Unless you have one of a few narrow use cases, you shouldn't care about bitcoins themselves yet. It's kind of more like the invention of the computer, which took a while to be relevant in daily life but was obviously a massive technical breakthrough to people who could see the future implications. Bitcoin is the first successful implementation of cryptography as money. It's Money Over IP. And that's a big deal, or....it will be. Especially when the currency itself can enforce complex agreements <https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contracts> without the intervention of a human authority. That lets us start replacing lawyers with programmers, which can only be a good thing :)
TCP was invented in 1974, but it took us 15 years to get the Web, and similarly I think it will take a while to make cryptographic money relevant in daily life. But if you're a geek, it's way more fun to work on TCP in 1974 than in 2004. Specifically, Bitcoin has become a surprisingly effective store of value, but it's got a long way to go as a medium of exchange and it's virtually worthless as a unit of account. Personally I think we'll see derivative units built on top of Bitcoin that behave more like Canadian or U.S. dollars, and then the space will really explode. But for now I find even the narrow use cases interesting--its use as a payment method to prevent chargeback fraud; as an intrusion detection system that pays attackers to reveal themselves; as a basis for provably fair or provably secure business models; as a shared store of value that costs nothing to ship; as a platform for unique programming projects<http://www.reddit.com/r/bitcointip> involving money; and so on. There's a ton of innovation happening in this space, and Bitcoin won't be going away any time soon. It's really just a question of * which* steps will eventually take it mainstream. And if you're a technical guy or an entrepreneur who gets into Bitcoin now, you'll be able to experiment with all this stuff yourself. To me Bitcoin is DIY money, and in my experience DIY'ers kick butt at innovating. On Sun, Jun 23, 2013 at 5:38 PM, Jim MacKenzie <protoj...@gmail.com> wrote: > Does this mean your able to answer the full question "How do bit coins > work, and why should I care about them?" It seems everyone is able to > answer part one, no one can give a decent answer to the 2nd half > > > On Sunday, June 23, 2013, Jeff Coleman wrote: > >> lol. Their approach is more to invite people to present at conferences. >> >> >> On Sun, Jun 23, 2013 at 3:48 PM, Theo Baschak <theod...@ciscodude.net>wrote: >> >>> So how many dark tinted window vans are parked on your block now? :-) >>> Any wifi's named "NSASURVEILLANCEVAN" pop up recently? >>> Any with fake pants on the side with real zip-down surveillance slots? >>> >>> Theo >>> >>> On 2013-06-23, at 3:19 PM, Jeff Coleman <jeffc...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> >>> > Yup, it's me :) >>> > >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> SkullSpace Discuss Mailing List >>> Help: http://www.skullspace.ca/wiki/index.php/Mailing_List#Discuss >>> Archive: https://groups.google.com/group/skullspace-discuss-archive/ >>> >> >> > _______________________________________________ > SkullSpace Discuss Mailing List > Help: http://www.skullspace.ca/wiki/index.php/Mailing_List#Discuss > Archive: https://groups.google.com/group/skullspace-discuss-archive/ >
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