On 16-May-11, at 4:39 PM, Srini RamaKrishnan wrote: [snip]
I don't know much about BitCoin, but my initial thoughts were that this is unenforceable as an alternative monetary standard without a global power behind it.
As the hawala system has proven, a currency has as much value as what anyone is willing to offer in exchange. Are there people willing to accept bitcoins as payment for "real" goods and services? If so, the currency has value independent of any political or military power. It turns out that you can buy stuff with bitcoin, even exchange regular currency. It can be argued that there are "real" currencies with far less legitimacy.
It's certainly a very interesting experiment. The hard limit is especially intriguing, and made practical by the simple rule that a bitcoin value can have arbitrary decimal places.
-Taj.
