According to the Telegraph
The Royal Mint has paired up with CME group to offer a gold backed trading platform built on top of blockchain technology.
I'm normally a proponent of these kinds of ideas, but the article is scant on details and this has me worried.
Blockchain technology is not some magic pill that you can insert into anything and suddenly make better.
In this case, there is a real problem in that the Royal Mint is obligated to sieze any and all funds sourced from any one of a number of "lists" that the government keeps of naughty people.
So one of two things is possible here. Either they've overlooked their legal obligation to sieze on demand any asset held by anyone defined as a bad actor. Or they have the ability to unwind the blockchain.
If they have ability to unwind the blockchain it completely negates any plausible reason for using blockchain tech.
Blockchains work on a concept called "distributed consensus". This literally means a lot of people are in agreement as to whether or not an event did or did not occur. Blockchain transactions are secured by the power of high strength cryptographic signatures to prove a transaction did or did not happen.
So herein lies the crux of the problem. You either do or do not have distributed consensus. You cannot have distributed consensus in a situation where one party has a "veto" or "seizure" right. If you do then there is no purpose in using a blockchain. You can get by much better, much cheaper and frankly much more securely simply by using a multi-master database.
With any "govchain", the government is the ultimate arbiter or who owns what. This is a danger any time govt controls money rather than just minting it and letting people control it from there.
This is going to go south quickly.
Just my thoughts on the matter, what do you think? Should the government even be trying to do this?
When governments and banks finally figure out what blockchains are, they will hate them.
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When BANKS finally figure out what blockchains are, they will hate them.
Governments will love them because they will set governments free from the banks that currently control them.
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TWEETED
"Royal Mint offers GOLD trading based on BLOCKCHAIN..!! MASSIVE NEWS"
https://twitter.com/StephenPKendal/status/803891169252012032
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Thank you so much! I love it when we bring eyeballs to steemit!
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It's all about spreading the word. No problem. Cheers. Stephen
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Disclaimer: I am just a bot trying to be helpful.
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I can imagine what Bitcoin Uncensored would make of this "govchain"....
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