On Tue, Apr 02, 2013 at 06:25:01PM +0530, Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote: > Till it starts to get exchanged for hard currency bitcoin is merely a token > of barter - you barter X bitcoins for say legal services. Or a dime (or is it > 10 bitcoin) bag of weed. Or whatever.
BTC exchanges have been around for a while. I don't know what a hard (or floppy) currency is, but Bitcoin is not a currency. It's merely money. Like gold (which is not money, according to Bernanke). > Once it starts getting exchanged for hard currency - the point where this > exchange takes place WILL get regulated. That's inevitable. You can exchange Bitcoin in central exchanges or with local folks for cash, see https://localbitcoins.com/ . > Any widespread use of bitcoin for illegal activities will also, inevitably, > attract interest - but more from the ATF, FBI or similar agencies worldwide, > compared to financial and tax regulators. You can run Bitcoin over anonymizing networks. Not that you can tell which wallet belongs to which person. Brain wallets need not even to be instantiated, though their weakness is getting enough entropy into the pass phrase. P.S. if you liked Bitcoin, check out https://bitmessage.org
