I'm guessing it is related to a dawning reality that while Bitcoin isn't at the whim of some government it *is* at the whim of "lots of people on the internet". There are major issues there; of a lack of oversight, a lack of security in the market (i.e. the recent hacking and crashinng of the market at MtGox) and so forth.
The MtGox crash will potentially be the turning point for BTC, I fear - notably because it raises the point that a decentralised currency can be attacked and scammed and you can't do anything about it without breaking the claim of "a currency no one can control" (which is what they did). This is what one of my favourite commentators had to say: *The Bitcoin "community" is an emergent, distributed boiler room<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiler_room_(business)>. They could just as easily be selling pink clam shells, tulips, or shares in an insolvent company that had a business plan to make pool cleaning agents. The underlying commodity doesn't matter. What does matter is that the widely disbursing the underlying commodity early gave them enough of a following, including folks who are savvy enough to think that they are the ones getting rich off the marks (a classic element of fraud), to attempt to convince other people that there is actually intrinsic value in what they are selling.* Also a lot of the claims by BTC advocates are turning out to likely be legally unsound, which is leading a lot of commentators into the attitude of "there could be trouble brewing here". Just in case BTC's were every logistically on the table... this should all be taken under consideration :) Tom On 21 June 2011 14:37, Milos Rancic <[email protected]> wrote: > On 06/21/2011 09:11 AM, Thomas Morton wrote: > > As a follow up to the discussion about Bitcoins (during the board > elections) > > & accepting them as donations... I thought this article by the EFF > > explaining why they no longer accept BC sets out some interesting > > arguments: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/06/eff-and-bitcoin > > Eh, the group of lawyers were sure about legal issues at the beginning > and now they are not. I suppose that US have introduced new laws in the > mean time. > > _______________________________________________ > foundation-l mailing list > [email protected] > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
