- 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
"Stable"
ReplyDeleteMaybe. For now it has risen in value exponentially, in my opinion because of all the hype. So it's volatile, and may well crash.
That will be a big bummer for anyone foolish enough to exchange a lot of dollars or any other real currency for this digital one.
You're right of course: it's speculative. But if it's at least safe, it can BECOME stable, and surely transaction fee-free payments will be valuable. I think that will create the demand. The spike you reference had (as I understand it) a fallacious anonymity "buzz" at it's source.
ReplyDelete