I've only recently begun paying attention to Bitcoin, and am still evaluating. Have yet to read the technical details, for instance. So I have nothing to say on the validity of the technology.
However I can offer some comments from a political perspective.
I find the timing of Bitcoin's appearance rather interesting. Here we are, entering into a whole mess of interconnected monetary crises -
* Crisis of confidence in the ubiquitous fiat currency systems, with ALL the world's currencies in an inflationary race to the bottom. A race that will very likely blow up into hyperinflation on the way to demonetization, followed by some as-yet unknown replacement monetary system.
* Crisis of legitimacy of the US Federal Reserve Bank. Which is neither federal, or a reserve, or really even a bank. It's actually a cartel of private bankers; many would say a criminal cartel.
* An ongoing raging battle between fiat currency in general (unbacked by anything other than 'faith') vs traditional stores of wealth - gold and silver. The forward trenches of this battle lie in the bullion vaults of COMEX and the LBMA, and the bullion holdings of the SLV and GLD funds. Right now, the Silver Liberation Army fights to expose the current economic order as the paper illusion it certainly is. When COMEX inevitably defaults (because they have less than one hundredth the actual metal they should have to back all the paper silver and gold they have sold over the years to suppress precious metals prices), then silver and gold will suddenly resume their rightfull place as the only reliable, inviolable store of value. And thus actual currency, or backing for currency.
Now, there's a method for manipulation of mass psychology called 'well poisoning'. It goes like this. If you are in a position of power and control, and you become aware of a concept or information that if it became widely accepted could threaten your position, you 'poison the well' from which that concept could rise into public awareness. You do this by introducing very similar concepts, but all with fatal attachments or flaws. This conditions people to automatically reject anything in that whole class of concepts. For example, if you know someone has gone to Kenya and obtained a copy of a genuine birth certificate of interest, you whip up a series of obviously faked 'Kenyan birth certificates' and saturate the opposition media with them. Result: no one wants to look at any more damned fake birth certificates, especially not one that's being offered on ebay. Heck, a while later you can even officially release your own grossly fake certificate, and still no one pays attention!
So, supposing you are the rulers of the global fiat monetary/banking system, and being able to print as much of that virtual funny money as you like is working very nicely for you. Then a small problem arises, as the fundamental systemic instability of 'never enough money to pay it all back plus interest' has unprotected sex with assorted hideous creatures from the banking black lagoon (derivatives, credit default swaps, collateralised debt obligations, mortgage/title/MERS nightmare.) All of a sudden you are up to your ears in Hellspawn like massive naked short positions on precious metals, PIIGS running wild and Vikings seeking banker blood, mark-to-market guillotines, the head of the august International Maid Fxckers organization casting aspersions about the gold in Fort Knox (or not), and your global reserve currency about to go pooof!
What to do, what to do?
Worst of all, there's this damned idea of a non-fiat currency raising its head again. Curses, you thought you had that one permanently dead, thanks to that fast deal you did back in 1913, after a private chat among friends on Jekyll Island. And why _shouldn't_ your banks create the national currency and lend it at interest to governments and the peasants? Stupid idea that Constitutional rubbish, about the government issuing silver money, interest free. Ugh! Where's the profit in that? Not to mention the inability to steal virtually everything over time via inflation and unpayable compounding interest on the entire monetary base.
However... you and your banking mates haven't quite finished God's Work of stealing absolutely all assets from everyone else. Needs a bit more time. But here's this bloody idea of a specie-based currency popping up again all over. States declaring silver coins valid as money, what next FFS! Time for some well poisoning! And fast!
What you (as an Elite banker) want to do, is set up something that is going to badly burn all the early adopters of alternate currency. Something that will make them wish they'd never seen or heard or even dreamed of anything but nice safe paper dollars. Distract them asap from any thoughts of buying (shudder) actual physical silver and gold. Definitely you want to minimize the numbers of these ... financial terrorists ... who end up holding an ounce of physical silver or gold in their hand for the first time and having that no-return moment of 'AH HA!' where they suddenly, at gut level understand what _real_ money is.
Also preferably something that will brand them on the forehead as currency outlaws, all the better to round them up and send to the camps if it comes to that.
Enter, stage left... Bitcoin. Riding in to save the day.
I don't think so.
There are a few other concerns I have, besides the awfully suspicious coincidence of timing.
Firstly, there's this thing about digital patterns and copyright, intellectual property rights and so on. I'm solidly in the camp that says you can't own information, and efforts to legally enforce ownership of information are fundamentally incompatible with deep principles of the Universe. Data is like Time, Matter, Energy and Space - it's a component of reality, with its own unalterable properties. One of those properties is that it can be duplicated indefinitely, without data loss. It can also be very easily destroyed, leaving nothing.
It's a huge topic of course, with sub-issues like secrets, lies vs truth, cryptography, the difference between data and knowledge, the philosophy of data/knowledge sharing and its social benefits, etc.
But as it relates to Bitcoin, I find myself very, very uncomfortable with the concept of founding a medium of exchange on pure data - both infinitely copyable, and utterly ephemeral.
Regardless of the soundness of the cryptographic methods, it sounds to me like asking for trouble. And that trouble might possibly have been intended from the start. It might hurt, a lot. Particularly if it's the fiat-banker ancien régime holding the other end of the cane, and it's you with your Patriot Act pants around your ankles.
Then there's a few more practical matters, that one shouldn't overlook these days.
* How do you bury Bitcoins in your backyard or out in the bush somewhere? (Silver & gold - no problem.)
* More to the point, even if you can somehow bury them, how will they be any use when someone digs them up in 10, 50 or 200 years? (Silver and gold - no problem!)
* When the police, BATF and FBI break down your door without a warrant, trash your place and take your computer, do your Bitcoins go with it? Ditto for burglars without badges and guns. (Silver and gold - at least you have some chance of hiding them.)
* TSA, airports, laptops and latex gloves. Where do Bitcoins go in this scene?
* Is it possible to melt down Bitcoins and cast bullets from them, and does Bitcoin ammo work against zombies, vampires and other flesh eating ravenous menaces?
* That '21 million Bitcoins max' figure. What?! Regardless of how that limit is set, and how dollar-Bitcoin exchange rates are determined, that figure tells me this was never intended to be a real currency, not even for one small nation. Less than one Bitcoin per person? Huh?
Bitcoin was clearly designed as a 'crippleware demo', as opposed to a workable system. But a demo of what? Of pain-bringing, I suspect.
(Silver and gold - there's enough to serve as a global currency. That there are two kinds, with about a 17:1 natural abundance ratio helps a lot too.)
* Quantum computers. Are now commercially available. How will this affect Bitcoin?
* Wishful thinking. Yes, we the people of the world do desperately need some medium of exchange that isn't owned by the banker and government flesh eating monsters. It would be great if it had all the good features of Bitcoin - electronic, anonymous, untraceable, unstoppable, untaxable transactions.
This doesn't mean we should leap joyfully at Bitcoin. Take a very close look, for strings, hooks, bear traps, punji-pits, etc. It's a mean world, and there are powerful, wiley forces who'll do anything, ANYTHING to preserve the existing fiat banking system a while longer.
There is no necessary relationship between the number of people using the currency and the number of units available, given that units are divisible. But if it makes you happy, define one "New Bitcoin" as 1/1000th of an original Bitcoin. Now there's enough to go around, and you can get 20 for free from the faucet!
> TSA, airports, laptops and latex gloves. Where do Bitcoins go in this scene?
That's a huge win for Bitcoins. Store yours in the cloud and you can transfer arbitrary amounts of cash across national boundaries without paying tax, filing paperwork or risking seizure. Try transferring the same amount by carrying out bills or coins and you'll see your stuff silently stolen from your checked luggage or noisily seized either by TSA or customs agents.
> How do you bury Bitcoins in your backyard or out in the bush somewhere?
Back 'em up in the cloud somewhere instead.
> When the police, BATF and FBI break down your door without a warrant, trash your place and take your computer, do your Bitcoins go with it?
If you don't use passwords and don't keep offsite backups, yes. How is this worse than if the authorities steal your cash or silver and freeze your bank account?
Yeah, I've since found out about the 'divisible' aspect. Don't understand it yet. In particular, how different people can own fragments of one cryptographic unit, without there being any central coordination point.
As for storing in the cloud, uh, no thanks. Recent cloud upset providing an entirely expected illustration of the 'nothing can possiblie go wrong!' principle. Not to mention the mooted Internet Kill Switch being also a Cloud Switch.
Power failures, major disasters... involving the Cloud is just making Bitcoin even more fragile.
I'm glad you mentioned backups. Because I forgot that. The issue being how many people actually do have adequate backup. I know mine is far too weak, and I wouldn't like to have my financial assets depend on it.
you ruined your whole argument with this "* Crisis of legitimacy of the US Federal Reserve Bank. Which is neither federal, or a reserve, or really even a bank. It's actually a cartel of private bankers; many would say a criminal cartel. *"
This ruins everything else you said. You're not telling us
anything new, or necessarily true (depending on how you twist the definition of cartel)
I find the timing of Bitcoin's appearance rather interesting. Here we are, entering into a whole mess of interconnected monetary crises - * Crisis of confidence in the ubiquitous fiat currency systems, with ALL the world's currencies in an inflationary race to the bottom. A race that will very likely blow up into hyperinflation on the way to demonetization, followed by some as-yet unknown replacement monetary system. * Crisis of legitimacy of the US Federal Reserve Bank. Which is neither federal, or a reserve, or really even a bank. It's actually a cartel of private bankers; many would say a criminal cartel. * An ongoing raging battle between fiat currency in general (unbacked by anything other than 'faith') vs traditional stores of wealth - gold and silver. The forward trenches of this battle lie in the bullion vaults of COMEX and the LBMA, and the bullion holdings of the SLV and GLD funds. Right now, the Silver Liberation Army fights to expose the current economic order as the paper illusion it certainly is. When COMEX inevitably defaults (because they have less than one hundredth the actual metal they should have to back all the paper silver and gold they have sold over the years to suppress precious metals prices), then silver and gold will suddenly resume their rightfull place as the only reliable, inviolable store of value. And thus actual currency, or backing for currency.
Now, there's a method for manipulation of mass psychology called 'well poisoning'. It goes like this. If you are in a position of power and control, and you become aware of a concept or information that if it became widely accepted could threaten your position, you 'poison the well' from which that concept could rise into public awareness. You do this by introducing very similar concepts, but all with fatal attachments or flaws. This conditions people to automatically reject anything in that whole class of concepts. For example, if you know someone has gone to Kenya and obtained a copy of a genuine birth certificate of interest, you whip up a series of obviously faked 'Kenyan birth certificates' and saturate the opposition media with them. Result: no one wants to look at any more damned fake birth certificates, especially not one that's being offered on ebay. Heck, a while later you can even officially release your own grossly fake certificate, and still no one pays attention!
So, supposing you are the rulers of the global fiat monetary/banking system, and being able to print as much of that virtual funny money as you like is working very nicely for you. Then a small problem arises, as the fundamental systemic instability of 'never enough money to pay it all back plus interest' has unprotected sex with assorted hideous creatures from the banking black lagoon (derivatives, credit default swaps, collateralised debt obligations, mortgage/title/MERS nightmare.) All of a sudden you are up to your ears in Hellspawn like massive naked short positions on precious metals, PIIGS running wild and Vikings seeking banker blood, mark-to-market guillotines, the head of the august International Maid Fxckers organization casting aspersions about the gold in Fort Knox (or not), and your global reserve currency about to go pooof!
What to do, what to do?
Worst of all, there's this damned idea of a non-fiat currency raising its head again. Curses, you thought you had that one permanently dead, thanks to that fast deal you did back in 1913, after a private chat among friends on Jekyll Island. And why _shouldn't_ your banks create the national currency and lend it at interest to governments and the peasants? Stupid idea that Constitutional rubbish, about the government issuing silver money, interest free. Ugh! Where's the profit in that? Not to mention the inability to steal virtually everything over time via inflation and unpayable compounding interest on the entire monetary base.
However... you and your banking mates haven't quite finished God's Work of stealing absolutely all assets from everyone else. Needs a bit more time. But here's this bloody idea of a specie-based currency popping up again all over. States declaring silver coins valid as money, what next FFS! Time for some well poisoning! And fast!
What you (as an Elite banker) want to do, is set up something that is going to badly burn all the early adopters of alternate currency. Something that will make them wish they'd never seen or heard or even dreamed of anything but nice safe paper dollars. Distract them asap from any thoughts of buying (shudder) actual physical silver and gold. Definitely you want to minimize the numbers of these ... financial terrorists ... who end up holding an ounce of physical silver or gold in their hand for the first time and having that no-return moment of 'AH HA!' where they suddenly, at gut level understand what _real_ money is.
Also preferably something that will brand them on the forehead as currency outlaws, all the better to round them up and send to the camps if it comes to that.
Enter, stage left... Bitcoin. Riding in to save the day.
I don't think so.
There are a few other concerns I have, besides the awfully suspicious coincidence of timing. Firstly, there's this thing about digital patterns and copyright, intellectual property rights and so on. I'm solidly in the camp that says you can't own information, and efforts to legally enforce ownership of information are fundamentally incompatible with deep principles of the Universe. Data is like Time, Matter, Energy and Space - it's a component of reality, with its own unalterable properties. One of those properties is that it can be duplicated indefinitely, without data loss. It can also be very easily destroyed, leaving nothing. It's a huge topic of course, with sub-issues like secrets, lies vs truth, cryptography, the difference between data and knowledge, the philosophy of data/knowledge sharing and its social benefits, etc.
But as it relates to Bitcoin, I find myself very, very uncomfortable with the concept of founding a medium of exchange on pure data - both infinitely copyable, and utterly ephemeral. Regardless of the soundness of the cryptographic methods, it sounds to me like asking for trouble. And that trouble might possibly have been intended from the start. It might hurt, a lot. Particularly if it's the fiat-banker ancien régime holding the other end of the cane, and it's you with your Patriot Act pants around your ankles.
Then there's a few more practical matters, that one shouldn't overlook these days.
* How do you bury Bitcoins in your backyard or out in the bush somewhere? (Silver & gold - no problem.)
* More to the point, even if you can somehow bury them, how will they be any use when someone digs them up in 10, 50 or 200 years? (Silver and gold - no problem!)
* When the police, BATF and FBI break down your door without a warrant, trash your place and take your computer, do your Bitcoins go with it? Ditto for burglars without badges and guns. (Silver and gold - at least you have some chance of hiding them.)
* TSA, airports, laptops and latex gloves. Where do Bitcoins go in this scene?
* Is it possible to melt down Bitcoins and cast bullets from them, and does Bitcoin ammo work against zombies, vampires and other flesh eating ravenous menaces?
* That '21 million Bitcoins max' figure. What?! Regardless of how that limit is set, and how dollar-Bitcoin exchange rates are determined, that figure tells me this was never intended to be a real currency, not even for one small nation. Less than one Bitcoin per person? Huh? Bitcoin was clearly designed as a 'crippleware demo', as opposed to a workable system. But a demo of what? Of pain-bringing, I suspect. (Silver and gold - there's enough to serve as a global currency. That there are two kinds, with about a 17:1 natural abundance ratio helps a lot too.)
* Quantum computers. Are now commercially available. How will this affect Bitcoin?
* Wishful thinking. Yes, we the people of the world do desperately need some medium of exchange that isn't owned by the banker and government flesh eating monsters. It would be great if it had all the good features of Bitcoin - electronic, anonymous, untraceable, unstoppable, untaxable transactions.
This doesn't mean we should leap joyfully at Bitcoin. Take a very close look, for strings, hooks, bear traps, punji-pits, etc. It's a mean world, and there are powerful, wiley forces who'll do anything, ANYTHING to preserve the existing fiat banking system a while longer.