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this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2024
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It's called cryptocurrency because Bitcoin used sha256 as it's proof of work algorithm for funsies, but has no actual tie to cryptography. Proof of work is not cryptography.
I hate to be that guy, but Bitcoin uses elliptic curve cryptography to sign transactions, and SHA256 is definitely in the field of cryptography. While cryptocurrency isn't purely cryptography, it is cryptography plus economics. Borrowing the "crypto" prefix, at least in my opinion, is reasonable.
It's not borrowing, it's attempting to entirely hijack and replace the prefix. This is already causing a massive loss in trust of the entire field of cryptography.
As I said in another reply, just because it uses sha256 as it's proof of work doesn't make it crypto, as it was essentially picked out of a hat.
And for the signing of transactions, are we going to start calling bank checks crypto? RCS being renamed crypto? Just because something tangentially has some sort of cryptographic signature tied into it does not make that object cryptography or related to cryptography- it just means that it has a signature enveloping that object.
Regardless of whether it's eroding trust in cryptography today, I still assert it was a reasonable choice when the term was coined. Cryptocurrency depends fundamentally on cryptography.
You could probably switch proof-of-work to use some non-cryptographic primitive with similar properties (maybe protein folding?) and it would still serve the same purpose, ignoring the economic problems. I will concede that point.
Bitcoin still cannot function without cryptography. Each UTXO is bound to a particular key pair. Each block refers to its parent using a hash. If either of those were switched to a non-cryptographic primitive, there would be no way to authenticate the owner of a UTXO, nor would there be a way to prove the ordering of blocks. Removing cryptography from cryptocurrency would make it entirely useless as a currency.
Banks existed for a thousand years without the existence of cryptography. If you removed cryptography from RCS, you'd still have the rest of the standard for messaging.
But you wouldn't be able to authenticate the bank transfers- or messages- as real. It's the exactly same situation the so-called cryptocurrencies run in to, and why all three have added signatures onto it. That doesn't make any of the three cryptography- just something that exists better with the support of cryptography.
A cryptocurrency can exist without the signature- it's less useful, but 'just trust me bro' is basically THE underpinning for first currencies since the beginning, and the source of a lot of the problems with them.
A cryptocurrency without crypto is just a currency then?