There is no need for backing. A need for backing presupposes that Bitcoin is an indirection or representation of something else. Whereas Bitcoin is not a child node, but a universal master ledger of goods and services exchanged. It has no parent (or, if you prefer, lower turtle
). It can
directly record income and distribution of value, as it flows from person to person.
For 5000 years you could provide goods and services to society and record that fact via acquisition of gold, which acted as an implicit ledger of sorts. Now the ledger actually exists, explicitly! No need for any pseudoledgers above or below.
That's why it's revolutionary. To update Plato a bit: up to now, we've been listening to vynil records and MP3s, but with Bitcoin we get as close as possible to the actual performance from which those recordings were sourced. It's not 100% transparent because the musicians are all wearing masks, but the key thing is that all the notes come through with zero delay and zero distortion.
