So if you load up a physical coin and throw away the key audited by trusted parties, would the physical coin then be considered valuable and usable for payment?
Ask Casascius.
It's not a technical question. I'm asking if one could make a physical Bitcoin that did not have any usability in the network, but still contained a provable value denominated in Bitcoins and still would be considered valuable for trades and other uses?
I you think about it, this could be a very desirable property.
Yes, that's my point. They've done basically that, and people use the physical coin as money.
Sorry for being dense, I got it. However you would have to have proof and tust in the issuer of the Physical container. Casacius could make a ton of coins with the same public address with the same Bitcoin. He would have to keep a list of issued coins and have a serial numbering system.
He would be the issuer of a container, but the value of each coin is stored in the blockchain. FinCen have their work cut out for them!
It's like the tricks of the internet used for separating the provider of copyrighted content from the public linker to that material.
In that sense, Bitcoin itself is an abstraction between value and a virtual object. Bitcoin is nothing more or less than an idea that actually existed before the internet:
The two most tradeable human assets, excluding manual labor, is information and brain power and both can be exchanged where a medium for information exchange exists. This is also a system of accounting and transfer of wealth, there are however limits to how much of each you can hold.
From nature we have been issued one brain each and it's very tradeable. So as long as information sharing is not outlawed these human traits can be traded and cashed out for $$ if needed.
So Bitcoin is in reality very old and just a formalization in software of the value of social group survival: "you tell me about that, I figure this out for you" and we both get "payed" in better survival chances. Peer nodes, crypto and wallets all have social counterparts in human interaction, so as long as speech is free, transactions can be made in something that isn't really money, without giving government a chance to intervene. However you can't go to spain and whisper some stranger in the ear that you want to buy his house with this "inside tip" or maybe you can, if he is connected to the same social group as you.
If you ask any trader, he can tell you that there are the money going around but there is also the network of exchanged tips which are payed with other tips or clever peoples suggestions interpreting them. An economist doing work might prefer being payed with an untaxable, untraceable tip instead of money.
