What do you folks think about Bitcoin? It looks interesting, in that it's a digital currency with no trusted third parties, and all the "rules" (such as: you can't just print your own money) enforced by the fact that only transactions which the majority of computers in the system accept get considered "accepted" globally.
There's a process to create new money, which is basically allocated to people via a lottery (and you increase your chances of winning by contributing more CPU power to the algorithms that prevent people cheating, so there's a nice feedback loop), such that the amount of money in the system will, in the long run, tend towards a fixed amount, that will just increases in value by deflating as the economy grows. I've written some thoughts on the implications: http://www.snell-pym.org.uk/archives/2011/05/12/bitcoin-security/ http://www.snell-pym.org.uk/archives/2011/05/16/lords-of-a-new-economy/ http://www.snell-pym.org.uk/archives/2011/05/13/aurum/ ABS -- Alaric Snell-Pym http://www.snell-pym.org.uk/alaric/
