Bitcoin News

Bitcoin Magazine - Bitcoin 2013: Day 2

Sat, 18 May 2013 17:43:52 -0700

Bitcoin Magazine - Bitcoin 2013: Day 2:

Bitcoin Magazine’s Vitalik Buterin shares developments from Bitcoin 2013 conference, Day 2.

- http://bitcoinmagazine.com/day-two-at-bitcoin-2013-live-coverage

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Bitcoin Magazine - Bitcoin 2013: Day 1

Sat, 18 May 2013 17:40:34 -0700

Bitcoin Magazine - Bitcoin 2013: Day 1:

Bitcoin Magazine’s Vitalik Buterin shares developments from Bitcoin 2013 conference, Day 1.

- http://bitcoinmagazine.com/bitcoin-2013-day-1/

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Mt. Gox Gets Goxed - Dwolla Account Seized By U.S. DHS

Tue, 14 May 2013 14:04:00 -0700

Mt. Gox Gets Goxed - Dwolla Account Seized By U.S. DHS:

In a post on BetaBeat by editor Jessica Roy (@JessicaKRoy) includes confirmation from Dwolla that funds held by Mt. Gox in the U.S. had been seized by the U.S. authorities. Excerpts:

“‘The Department of Homeland Security and U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland issued a ‘’Seizure Warrant’’ for the funds associated with Mutum Sigillium’s Dwolla account (a.k.a. Mt. Gox),’ [a representative from Dwolla] said. ‘Dwolla has ceased all account activities associated with Dwolla services for Mutum Sigillum.’”

[Note - Camp BX, based in the U.S., is the only other market exchange that allows accounts to be funded with Dwolla and performs withdrawal of USD balances to Dwolla. FastCash4Bitcoins performs cash-out service to Dwolla.]

- http://bit.ly/10wQRvI (Betabeat article)
- http://i.imgur.com/soOTB5N.png (Dwolla notice received by Mt. Gox customer)
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=205370.0 (Further discussion on the development)

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Video: Kashmir Hill's Week Of Bitcoin

Fri, 10 May 2013 12:33:00 -0700

Video: Kashmir Hill's Week Of Bitcoin:

Forbes writer, Kashmir Hill (@KashHill), invited Bitcoiners to join her for a dinner at Sake Zone in San Francisco to celebrate the conclusion of her Week Of Bitcoin series of posts. In her video she interviews some of those who joined her.

- http://bit.ly/16mUiNA Video - Length: ~4 minutes
- http://onforb.es/199d9Zo (Week Of Bitcoin Series Of Posts)
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=201343.0 (Further discussion of the video)
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=200458.0 (Further discussion of the series)

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Reminder: Hard Fork Coming May 15th, Backports Of v0.8.1 Fix Available

Thu, 09 May 2013 12:11:00 -0700

Reminder: Hard Fork Coming May 15th, Backports Of v0.8.1 Fix Available:

A post on Bitcoin Money (@BitcoinMoney) blog describes the upcoming May 15th 2013 hard fork:

“Released following the Bitcoin blockchain fork on March 11th 2013 was an updated v0.8 client (v0.8.1) that temporarily respects an undocumented limit found in all prior versions of the Bitcoin-Qt/bitcoind clients.”
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“That temporary grace period ends and on May 15th 2013 (12:00 am UTC) any node that still hasn’t been fixed to remove this limitation will eventually find itself rejecting valid blocks from the Bitcoin blockchain. It is possible that these unfixed nodes will see block confirmations but those blocks will not be part of the longest chain so it is critical that no commerce continue on or after May 15th using a node that hasn’t been upgraded.”
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“Release v0.8.1 of Bitcoin-Qt/bitcoind has been available since March 18th, 2013 and accommodates the May 15th 2013 hard fork properly. The fix has been backported to v0.7.3, v0.6.5, v0.5.8, and v0.4.9 clients as well.”

- http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/50027334954
- http://sourceforge.net/projects/bitcoin/files/Bitcoin/bitcoin-0.8.1
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=199699.0 (Backports)

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Phil Archer - U.S. Regulators Confused On Bitcoin

Thu, 09 May 2013 10:45:00 -0700

Phil Archer - U.S. Regulators Confused On Bitcoin:

Phil Archer’s post on TheGenesisBlock.com describes how regulators are having a difficult time figuring out what where Bitcoin fits. Excerpts:

“[CFTC’s Bart Chilton] stated on bloomberg.tv: ‘In essence, we’re talking about a type of shadow currency, and there is more than a colorable argument to be made that derivative products relating to Bitcoin falls squarely in our jurisdiction.’”
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“Bitcoin clearly does not derive its value from the future purchase of an underlying asset. Therefore, if the CFTC plans to regulate bitcoin, they must consider bitcoin either a commodity or forex, with the intent to regulate bitcoin forex or bitcoin derivatives.”
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“Since bitcoin is not the currency of a foreign government, but rather the first global currency, it would seem their power to regulate bitcoin as forex does not apply.”
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“Bitcoin being declared a commodity would create an interesting contrast with fincen’s March guidance requiring bitcoin exchanges to be registered as Money Service Businesses (MSB).”
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“So it seems the US Government has no idea how to classify bitcoin: is it a currency or a commodity? Any CFTC ruling would likely declare bitcoin a commodity and put it in a Schrodinger’s Cat state – it would coexist as both a currency and a commodity.”
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“FinCEN was forced to create a new definition for virtual currencies, and we expect the CFTC to do the same. However, those living in fear of what the CFTC’s decision may hold should have solace in the fact that any regulations will be largely unenforceable anyway.”

- http://bit.ly/10vfONv
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=200305.0 (Further discussion of the topic)

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Kashmir Hill - Living On Bitcoin For A Week: Day 4

Sat, 04 May 2013 19:50:00 -0700

Kashmir Hill - Living On Bitcoin For A Week: Day 4:

Through daily posts by Forbes writer Kashmir Hill (@KashHill) we learn how far Bitcoin as a payment system has come along. Her assignment ais to live on bitcoin for a week — without spending any dollars. Excerpts from Day 4:

“[Bakery owner] Jennifer Longson is there, wearing a cupcake apron, filling cupcake tins with fresh batter along with two employees. She says I’m the second customer of the day asking to pay in Bitcoin.”
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“Cups and Cakes [receives publicity] as one of the first stores to accept the currency. Her little shop has been featured in international news: on the BBC, in the Financial Times, on NPR Marketplace, and beyond.”
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“Longson is surprised that I’m able to use my Blockchain iPhone app to scan her QR code and make the payment. “When you update your iOS, you’re going to lose that,” she says. ‘Apple has blocked it.’”
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“[Market owner Adam Sah] didn’t want to take the currency risk with the Bitcoin I paid him so he paid it out the same day to Name Cheap, the company which provides their domain name services (and accepts Bitcoin). ‘I paid our fee for the year with it,’ he says. ‘More and more IT services accept Bitcoin. […] With all these new things, you have a bunch of early adopters who experiment,’ he continues. ‘Then there’s a crossing of a chasm and then it becomes mainstream.’”
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“‘As a retailer, I am salivating over the idea of having this silently competing with credit cards and their fees and the hidden cost of dealing with cash: counting it, the fee I pay to Wells Fargo for a business account, transferring it,’ [said Sah]”.
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“When I go to bed, Bitcoin is valued at $96; by Saturday, it is shooting back up in value.”

- http://onforb.es/10eKkXe (Day 4)
- http://onforb.es/Zszg8U (Day 3)
- http://onforb.es/ZYlttF (Day 2)
- http://onforb.es/10VXn6b (Day 1)

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Dan Kaminsky - Bitcoin "Not Going Away Anytime Soon"

Fri, 03 May 2013 22:38:00 -0700

Dan Kaminsky - Bitcoin "Not Going Away Anytime Soon":

Wired contributor Dan Kaminsky (@DaKami), the security researcher who “broke the internet” some years back, opines on Bitcoin. Excerpts:

“The internet has proven to be a pretty big deal for global society, and Bitcoin could basically be thought of as the Internet, applied to Money.”
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“Bitcoin is about as friendly to [regulation] as the rest of the internet is — not very. To put it another way: Bitcoin’s a dollar bill, with a teleporter built in. We can just poke in a few coordinates and poof, off it goes, with the ease of posting to some forum somewhere. That’s somewhat new.”
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“But its real value proposition is as a medium for transfer. It really works. And keep in mind, if we’re just holding the currency for a few minutes, we don’t care about the absolute value.”
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“Bitcoin’s resilience comes from a property I refer to as Too Big To Regulate. Put simply, it’s easier to tell ten people to behave, than ten thousand. So if we want a system that’s impossible to regulate, get the power in the hands of ten thousand rather than ten.”
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“In Bitcoin, because everything’s backed by cryptographic keys, one can actually prove s/he has access to a certain amount of Bitcoin. We are either able to sign messages linked to the private keys, or we are not.”
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“I don’t really see the volatility declining in the present model. But this is an experiment. And it continues.”
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“Short of an all out war on technological innovation, it’s just really tricky to see how to even try to stop Bitcoin. The internet was not the first time networked communication was tried, but it was the first time a major network became available that didn’t have gatekeepers everywhere.”

- http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/05/lets-cut-through-the-bitcoin-hype
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=194554.0 (Further discussion of the article)

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Jon Matonis on The Elephant in the Payments Room

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 11:14:00 -0700

Jon Matonis on The Elephant in the Payments Room:

The latest article by columnist and Bitcoin Foundation board member Jon Matonis (@JonMatonis) is on how Bitcoin is the only real disruptive technology in the payments space but is disruptive in a way that others might be missing. Excerpts:

“We are witnessing something unique in money and payments. For those that do invest and successfully navigate the potential traps, the reward is a first-mover advantage for a new international monetary unit.”
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”Here’s the important part. Disruption in the unit of account is the way to disrupt the payments space.”
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“With a nonpolitical monetary unit, many new possibilities become apparent structurally that would not have been contemplated before, such as: peer-to-peer mobile applications that don’t require permission from legacy transaction carriers; global remittances that don’t require high-fee currency conversion; merchant categories that are no longer disallowed due to fraud and chargeback risk; and merchant reach into countries that are not even on the map for Visa, MasterCard or PayPal.”
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“Disruptive technology disrupts. That is its mission. It annihilates any substandard process or product in its path and it originates outside of the established paradigm. You don’t see it coming.”
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“A payments startup that ignores Bitcoin in its strategic plan is like a publisher ignoring the Web in 1999. Certainly, innovators can design routes around Bitcoin and established players can dismiss it as insignificant, but that won’t make the elephant go away.”

- http://bit.ly/17tznX5
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=191021.0 (Further discussion of the article)

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Guardian - Bitcoin Migrates Off The Internet (Video)

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 06:50:07 -0700

Guardian - Bitcoin Migrates Off The Internet (Video):

Guardian’ s Kate Connolly (@ConnollyBerlin) and Guy Grandjean (@guygrandjean) cover the story happening in Kreuzberg, which is becoming a the world’s largest Bitcoin local economy. Excerpts:

”’[Bitcoin is] an easier way of digital payment than credit cards, which cost me a lot of money as a business and to which I’m forced to sign up for years,’ [says Florentina Martens owner of Parisian-style cafe Floor’s].”
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“Graefekiez, a cosy neighbourhood established in the 19th century in the southern Berlin district of Kreuzberg, currently boasts the highest density of businesses accepting the currency in the world.”
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“‘Kreuzberg is traditionally an area in which people are very politically aware, critical towards existing systems and are constantly discussing and looking for alternatives to them, which makes it the perfect breeding ground for Bitcoin,’ says Joerg Patze [owner of Room 77].”
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“[Law student Jeff Gallas] taps the amount he owes Room 77 into the virtual Bitcoin wallet on his Android phone and, aligning it with a code on the bar’s device, presses a button to process the payment. A theatrical ‘kerching’ sound follows and Gallas is grinning from ear to ear. ‘It could hardly be easier,’ he insisted.”
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“[Wilko Bereit] likes the fact that Bitcoin scares people in suits, ‘because if this thing were to really take off, it would bankrupt a lot of bankers.’”

- http://bit.ly/12rZ73O
- http://bit.ly/17m9pER (Video)
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=188269.0 (Further discussion of the article and video)

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Jon Matonis - Must-see Presentations At Next Month's Bitcoin 2013 Conference

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 18:00:00 -0700

Jon Matonis - Must-see Presentations At Next Month's Bitcoin 2013 Conference:

Bitcoin Foundation board member Jon Matonis (@JonMatonis) describes upcoming presentations at the Bitcoin 2013 Conference (May 17-19) in San Jose, CA. Excerpts:

“The conference is attracting technologists, venture capitalists, bankers, traders, payments specialists, and financial regulators.”
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“The agenda will be particularly interesting to those in the banking and payments fields.”
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“BitPay co-founder and CEO, Anthony Gallippi, will explain how he’s been driving business adoption of Bitcoin.”
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“Paymium’s co-founder and chief operating officer, Pierre Noizat, will talk about bridging the gab [between bitcoin and the traditional regulated banking infrastructure].”
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“Rainey Reitman, the activism director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit civil liberties law firm and advocacy center, will hold forth on the liberating aspects of Bitcoin.”
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“Tuur Demeester, author of the financial newsletter MacroTrends, will talk about bitcoin’s emerging role as a separate asset class alongside precious metals, equities, and bonds.”
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“Online payments industry veteran Peter Šurda about how nonpolitical cryptocurrencies like bitcoin could alter the future of fractional reserve banking.”

[Note: Though registration for the event continues online through May 15th, the deadline for the conference rates is April 26th.]

- http://bit.ly/17IYUcR
- http://www.Bitcoin2013.com
- http://www.bitcoin2013.com/topics—schedule.html (PDF)

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Gwynn Guilford - Why Chinese People Will Drive Next Bitcoin Bull Market

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 16:12:44 -0700

Gwynn Guilford - Why Chinese People Will Drive Next Bitcoin Bull Market:

Reporter Gwynn Guilford ‏(@sinoceros) writes on Quartz.com reasons why China could drive a further bit-boom. Excerpts:

“They’ve already done the whole virtual currency thing—with Q Coin.”
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“Property, stocks, art, tea—speculation dominates in every major asset market you can think of in China. The Chinese are a people used to high risk-reward investments.”
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“As the online gamer source tells Quartz, ‘the currency’s system is so decentralized’ that it would be extremely difficult for the Chinese government to do anything about bitcoin.[…] And unlike with Tencent, there’s no company or entity to target for regulation. ‘To China’s conservative regulators,’ he adds, “Bitcoin is a game [that’s] way more dangerous.”

- http://bit.ly/ZgOoc6
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=176010.0 (Further discussion of the article)

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Jon Matonis - Bitcoin and the Rebirth of Financial Safe Havens

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 04:16:09 -0700

Jon Matonis - Bitcoin and the Rebirth of Financial Safe Havens:

E-money researcher and Bitcoin Foundation board member Jon Matonis (@JonMatonis) describes how financial privacy of individuals is being trampled upon. Excerpts:

“‘Private individuals should have more privacy [than politicians would be afforded], as they have not placed themselves into the political arena. They have not agreed to give up their privacy,’ [says Attorney Jenice Malecki (@SecuritiesLawUS)]. However, she also concedes that when it comes to offshore numbered accounts, ‘it does seem that banking secrecy is eroding. Slowly, but surely, banks are releasing information for governmental investigations.’”
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“Decentralized cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin arrived on the scene in early 2009 and now provide an outlet for personal wealth that is beyond restriction and confiscation. The exchange rate for government fiat currencies may be volatile now, but as the market price eventually finds equilibrium and stabilizes, bitcoin will become an important store of value.”
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“Think of bitcoin as your own personal financial safe haven or offshore bank.”
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“Future regulatory and confiscatory attacks on safe havens and banking secrecy will become irrelevant, because bitcoin provides for a personal ‘offshore center’ under direct and sole control of the individual.”
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“Legitimacy is a politically charged term. One person’s legitimacy may be another person’s aggressive and unjustifiable overreach. Also, what a certain government sees as legitimate may be viewed in other parts of the world as a violation of fundamental human rights. This is clearest in authoritarian regimes that impoverish and imprison their political opponents for so-called crimes against the state.”

- http://bit.ly/150p0Ly
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=174567.0 (Further discussion of the article)

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Rick Falkvinge - What We Learn From This Bitcoin Correction

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 03:07:21 -0700

Rick Falkvinge - What We Learn From This Bitcoin Correction:

Rick Falkvinge (@Falkvinge) describes some lessons re-learned with Bitcoin’s recent exchange rate correct. Excerpts:

“An exchange [Mt. Gox] that has a ten-minute lag in trading orders at best, and is completely unreachable at worst, can barely be taken seriously as a hobby project – and certainly not as the main hub of a next-generation billion-dollar trading system. MtGox shutting down trading mid-correction was just the icing on the cake that confirmed this.”
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This was not the second peak, but something like the fourth or fifth similar event. We can be certain it is not the last.”
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“Most importantly, failure or success of short-term speculation is irrelevant to bitcoin’s eventual success as a decentralized, resilient currency.”
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“The good news, as said, is that we may expect a lot of [the exchanges] to be fixed by the next time this happens. Maybe in the spring of 2015, maybe sooner, maybe later.”

- http://bit.ly/10ZdzyK
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=174514.0

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Dealbook - Bitcoin Gets Ready for its Close-Up

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 13:45:00 -0700

Dealbook - Bitcoin Gets Ready for its Close-Up:

Reporters Nathaniel Popper (@nathanielpopper) and Peter Lattman (@peterlattman) share some new investments made both in Bitcoin and Bitcoin startups. Excerpts of their NY Times Dealbook article:

“Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss have been many things in a short time: Olympic rowers. Nemeses of Mark Zuckerberg. Characters on ‘The Simpsons.’ Now they can add a new label: bitcoin moguls.”
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“The Winklevii — as they are popularly known — say they own nearly 1 percent of that, or some $11 million.”
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“Now mainstream investments in the digital money are starting to emerge. On Thursday, a group of venture capitalists, including Andreessen Horowitz, announced that they were funding a bitcoin-related company, OpenCoin.”
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“But the 6-foot-5 Winklevii were unfazed by the latest tumult. Indeed, the brothers said they used the low prices to buy more. They argue that bitcoin will have much further to soar once a broader audience sees its virtues: a unit of exchange that can be moved around the world at the click of a button without requiring any payments to Western Union or American Express.”
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“‘People say it’s a Ponzi scheme, it’s a bubble,’ said Cameron Winklevoss. ‘People really don’t want to take it seriously. At some point that narrative will shift to [how] virtual currencies are here to stay.’ We’re in the early days.”
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“For their part, the Winklevoss twins have used some of their bitcoin to pay for the services of a Ukrainian computer programmer who has worked on the site of their venture capital firm.”
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“In addition to the purchase of bitcoins, they also say they have invested in a bitcoin-related company, but declined to disclose which one.”
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“’It has been four years and it has yet to be discredited as a viable alternative to fiat currency,’ said Tyler Winklevoss. ‘We could be totally wrong, but we are curious to see this play out a lot more.’”

- http://nyti.ms/151cJqg
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=173772.0

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Jeffrey Tucker - What Bitcoin Is Teaching Us

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 00:58:00 -0700

Jeffrey Tucker - What Bitcoin Is Teaching Us:

Jeffrey Tucker (@JeffreyATucker), editor of Lassez-Faire Books and past editorial vice president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, posts how deflationary currency brings a change to what we know about money. Excerpts:

“None of us in living memory has had experience with a currency that rises in value. The emergence of Bitcoin — a digital currency that has grown in purchasing power over time — has changed that experience dramatically.”
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“The 20th-century experience flipped our expectations for what money should do. Especially in the postwar period, the falling value of the dollar punished savings and rewarded spending. This is exactly what the Keynesian economists hoped for. They wanted money always circulating and never ‘hoarded.’ ‘Deflation’ was to be avoided no matter what.”
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“Bitcoin is often described as a ‘deflationary’ currency. This is exactly why Paul Krugman hates it so much.”
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“Here’s what beautiful about this experience: It doesn’t matter in the slightest what Paul Krugman thinks. It doesn’t matter how many economic experts Paul Krugman lines up to oppose Bitcoin. It doesn’t matter how many Nobel Prize winners denounce it and oppose it. That’s because Bitcoin is not a “policy” invented by elite and privileged intellectuals. It is a market-based currency, one created by an entrepreneur and chosen by market players.”
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“That is an essential postulate of the free society. When government gets hold of the money, freedom is in peril. When the market makes and manages money, freedom has a built-in reinforcement in half of every transaction. In short, just based on our experience with Bitcoin so far, we see the conventional wisdom of a century completely turned on its head. Fantastic!”

- http://lfb.org/today/what-bitcoin-is-teaching-us
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=171577.0 (Further discussion of the article)

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Timothy B. Lee - Four Reasons Bitcoin Is Worth Studying

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 03:55:00 -0700

Timothy B. Lee - Four Reasons Bitcoin Is Worth Studying:

Forbes contributor Timothy B. Lee (@BinaryBits) writes again on Bitcoin. Excerpts:

“Even if you think the current value of of more than $140 is a bubble, it’s clear that Bitcoin has some genuine applications. The number of daily Bitcoin transactions has soared from around 1000 at the beginning of 2011 to about 50,000 today. Figuring out the “fundamentals” that drive the currency’s long-term value seems like an interesting theoretical puzzle.”
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“A core part of Bitcoin’s appeal is that it’s not under anyone’s control. Supposedly, nobody has the authority to change the Bitcoin money supply, cancel or reverse transactions, or otherwise change the attributes of the protocol. But in practice that’s not really true. In the wake of last month’s fork, the elites in the Bitcoin community effectively changed the rules in a matter of hours. In principle, there’s no reason those same elites couldn’t make other changes to the Bitcoin protocol.”
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“In principle, these two pools might be able to join forces and execute a 51 percent (or 53 percent) attack on the rest of the network. But doing so might prove foolish in the long run, since that kind of power grab might undermine public confidence in the currency’s long-term viability, since a mining cartel might have the power to change the rules of the Bitcoin protocol in ways that benefit themselves at the expense of ordinary users.”

- http://onforb.es/10yeRSe
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=170270.0 (Further discussion of this article)

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Gigaom's David Meyer - Yes, You Should Care About Bitcoin

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 01:36:14 -0700

Gigaom's David Meyer - Yes, You Should Care About Bitcoin:

David Meyer (@superglaze)’s post on Gigaom offers a current introduction to Bitcoin for any of its readers who haven’t yet brought themselves up to speed. Excerpts:

“No one’s really sure where [Bitcoin] will end up, because no one has really done this distributed, borderless digital currency thing for real before – yes, there are Facebook Credits and Linden dollars, but these are still centralized and controlled as such.”
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“There have also been multiple previous attempts at creating non-digital alternative currencies, such as the Liberty Dollar, which earned its creator Bernard von NotHaus a counterfeiting conviction. Bitcoin may share the anti-statist motivation behind that wannabe currency, but it’s hard to see how it could constitute counterfeiting.”
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“If you lose your Bitcoin wallet, the money is lost forever, to everyone. If you lose your bankcard, it doesn’t wipe out the money in your account, and your bank will issue you a new one. There is no such mechanism in place here; losing Bitcoins is effectively like burning banknotes.”
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“From where I’m sitting, Bitcoin is already proving its worth as a disruptor and as a test-case for how technology could divorce currency from certain external factors.”

[Note, the same article was syndicated on CNN Money]

- http://bit.ly/XfAVAz
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=167472.0 (Further discussion of the article)

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Video: FBN's Melissa Francis Interviews Trace Mayer

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 22:29:33 -0700

Video: FBN's Melissa Francis Interviews Trace Mayer:

Trace Mayer (@RunToGold) helps Fox Business News’ Melissa Francis understand Bitcoin.

Duration: 5 minutes

- http://bit.ly/ZbyDiJ
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=167267.0 (Further discussion of the interview)

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Rick Falvinge - Bitcoin Poised To Change Society

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 01:38:00 -0700

Rick Falvinge - Bitcoin Poised To Change Society:

Rick Falkvinge (@RickFalkvinge) posts his view that Bitcoin can change society even more than the Internet has. Excerpts:

“We essentially have four different types of players that keep the economy going, and by extension, the government funded and operational.
One, there is the government itself, which issues money and regulates banks.
Two, there are commercial banks which are in complete control of the money flow, in exchange for sharing that insight with the government and letting it siphon off as much as it likes to operate itself.
At the bottom of the food chain are, three, corporations which are tasked with using this system, running all its operations through these banks,
and four, the ordinary citizen, who is supposed to be doing actual work and actually produce something that fuels the entire ecosystem.”
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“What bitcoin does is cut the banks out of the loop, and by extension, the government’s ability to operate.”

- http://bit.ly/10wqNT8
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=166432.0 (Further discussion of the article)

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