Bitcoin

[Haole]

Glad to be back after what appeared to be a system upgrade and me being locked-out of the forums.  So happy you're all still here and the forums are thriving.

Now, what do you guys think of Bitcoin?

Huge news yesterday that WordPress (the 22nd most visited website on the internet if memory serves?) is going to accept Bitcoin as payment.  Value of Bitcoin jumped around 9% on the news and has since settled just below the short term high on selling in global exchanges.

Personally, I've spent the last few weeks learning about how this currency works and am now in possession of some as a speculative investment/means of savings/way of separating a small portion of my money from "the system".

A tremendous resource for information is BitcoinTalk.

So, is anyone involved and/or does anyone have any opinions/comments on this fascinating concept?

Cheers all!

[petrus4]

It's been around for a little while.  Bitcoin is the real world equivalent of the Ferengi's gold pressed latinum from Star Trek; it's the currency of exchange for online black markets, among other things.  It seems to be particularly popular among anarcho-Capitalists, as well; I heard Stephan Molyneaux talking about it from time to time.

[rob h]

Have been looking at this again and ready to do some proper research into it now I think. Amaterasu said to me earlier on twitter "Bitcoin just perpetuates the scarcity paradigm where We have to exchange to survive..." But I'm not sure this form of currency is all that bad. The one thing that I do want to see happen is for it to become bigger even if Amaterasu is right, because at least for the time being, while the governments seem to be maintaining such a hold on certain forms of tech, this is already out there and working for many people, and we might see a tipping point with it in the near future.

If that happens, then like the article I read earlier said (linked further down) : things like national currencies, banking systems, paypal, credit card companies and so on will just gradually become worthless. I just think this has such a great ability to get right to the root of so many problems and should be spoken about a lot more so people can start understanding it. If that can happen, then in the near future all we have to do is have more people using it, and we're going to get closer to seeing one of the most central parts of the current broken system start becoming phased out.

Of course they'll probably try to fight it, but there's nowhere to fight bitcoin in a centralized way, so we might be in for an interesting future where currency is concerned, because it'll be "our" currency and free from their control if it works. Ever since seeing The Money Masters a few years back and seeing how messed up things have been with money throughout so much of our history, I just want to see this really challenged over the coming years, and then we can see what the governments and their banking buddies have by way of excuses, because we just don't need their fakery with money and the money supply if this works.

The part on this page titled "Bitcoin vs. The State" (edit : sorry, and the section straight after it.) is where it starts getting really interesting as it looks at the bigger picture of what this could do : http://bitcoincard.org/movement.php

Even though I can see a future where money might not be needed, (I've got a fair bit of research to do yet to see things how Amaterasu does!) I still think we've got to transition for this to happen, and that it could be well out of our lifetimes before it takes place. If that's the case and we do start finally having the freedom we've been looking for, switching from corrupt banking systems, national currencies and all the other junk is a great place to start that process.