The European Union does not have a standing Army.
But, essentially I agree with you. When you go into a casino, you get
chips. In that casino, those chips are money. They are backed by that
casino. They may represent a certain currency because we are familiar
with that currency, but they don't need to be.
Gold, silver, Platinum, ... are commodities. Additionally, money (eg
currency) is also traded like commodities. You can trade in currencies.
The big difference is that currency is an abstraction. Down in
Tennessee, where Jack lives, he has to carry bars of gold. because they
don't take bitcoins.
On 04/18/2013 01:35 PM, [email protected] wrote:
It's funny, we were joking a while ago about what constitutes "money."
Bitcoins are not money any more than wampum is. This does not mean that
they do not have a value, but the value is quite subjective.
Money, on the other hand, is historically a token for something of fixed
value, like gold or silver. Granted this distinction has been somewhat
blurred.
The main thing about "money," is that it is typically managed by a state
with a standing army. Obviously not part of the official definition, to be
sure, but certainly a "value add" component that bitcoins lack.
I am not sure either way. It could be that Bitcoin takes its place as a
real currency (in some ways, it already is for the Internet black market).
It may fizzle as a fad. It may be deemed illegal and driven underground.
it will crash again (it is a currency, so it will - trivially true
statement) - will it always recover, like a real world currency?. Who
knows - I had no time to think about this.
The BitCoin paper is here, that should explain how the scheme works:
http://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
Best -F
PS: Satoshi Nakamoto is somebody's secret identity. Most likely a team of
Quants in London or NYC, but even that is uncertain.
On Apr 17, 2013, at 1:36 PM, Kurt Keville <[email protected]> wrote:
Well, if it walks and talks like a pump & dump scheme ...
There are no math answers to give (as there are in, say, the GIMPS
project)... this is just gratuitous CPU burdening for it's own sake. I
have been to a couple of the Bitcoin Club meetings at MIT and I still
don't get it... seems to me to be a currency musical chairs; you don't
want to be holding this currency when the bottom drops out again...
there is another one this Friday if you are interested... I still go
even though I still haven't figured out what the hubbub is all about.
At 10:33 AM 4/17/2013, Greg London wrote:
Bitcoin has been all over the news this past week.
I don't understand. It sounds like someone set up a
company to trade in virtual money, and all I have to
do to mint my own money is do some math?
I do some math, show them the answer, and they... do what?
They give me money? They act as a trader and take a
commission off on anyone trading money?
Can someone explain how this works at the transaction level?
--
Jerry Feldman <[email protected]>
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id:3BC1EB90
PGP Key fingerprint: 49E2 C52A FC5A A31F 8D66 C0AF 7CEA 30FC 3BC1 EB90
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