[hackerspaces] bitcoin

[Jamie Schwettmann]

... It also doesn't make sense to cap the number of bitcoins at 21 million.
That's an artificial limit on the system just as much as suddenly dumping
millions of them in to compensate for hoarding would be an artificial bloat
to the system.

We're humans living on Earth, and that fact isn't going to change for a few
billion years, or until we extinct ourselves or colonize elsewhere,
whichever comes first.  So long as Earth continues to turn, the moon
continues to orbit, and the sun continues to shine, the natural currency --
energy -- will continue to increase in availability on (and around) Earth.
Any currency system artificially out of step with that natural
damn-near-constant increase in locally available energy will result in
irreconcilable hoarding, speculation, inflation, and crashing.

That's my $0.02.  It used to be worth something, but now I'm not so sure.

- Jamie

----
brinkofcomplexity.com
tw: brink_0x3f

On Thu, Apr 7, 2011 at 4:10 AM, Chris Hardee <shazzner at gmail.com> wrote:

> I read up a little on it and found someone selling a pcb board for
> bitcoins:
> http://shrp.me/projects/apc/
>
> So that was my goal, to mine enough to buy that. After leaving it running
> on my computer for a week I had generated 0.05 bitcoins and gave up there.
>
> It seems like a good idea, but the kind of people that would accept bitcoin
> are the same that would hoard it like gold and it doesn't really work as a
> currency unless it's being freely traded.
>
> On Thu, Apr 7, 2011 at 3:03 AM, Yves Quemener <quemener.yves at free.fr>wrote:
>
>> On 04/06/2011 11:20 PM, Justis Peters wrote:
>>
>>> On 04/05/2011 05:29 PM, Yves Quemener wrote:
>>>
>>>> If you don't know what bitcoin is or dismissed it like I did one year
>>>> ago because it looked like a pyramidal scheme, look again.
>>>>
>>> This is exactly why I dismissed it. Can you make a further case as to
>>> why we should look again?
>>>
>>
>> The Ponzi part was actually a way of distributing the initial amount of
>> wealth and giving people an incentive to participate so there is a
>> ponzi-like part, but there is also another part : It is actually a good
>> protocol to maintain a register of transactions that is 100% distributed
>> with no single point of failure and that is resistant to counterfeiting.
>> Also there will never be more than 21 millions bitcoins in circulation, that
>> is an important characteristic : the value can go down because people do not
>> trust it but not because a central authority hided the number of BTCs really
>> in circulation.
>>
>> Most of the BTCs enthusiasts are now conscious that people "mining" BTCs
>> and not using them are a danger to that economy and that the current rate
>> (0.8$ for 1 BTC)  is probably way too high due to speculation.
>>
>> Now is a good time to begin using it as a currency to buy dematerialized
>> goods : hosting, CPU cycles, development, web design, music, artwork,
>> donations, etc... There are currently no legal framework for a small group
>> of international enthusiast to exist and manage funds together. Bitcoin aims
>> at doing that.
>>
>> There are currently 7 millions BTCs in circulation and that is supposed to
>> be a $5.6 millions but I doubt that more than a few hundreds dollars worth
>> are exchanged each day, so the value will probably go down dramatically. But
>> even after that event, it will still be a transaction system that works and
>> that allows micro-transactions (A BTC can be divided in 10e6 parts).
>>
>> I am willing to participate in this tentative economical hack and will
>> begin to accept BTCs soon in my activity as a freelance developer.
>>
>> Iv
>>
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>
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