Re: why IPv6 isn't ready for prime time, SMTP edition

[Barry Shein <bzs () world std com>]

On March 30, 2014 at 04:47 johnl () iecc com (John Levine) wrote:
> > When people talked of "virtual currency" over the years, often arguing
> > that it's too hard a problem, how many described bitcoin with its
> > cryptographic mining etc?
>
> None, but it shouldn't be hard to look at the way bitcoin works and
> realize why it'd be phenomenally ill suited for e-postage, just for
> technical reasons.  I told Satoshi so in 2009.

I wasn't suggesting bitcoin was a model for e-postage, only that a lot
of papers were written saying systems like bitcoin were more or less
impossible (usually based on the double-spending problem.) But bitcoin
seems to have gained quite a bit of traction nonetheless though it may
well still be a bad idea.

The problem is the world is a very sloppy place and tends to function
in spite of proofs that "bumblebees can't fly" etc. when there's a
need.

> R's,
> John
>
> PS: Sometimes a WKBI really is a WKBI.

-- 
        -Barry Shein

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