Bank of England Looks Into 'Centralized' Bitcoin Alternative, RSCoin (thestack.com)

An anonymous reader writes: The Bank of England is working with researchers at University College London to design a Bitcoin clone of its own that can be centrally controlled. It was recently found that the UK's central bank had reached out to university researchers to help it create a cryptographically secure digital currency. The resulting system has now been revealed, and is named RSCoin. The system employs cryptography to obviate counterfeiting and tampering. Unlike other mechanisms, the digital ledger used by the new cryptocurrency is handled exclusively by a central body and will only be made accessible to users in possession of a specific encryption key. Its developers explained that an RSCoin ledger could be published publicly by a central bank, and added that the system's design would also allow a central bank to make transactions entirely, or partially, anonymous.

Comments

Centralized currency? Don't we already have that?

[BoberFett]

I'll take Missing The Point for 800 Alex!

And the question is "This digital currency is centrally controlled and allows the authorities to monitor every purchase you make."

'What is centralized bitcoin?

You are correct.

Your Rothschild Masters :)

[Anonymous Coward]

They saw the free market currency bitcoin and felt it threatened their precious dollar (which they control at the Federal Reserve and enslave the American people through debt)

Now they want to own bitcoin through their own implementation and enslave you more :)

Enjoy your Rothschild Slavery :)

(Queue the next global warming article on slashdot - another Rothschild scheme to tax your carbon footprint - boy they sure can't get enough money and slavery :) )

Partial truth

[s.petry]

States could easily back the Bitcoin digital currency without creating their own. That a central bank wants to re-invent the wheel is more a testament to how much money there is to be made by a central bank controlling currency. That a State plays along and goes with the central bank's version is a testament to the control Bankers have over Governments.

Nothing new here really.

BRITcoin surely

[McWeenie]

I'm a long time lurker but had to sign up to point out the Royal Bank has missed the very obvious name: BRITcoin

Re:Will it be pleasant to use, though?

[GLMDesigns]

You don't need to download the full blockchain to buy and spend bitcoin.

If you want to mine bitcoin you do. If you want to have a wallet which references the entire blockchain you do. But there are plenty of light wallets out there which do not download the entire blockchain.

If that was so people couldn't have 60+GB blockchains on theri 16GB phones now could they? And yet there are plenty of mobile wallets out there.

And no using a light-wallet does not defeat the decentralization of bitcoin. You can have both. AND not everyone needs to have both for the blockchain to have value as a distributed resource.

Re forking. Forks happen every day and yet ... bitcoin is still around. Now hard forks are not something that should happen often - but they will.

Re lack of adoption. Umm. I guess you've been missing the news about how many major firms have been putting serious funds into developing blockchain technology.

Re difficulty of use. Yup. You have something there. Until it's as easy to use as a debit card it's too complicated. But it will get simpler in time or will never get mass appeal.