Bitcoin: predictions?

[Jay Vaughan]

> Scammers are always searching for a new bubble to hop on?  Bitcoin
> speculation is the new silver and gold hoarding scam?
> 

Well then, that means it is really a currency, since all new currencies are propelled in precisely this same way, on all markets where the currency has .. current value.

> Bitcoin is the currency of crime for a reason.

“a” currency of crime. “the” currency of crime is still the greenback, moron.  Courtesy of you-know-who ..

But if you mean that ‘bitcoin is used mostly by criminals’, in my small sampling this isn’t such the case.  Actually, the hackerspaces - those with functioning micro-economies - are all using Bitcoin.  Its being used to buy stuff that isn’t criminal.  Normal webshops - i.e. just selling stuff - are starting to use it. Btx is a merchant reality in China, where admittedly a lot of illegal stuff happens - but a lot of real economic exchange too.

But of course, every currency can be used for criminal purposes - and governments can declare currencies ‘illegal’ because of criminal activity, but did you not know that it is a very, very fine line when such questions are asked about Bitcoin, because what weakens Bitcoin, weakens ‘traditional fiat instruments’ even further.  And worse.

> If you are a government or corporation, why would you want to allow your monetary system to
> suddenly become decentralized and out of your control?  

Because your old money system is about to collapse, and you want to transfer the peoples’ assets to the near-impervious new crypto-currency standards that are emerging during a time when the world is actually poised to accept such things.


> In 5 years time
> Bitcoin will either be exactly as it has always been (the defacto
> currency for cybercrime) or it will have been completely co-opted and
> neutered so as to better support the interests of existing government
> and multi-national power structures.

Well, I’ll be buying Government Ice-cream with it then, probably ..


> 
> Much the same as has happened with the Internet being "open”.

Touché .. but then again, its still just as easy for a group of (or even just one) dufus'es to set up a web site as it is for Corporate Entity #1337.  Such things are still just as open for you and me as they are for anyone else.  I’m not seeing the ‘un-open’ Internet, unless you mean of course the Consumer-hating side of it, in which case its a very large gape indeed.  The Internet is just as open today as it was in 1989.  In some ways, even more so - you don’t have to wait for a sysadmin to give you the password, you just hit “Publish Wordpress” and off it goes.  So actually, what do you mean .. the Internet isn’t “open”?

j.