Gigaom’s David Meyer – Yes, You Should Care About Bitcoin:
David Meyer (@superglaze)’s post on Gigaom offers a current introduction to Bitcoin for any of its readers who haven’t yet brought themselves up to speed. Excerpts:
“No one’s really sure where [Bitcoin] will end up, because no one has really done this distributed, borderless digital currency thing for real before – yes, there are Facebook Credits and Linden dollars, but these are still centralized and controlled as such.”
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“There have also been multiple previous attempts at creating non-digital alternative currencies, such as the Liberty Dollar, which earned its creator Bernard von NotHaus a counterfeiting conviction. Bitcoin may share the anti-statist motivation behind that wannabe currency, but it’s hard to see how it could constitute counterfeiting.”
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“If you lose your Bitcoin wallet, the money is lost forever, to everyone. If you lose your bankcard, it doesn’t wipe out the money in your account, and your bank will issue you a new one. There is no such mechanism in place here; losing Bitcoins is effectively like burning banknotes.”
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“From where I’m sitting, Bitcoin is already proving its worth as a disruptor and as a test-case for how technology could divorce currency from certain external factors.”
[Note, the same article was syndicated on CNN Money]
– http://bit.ly/XfAVAz
– http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=167472.0 (Further discussion of the article)
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