May 25, 2026

Capitalizations Index – B ∞/21M

Bank of Spain Report: Bitcoin Is a Solution for a System Without Censorship

More info at http://bit.ly/2NdTp35

Bank of Spain Report: bitcoin Is a Solution for a System Without Censorship

A recent report published by the Bank of Spain states that bitcoin is a solution for the creation of a system without censorship. This is in contrast to public comments made by most central bankers who are prone to attack cryptocurrency with little insight into why it is needed.   
Also Read: Survey: ‘Blockchain’ Was Most Overrated Buzzword of 2018
Explaining Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash to Bankers
Banco de España, Spain’s central bank and supervisor of the Spanish banking system, recently published a report aiming to explain how bitcoin works. The document details the functions of the cryptocurrency, as well as analyzing its strengths and weaknesses from the point of view of the established financial order. It also explains that the best way to understand the aims of the new system is by consulting the original bitcoin whitepaper written by Satoshi Nakamoto.

The report mentions that according to Nakamoto the world needs “an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party.” Thus the goal is to create an electronic payment system similar to cash which allows remote payments without the need for the intermediation of institutions such as banks. This is meant to enable truly irreversible payments and reduce intermediation costs.
A System Without Censorship
The report concludes that cryptocurrency was envisioned as a payments system without the possibility of transaction censorship or a central authority with the power to authorize or reject transactions. It states that “bitcoin is an imaginative and elegant solution to this problem” of “the creation of a system without censorship.” However the central bank’s report also determines that traditional payment systems do not seek to resolve this problem and therefore cryptocurrency is not an alternative to them.

In line with the common position usually expressed by central bankers, the report ends by saying: “Taking into account that for most agents the existence of trusted intermediaries is not a problem, along with the costs and inefficiencies generated when an attempt is made to eliminate these intermediaries, it does not seem that bitcoin, as it currently stands, is going to have a significant impact for the financial sector as an alternative payment system to the traditional channels.”
What do you think about the conclusions of this report? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

Verify and track bitcoin cash transactions on our BCH Block Explorer, the best of its kind anywhere in the world. Also, keep up with your holdings, BCH and other coins, on our market charts at Satoshi’s Pulse, another original and free service from bitcoin.com.

Tags in this story

Avi Mizrahi

Avi Mizrahi is an economist and entrepreneur who has been covering bitcoin as a journalist since 2013. He has spoken about the promise of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology at numerous financial conferences around the world, from London to Hong-Kong.

Disclaimer: Price articles and markets updates are intended for informational purposes only and should not to be considered as trading advice. Neither OhioBitcoin.com nor the author is responsible for any losses or gains, as the ultimate decision to conduct a trade is made by the reader. Always remember that only those in possession of their own private keys are in control of their own “money.”
If you enjoy this type of content please click the like and subscribe buttons below it helps us to get more views.
Thanks again. See you with more bitcoin headline news and analysis soon!

Previous Article

Crypto Financial Services Firm to Offer Crypto Insurance Through Lloyd’s of London

Next Article

What is CRYPTOCURRENCY? CRYPTOCURRENCY meaning – CRYPTOCURRENCY definition

You might be interested in …

Adam Back to Jihan Wu: SegWit Not ‘Complicated,’ Fixes Satoshi’s Bug

Hashcash inventor Adam Back has said Segregated Witness (SegWit) “fixes” an original bug in bitcoin from creator Satoshi Nakamoto.


Back: SegWit ‘Fixes Satoshi Bug’

As part of a Twitter exchange Friday, Back rebuffed criticism from bitcoin Unlimited proponent Jihan Wu, demonstrating how SegWit is beneficial to the virtual currency’s core protocol.

Wu, who is a co-founder of mining conglomerate Bitmain, had said that the technology would make the network “more complicated.”

adam-back

“SegWit is not more complicated,” Back wrote.

“It fixes Satoshi’s bug that txid=H(tx,sig) to txid=H(tx) this is not complicated, and it is necessary to fix.”

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

What’s more, if implemented, SegWit can can actually help reduce the so-called “technical debt” burden of complicated code albeit having its own tradeoffs, which are assessed here.

The segwit code has been heavily reviewed, which helps resist the introduction of technical debt at both a code and design level…Segwit has multiple independent reimplementations, which helps discover any unnecessary complexity and technical debt at the point that it can still be avoided.

SegWit: Complicated & Straightforward

Wu’s stance echoes a broader opinion from the Chinese community in particular that SegWit creates unnecessary complexity within bitcoin.

In an interview with Bitcoinist this month, for example, Leon Liu, CEO of P2P trading service Bitkan, said that this was a reason why the technology “is not the best solution for bitcoin scaling.”

“Segwit will not be the best solution for bitcoin scaling, it will make the bitcoin network more complicated,” he stated.

At the same time, efforts have been made to allay such fears, Blocktrail CTO Ruben De Vries commenting last year that SegWit “is not very complicated if you already know the ins and outs of the bitcoin protocol.”

segregated-witness

Back meanwhile has praised attempts at educating the wider community on the nature of scaling solutions without resorting to ‘political’ siding.

An explainer on SegWit by Andreas Antonopoulos garnered considerable praise, Back describing it as “the best he’d seen on the topic.”

On its benefits, Antonopoulos wrote in the blog post, which originally came out in August last year:

“Firstly, segregated witness reduces the overall cost of transactions by discounting witness data and increasing the capacity of the bitcoin blockchain.

“Secondly, segregated witness’ discount on witness data corrects a misalignment of incentives that may have inadvertently created more bloat in the UTXO set.”

Litecoin Bounce on SegWit Rumors?

SegWit is traditionally considered ‘complicated’ compared to merely increasing the bitcoin block size, despite the latter requiring a hard fork of the virtual currency.

Currently, the proposal is still behind bitcoin Unlimited though both need at least 95% to activate.

12121212

Outside the bitcoin debate, rumors surfacing that Litecoin is to activate SegWit may have led to a surprise expansion in value of the altcoin by around 30%.

What do you think about the contrasting opinions on SegWit? Will it add complexity to bitcoin? Let us know in the comments below!


Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Twitter

The post Adam Back to Jihan Wu: SegWit Not ‘Complicated,’ Fixes Satoshi’s Bug appeared first on Bitcoinist.com.