[LINK] Dan Kaminsky: Let’s Cut Through the Bitcoin Hype

[Kim Holburn]

Dan Kaminsky: Let’s Cut Through the Bitcoin Hype

http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/05/lets-cut-through-the-bitcoin-hype/

> An unregulated resource is behaving wildly. This is what unregulated resources do, in every network imaginable. With Bitcoin, the supply of this awesome thing completely ignores the demand for it.
> 
> And yet it’s not going away. It could have. There have been a couple of major crashes. But the value has never hit zero, because as William Gibson wrote decades ago, the street finds a use for things.
> 
> People keep trying to describe bitcoin as an amazing store of value. Perhaps it is. But its real value proposition is as a medium for  transfer.

....

> At least, that’s the theory. Reality is more complicated. Of all the millions of dollars of purloined bitcoin that’s floating around out there, not one Satoshi of it has been spent. That’s because while most other stolen property becomes relatively indistinguishable from its legitimate brethren, everybody knows the identity of this particular stolen wealth, and can track it until the end of time.

.....

> Nothing made by humans is ever free of politics or even error.
> 
> Not even math, and certainly not Bitcoin. It’s not merely that Bitcoin must interact with the messy real world, and absorb its faults  and foibles. Currencies do not naturally maintain fairly stable valuations. Their rate of change is absolutely manipulated over time.

.....

> The euro is a much bigger deal than bitcoin is going to be on any reasonable timescale. But governments are keeping an eye on it, because you know, that internet thing eventually did become significant.




-- 
Kim Holburn
IT Network & Security Consultant
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