[LINK] BitCoin DDoS and/or Wallet-Hack

[Kim Holburn]

It's an interesting take.  IANAE but I could look at it slightly differently.  The key to a barter system is trust in the barter tokens.  That trust comes from (or doesn't) from being backed by a government or from inherent value (gold, assets) but in the case of bitcoin it comes from trust in the inherent mathematics.  People can at times lose trust in any or all of those things.

While it's true that those bits have no inherent value you might say the same of any digital way of transferring value or even government currency.  People have lost trust in paper money many times throughout history, it too has no inherent value.

On 2013/Apr/18, at 2:50 PM, Jim Birch wrote:

> UQ Economist John Quiggin's take on Bitcoin:
> 
> http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/the-bitcoin-bubble-bad-hypothesis-8353
> 
> "The sudden drop in the value of Bitcoins, the hot new Internet currency,
> has added urgency to the question of whether Bitcoin is the way of the
> future, or just another bubble. Not to keep readers in suspense, the answer
> is a bubble, but a particularly interesting example of one. In particular,
> Bitcoin represents what ought to be the final refutation of the
> efficient-markets hypothesis, which still guides most regulation of
> financial markets."
> 
> An "asset" that has no inherent value, productive or consumptive, unlike
> gold or tobacco, has no organisation backing its value, unlike US dollars
> which the US government will accept indefinitely as payment for tax
> liabilities, and, which it only makes sense to hold if you expect its value
> to escalate is about as pure a bubble as is logically possible.
> 
> - Jim
> _______________________________________________
> Link mailing list
> Link at mailman.anu.edu.au
> http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link

-- 
Kim Holburn
IT Network & Security Consultant
T: +61 2 61402408  M: +61 404072753
mailto:kim at holburn.net  aim://kimholburn
skype://kholburn - PGP Public Key on request