so what do you think? did i at least somewhat answer your question?
Sorry, it seems like my original reply had disappeared into the ether. You shouldn't use the phrase "prevents file copying", but something like "allows efficient detection of duplicate copy versus the original" or "detects and suppresses the attempts to multiple-spend the original value".
Other than the above it seems like what you wrote is correct or very close to correct. I will not attempt at nitpicking who was first and who was second. But your writeup reads like a pitch, not like a diligent analysis.
While I understand and somewhat share the goal of overthrowing the banking cartel, I cannot share their methods of doing that. I see absolutely no reason to dispense with the generally accepted principles of accounting like e.g. double-entry and utmost good faith. It is quite unfortunate that nobody in the core development team is familiar with accounting practice. Moreover they are quite proud of not understanding accounting, universally despise accountants and bankers (even the conscientious ones) and actually seem to cherish the opportunity to poke out their eyes and ridicule their needs.
It is my opinion that as an investor you shouldn't rely on the opinion of Internet experts like Gavin, theymos, Dan Kaminsky or 2112. You should sit with somebody whom you know well, with whom you worked with for many years, and who had deployed and integrated some financial software in a business that you understand. Only then you'll have a real knowledge of what will happen when the Bitcoin rubber will meet the dirty road of financial reality. You're saying that the Bitcoin withstood 3 years of attempted attacks. I'm asking: why during those 3 years nobody had attempted even a toy integration project and shown that the books balanced?
Since you've asked about my technical perspective, here are the three points that should become hard questions to ask the core developers:
1) Their reliance on a "gitian" build system that is pretty much a rehash of "secure Ada compilers" from the days of Uncle Ronnie fighting Star Wars using imaginary weapons. This is just pure pandering to paranoia, not a software security methodology. It is nothing more than a tar pit that actually makes serious integration work pretty much impossible.
2) Their reliance on the JSON-RPC communication protocol that is completely unsuitable to the needs of two-way communication. The band-aids of "long poll" (implemented) or "monitor" (not yet implemented) are showing lack of literacy in the available technology, eg. FIX protocol (in use by financial institutions for almost 20 years) or ZeroMQ or AMQP.
3) The overall project dynamic is completely strangulated by the vested interest of miners. Even a simple off-by-one bugs aren't getting fixed because fixing them may offend miners. Check out this post by ArtForz and the discussion on the preceding and the following page.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=46498.msg555148#msg555148This is completely unlike any other open-source project and worse than the majority of the closed-source ones.
I summed the "mining income" of the last 3 blocks: 150.0200. Of this 0.0200 was for the useful work of securing network transactions and 150 was the distribution lottery tickets that will decay exponentially to zero. If you feel that the current banking cartel is ripping you off then wait until the sole discretion at setting the transaction fees will be in the hands of the current mining cartel.
Bitcoin may be the solution to the current worldwide problems with fiscal management. But not in the present implementation and not with the present leadership.
Edit: Oh, and by "leadership", I don't mean Gavin Andresen personally.
