network - it&#39;s /ecash/. Bearer-negotiable, whoever-controls-the-private-keys-owns-it, **ecash**.&#xA;&#xA;If not that, what do you think it is? :-)&#xA;&#xA;I like trustless systems for purely pragmatic, cost-benefit reasons. They allow us to avoid all the costs associated with imperfect humans, while reaping the benefits of reliability and predictability :P&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;On 28 April 2014 12:31:05 AM AEST, Mike Hearn &lt;mike at plan99.net&gt; wrote:&#xA;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt; That moves us away from a pure trustless system built upon a small&#xA;&gt;&gt; democratic foundation (as something of a necessary evil in an&#xA;&gt;imperfect&#xA;&gt;&gt; world where humans run our computers and use our system) and toward a&#xA;&gt;&gt; &#34;democratic system&#34;.&#xA;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt; You don&#39;t have to agree, but I hope you can understand the point I&#39;m&#xA;&gt;&gt; making :-)&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;Yep, your point is well made.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;I don&#39;t have much more to say about this proposal specifically, but I&#xA;&gt;think&#xA;&gt;this whole question of what changes are OK and what would be a&#xA;&gt;violation of&#xA;&gt;the social contract will get discussed endlessly over the coming years.&#xA;&gt;Put&#xA;&gt;another way, what do Bitcoin&#39;s users expect and want - a system that&#xA;&gt;evolves or a system that remains exactly as they found it? There will&#xA;&gt;be&#xA;&gt;good arguments on both sides, and the answer will probably be different&#xA;&gt;on&#xA;&gt;a case by case basis. But personally I&#39;m skeptical of any argument that&#xA;&gt;argues against change for its own sake. It has to be an argument rooted&#xA;&gt;in&#xA;&gt;a careful analysis of costs and benefits.&#xA;&#xA;-- &#xA;Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.</html></oembed>