In reply to Thomas.

Hi Thomas, I realize you've indicated a frustration with having to explain some things about the necessity of bitcoin in the blockchain but I'm hoping you'll be able share a bit of your knowledge.

I have an intuitive sense also that the chain and currency/incentive can't be so easily detached but my understanding isn't so deep. Lately I've been reading alternate views and I'm having some some contradictory thoughts I'm hoping you can take a swing at for me.

First, you mention that a bank-controlled blockchain without a crypto-currency is just a checkbook register. But I wonder if that might actually be a step forward for banks. They currently have to rely on central banks to settle and even then have to reconcile against unique internal systems. If they ran an exclusive ledger, maybe even as a chain of crypto-secured blocks, they might be able to lower costs and decrease settlement time. That's a big win for these inefficient institutions.

Second, for banks the incentive is there to behave in a legal manner. Not doing so risks losing their banking charter. If they shared an auditable ledger it would be even harder to hide shady moves. Wouldn't this remove the need to incentivize their good behaviour with a crypto-token?

Lastly, could a blockchain not simply encode general messages with no crypto-currency but instead embed fiat transactions including fee payments? It would seem that the private banking chain might use a method like this to pay each other for the service of block creation. In a sense, SWIFT provides something like this today but it's not auditable by all participants. SWIFT sends secure contractual messages between participants who then credit/debit their respective internal ledgers.

In general I guess I'm wondering if it's possible that the public blockchain is the major innovation but that a private blockchain might still show major benefits over the current situation. I tend to think of the private version as a shared crypto-secured linked list of transactions. That's not necessarily a major innovation as the banks could've done something like it before they were threatened by bitcoin. But it could still result in an appreciable improvement in efficiency. Whether this could actually compete with bitcoin in the short or long run would seem to depend on the velocity bitcoin develops at.

Looking forward to your thoughts!