Meanwhile, there are some other basic features of the currency which seem undesirable to me. In particular, the built-in (and ever-increasing) scarcity of coins means that the value of the currency will always, continuously, rise. That seems great, except that an economy built entirely on Bitcoins would therefore have an economic disincentive to investment -- if you can make 5% return by just sitting on your coins, why would you invest in a new business and create jobs and risk getting less than that?
Bitcoins do seem pretty attractive on an individual level, but at the macro scale they worry me, and I'd love to hear somebody with an economics background chime in on these points.
Unfortunately, discussions on this subject can rapidly become arbitrarily politically incorrect. If you're interested, I'd be happy to send you a link to a very non-mainstream source (but would rather not post it here). My email address is in my profile.
I'm not a fan of Bitcoin personally (too much speculation for me to be comfortable using it as a medium of exchange, much less a store of value) but I think people underestimate how badly we're getting screwed by the current payment oligopoly.
Why not just trade in something else like gold or coins, where you can buy and sell without having a state security system looking over your shoulder?
I frankly don't know if I'm a fan or not. I haven't been, but the movement seems persistent, and I admire that. I also admire the concept of trying to use technology to free us from ever-more-oppressive governments. However I'm cautious: BC is "version 1.0". Might take until version 3 or so to get the bugs worked out.
I just hate seeing a lot of really smart people work hard to end up in the same spot they started from.
Instead you'll have to pay fees to miners as transactions fees. This is the medium to long term stated goal of bitcoin.
>and entered the phase of "BC is natures's way of teaching political power to nerds"
That is one of the best quotes I've read on bitcoin.
The western world is waking up to distrusting their governments. In a low-tech way, most 3rd world countries have been there for decades. Squirreling away savings is a behavior enforced upon citizens with acquisitive governments (hello Cyprus!).
The world is changing, and bitcoin is there to help.
Reading through the recent Treasury Department guidance this morning, it looked to me like the U.S. is initially attacking where hard currency comes in and leaves the system -- no matter where in the world that takes place (plug: http://freedom-or-safety.com/blog/the-other-bitcoin-shoe-dro... )
I imagine they'll leave that decision out there for a while -- months or years -- before they start heavy enforcement. But enforcement is coming. And reading through the AJ link, it looks like BC is beginning to integrate quite nicely into the EU banking system.
So now I have an anonymous virtual currency -- that governments can track the movement of. Which might require special licensing, permits, and insurance to broker. Perhaps I'm missing the point here?
We're getting to the point where the big boys step in, and my bet is that it's not going to be comfortable for the people who started the whole thing. I expect more "integration" into the traditional banking system, at least until there's no value-add between cash and BC, and then we've reached our starting point. BC becomes nothing more than "collecting sharp sticks" in such a fashion as to be closely monitored by world governments.