no, the whole point of bitcoin is that it's money and that means it has to be a global ledger, in order for its supply to be limited... it's the realisation of ideas from Mises and Hayek
there is no need for a global ledger for a server that one person is responsible for and providing for a limited set of users, it's a different structure, in terms of law, money cannot be a trust, but any enterprise can be a trust because a trust must have a bounded set of beneficiaries
any kind of "currency" that is still a trust is not money in the sense of gold coins are always going to be worth something because they are durable, portable, scarce and verifiable
bitcoin's got all of these properties
Replies (3)
Is bitcoin better money because of those properties? Sure.
Are those properties a requirement for money? No. History is full of moneys that didn't offer much but were still highly used.
Is a global unified ledger a requirement? No, you can have sharded ledgers everywhere. They can all be different from one another. Does it exist today? No. Could it exist? For sure. Do we know how to build it? No.
Just because things are the way they are doesn't mean that better things cannot exist. I don't know if we will see something better than Bitcoin in my lifetime, but there is no mathematical proof that a better system can't exist.
Let's give it another 100 years and check in later. My bet is that Bitcoin will last as long as other global reserve currencies have lasted. Then somebody will have a true new idea.
"We don't know how to build it" -- if "we" is humans on planet Earth that's a large set and makes negatives hard to prove. There could be a yak herder in outer Mongolia right now sitting in a yurt with their laptop, coding the shared ledger solution, and you wouldn't know about it.
The "if/when it exists, the news will reach me" attitude requires being well plugged into the global conversation, and one that bitcoin "shutting out the blasphemy" bigots can't afford.
Sharded ledgers FTW.
