Monday, March 4, 2013

Arwa Mahdawi — Bitcoin: more than just the currency of digital vice

Castronova notes that among young people, the mental accounting on different sorts of "money" is already very fuzzy. "Twenty-year-olds don't see any difference at all between dollars, gold coins, GPAs," said Castronova. "They're all just digital score sheets".
The future of money may or may not include a Federal Reserve Bank of Amazon, but it probably does involve the gradual decentralisation and democratisation of currency. Virtual currencies aren't just a new-fangled sort of Monopoly money. Rather, they may just be the thing that ends the monopoly on money.
The Guardian
Bitcoin: more than just the currency of digital vice
Arwa Mahdawi
(h/t Max Keiser)

Update on Bitcoin. Some interesting tidbits.

7 comments:

Unknown said...

Bitcoin is worse than gold as money since there is an absolute limit on how many may be "mined"; it is a money hoarder's dream.

The only problem is that others may create their own competitive Bitcoin-like solutions. But why should people accept them? Hence common stock as an ideal private money form since it "shares" the profits of sound money creation.

Anonymous said...

Count me out of the new laissez faire revolution in new private currencies. I haven't cared much for the last few laissez faire revolutions.

I prefer a single, public, democratically controlled currency system; not currency systems run by hacker jerkoffs

The Arthurian said...

Unified currency is what unified the US into one market, one nation. Evidence: the Euro.

The breakdown, diversification, "democratization" of currency accompanies the end of the unified society. Something similar probably happened in ancient Rome.

The Rombach Report said...

Dan Kervick: "I prefer a single, public, democratically controlled currency system"

Democratically controlled? Huh?

Unknown said...

I prefer a single, public, democratically controlled currency system; Dan K

And so we would have for the most part IF that currency was managed properly and not squandered propping up the "private" banking system, for example.



Unknown said...

In other words, alternative private currencies (for private debts only) are a needed check-and-balance to the government's money creation power. If the government manages its fiat properly then most people will choose to use that fiat for their private debts too. If not, then at least the private sector can escape that mismanagement by switching to a more responsible private currency.

Tom Hickey said...

In other words, alternative private currencies (for private debts only) are a needed check-and-balance to the government's money creation power. If the government manages its fiat properly then most people will choose to use that fiat for their private debts too. If not, then at least the private sector can escape that mismanagement by switching to a more responsible private currency.

This is also Bernard Lietaer's view.