Bitcoin

From RationalWiki
Revision as of 12:04, 25 June 2011 by David Gerard (talk | contribs) (stubby stub)
(diff) ← Older revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)
Jump to navigation Jump to search
The dismal science
Economics
Icon economics.svg
Economic systems

  $  Free market
  €  Social democracy
  ☭ Socialist economy

Major concepts
The worldly philosophers

Bitcoin is an Internet-based digital currency, authenticated using strong cryptography.

The mathematics is robust, so overprivileged nerds and internet libertarians think this is all that is needed, because they don't understand people and don't know anything about economics or history. This then bites then in the arse when they discover that running a Magic: The Gathering card exchange site is insufficient experience to securely run a currency exchange.

It's an entirely imaginary fiat currency, but no more so than US dollars, and could be a currency if 300 million people similarly thought it was. The Economist, for example, takes it seriously and finds it quite interesting.

Right now, its main function is as a pump-and-dump scheme wherein early adopters - who have more bitcoins than anyone else ever will - hype it up so they can offload their bitcoins onto fools who think they'll strike it rich as speculators.