[LINK] Bitcoin Virtual Currency

[Tom Worthington]

On Mon, 2011-06-13 at 09:27 +0000, stephen at melbpc.org.au wrote: 
> P2P Virtual Currency <http://www.bitcoin.org> ...
> Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer currency. Peer-to-peer means that no central 
> authority issues new money, or tracks transactions.  ...

Had a call from a journalist asking about BitCoin a few days ago. They
seemed very excited by the idea that it was untraceable and could not be
exchanged for currency in the real world and therefore was not
controllable and transactions were not taxable by governments. I started
to tell them that Bitcoin was not the first e-currency and that
governments have found ways to regulate and tax such systems in the
past.

The journalist seemed insulted that I did not find Bitcoin as new and
exciting as whatever media release they were reading. The call then
ended. That may have been due to the interference from all the equipment
surrounding my office, or the journalist hung up and called someone who
would agree with whatever they wanted their story to say.


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS CP HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, School of Computer Science, The
Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/
Visiting Scientist, CSIRO ICT Centre: http://bit.ly/csiro_ict_canberra