Bitcoin, and other monies.

Bitcoin is internet currency.  It is...
  • distributed: There's no centralized authority (extant or needed!)
  • free: no transaction costs.  However, using regular cash offers the possibility of exchanges without transaction costs, too.  So just as with "real" money, people may offer you financial services in exchange for fees, and you might pay them. It seems possible  the whole parasitic credit industry could arise, phoenix-like, around bitcoin.
  • Transactions are all visible, but users are anonymous: this is seemingly problematic, but the transactions happen over the internet though, so should be traceable with some effort, given just cause to compel the internet companies to relinquish e-mail records.
  • Safe?  Should be.  It's based on the public cryptography (public key encryption, started by Philip Zimmerman is the technology underpinning it.) Zimmerman was the real deal. There is now a very thick layer of corporate bullshit over pgp, cut if you look hard enough you can still get the excellent personal pgp application I think this link works. A public key allows somebody to "sign" a payment. The SW system is under public control (caveat emptor: I don't know this, it's popular hearsay)
  • Stable.  This is the key thing.  the total quantity of bitcoin is more stable than even gold. There's a known quantity, and a known (and decreasing) rate of minting.  This happens through a bizarre, nerdy and somehow quaint process of "mining" which is just setting your computer grinding away at a hard problem of some kind.  If this doesn't seem like a "fair" way to create the new money,  well, just ask how the US government gives out the new money:  I think they basically just give it to bankers! This could also be a key problem. If bitcoins get scarce, they will acquire collector value, and nobody will spend them for fear of losing out on future value.
  • Available on your Android  or i- phones.
  • Here's an Incite video.


Woooo! I'm a Bitcoin miner! See below for proof of my riches:

Coin Generations:
Total payouts generated: 1

Coin Generation List
From To Amount Date Message Status View
Coin generation Me 0.00003102 BTC Jul 15, 2011 11:46 AM MDT Complete

DFC-182



So this is our autopilot flying an old Cessna. It's that wire going into the instrument panel: everything else you see is (very) aged avionics doing something else.  Our stuff is in a little pallet of new gear back in the luggage compartment!  It flies great. Someday we'll make this available for everybody to use, in these old airplanes.

Red!


View from the porch.


So, this is the view from the porch at Betty Bear hut. Drive to Leadville, Independence pass, Aspen, Basalt, then back east & then up. We made bows, practiced archery (with real bows, mostly) had pound cake and Brussels' sprouts and pork in adobo. Mark and Miles had an adventure