Dan Kaminsky: Let’s Cut Through the Bitcoin Hype http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/05/lets-cut-through-the-bitcoin-hype/
> An unregulated resource is behaving wildly. This is what unregulated > resources do, in every network imaginable. With Bitcoin, the supply of this > awesome thing completely ignores the demand for it. > > And yet it’s not going away. It could have. There have been a couple of major > crashes. But the value has never hit zero, because as William Gibson wrote > decades ago, the street finds a use for things. > > People keep trying to describe bitcoin as an amazing store of value. Perhaps > it is. But its real value proposition is as a medium for transfer. .... > At least, that’s the theory. Reality is more complicated. Of all the millions > of dollars of purloined bitcoin that’s floating around out there, not one > Satoshi of it has been spent. That’s because while most other stolen property > becomes relatively indistinguishable from its legitimate brethren, everybody > knows the identity of this particular stolen wealth, and can track it until > the end of time. ..... > Nothing made by humans is ever free of politics or even error. > > Not even math, and certainly not Bitcoin. It’s not merely that Bitcoin must > interact with the messy real world, and absorb its faults and foibles. > Currencies do not naturally maintain fairly stable valuations. Their rate of > change is absolutely manipulated over time. ..... > The euro is a much bigger deal than bitcoin is going to be on any reasonable > timescale. But governments are keeping an eye on it, because you know, that > internet thing eventually did become significant. -- Kim Holburn IT Network & Security Consultant T: +61 2 61402408 M: +61 404072753 mailto:[email protected] aim://kimholburn skype://kholburn - PGP Public Key on request _______________________________________________ Link mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
