This is not true. "minting" Bitcoins, or as we like to call it, mining, is a shared responsibility of all nodes on the network.
Ups, I think I got Satoshi's paper wrong ...
The problem of course is the payee can't verify that one of the owners did not double-spend
the coin. A common solution is to introduce a trusted central authority, or mint, that checks every
transaction for double spending. After each transaction, the coin must be returned to the mint to
issue a new coin, and only coins issued directly from the mint are trusted not to be double-spent.
He was explaining common solutions but later he wrote:
To accomplish this without a trusted party, transactions must be
publicly announced [1], and we need a system for participants to agree on a single history of the
order in which they were received. The payee needs proof that at the time of each transaction, the
majority of nodes agreed it was the first received.
Thx for pointing me in the right direction.
Best regards,
mnemonix
