I never mentioned bitcoin. I am as mply pointing out that relying on trust is problematic and leads to the emergence of "trusted third parties" which is counterparty risk tofunctionaltity.

Agreed that client downloading 20mb for a count is inefficient and that's dumb way to count though.

Why not micro relays on every "full" client? Data is pretty cheap most places  and solves the trust issue for day to day operations.

Jus's a thought.