
Why I’m Putting All My Savings Into Bitcoin - mazsa
http://falkvinge.net/2011/05/29/why-im-putting-all-my-savings-into-bitcoin/
======
nazgulnarsil
Bitcoin has aggravated the "layman talks out his ass about economics" problem
again.

1\. Gold is a proof of work system just like bitcoin. When someone accepts
gold as payment for some other commodity or service they are doing so under
the assumption that the value will be stable because it takes at least X
amount of time/labor/ingenuity/money to "create" more gold by mining it. This
is what backs non-consumption commodities.

2\. Fiat currencies ARE backed. They are just usually backed by a service and
not a commodity. The USD for example is backed by several things: the fact
that it is the reserve currency for buying oil (all oil is sold in US
dollars), the fact that dollars are avoid-prison coupons for tax burdens (how
most fiat currencies have been backed), confidence that the US will inflate
less than other regimes and meet its obligations, confidence that the US will
enforce debt obligations denominated in USD with their military if necessary.

I'm getting pretty tired of ALL CAPS hyperbole about gold and fiat currency.

~~~
javert
I don't know much about economics, but...

Gold isn't really a non-consumption commodity. It's used in things like
jewelry and compter circuits.

In other words, it doesn't just work because everybody agreed that it's a good
mechanism for trade. It works because it actually has underlying value. Or, at
least, I can't rule out that possibility, because it DOES have underlying
value.

~~~
adrianN
But it has much less underlying value than other consumption commodities.
Copper is more more useful than gold, for example.

~~~
knowtheory
That gold is overinflated doesn't diminish the fact that it has a utility
outside of it's use as a financial instrument.

~~~
hugh3
True, but if you break down the value of gold then it's maybe a dollar an
ounce from practical uses and 1500 dollars an ounce from the fact that it's a
seven-thouand-year-old asset bubble.

Or, to put it another way, suppose tomorrow I figure out a way to replace gold
with some much cheaper tin-copper alloy in _all_ its industrial applications.
That's not gonna decrease the value of gold all that much. (Note that I don't
really count jewellery as an industrial application -- gold is used in
jewellery _because_ it's valuable, not because it looks any prettier than
other metals).

~~~
javert
_gold is used in jewellery because it's valuable, not because it looks any
prettier than other metals_

I'm not so sure about that. Gold is used in jewelry because (a) it looks
cooler than silver/tin/copper/etc.; and (b) because it is really rare.

So I'm proposing the chain is:

Looks good & rare -> Valuable

I think if you were missing either "looks good for jewelry" OR "rare", it
wouldn't be valuable and it wouldn't work as a medium of exchange.

This is a historical perspective. These days you could also use:

Used in industrial applications & rare -> Valuable

but I doubt that would drive the value of it up to where my former hypothesis
does, if it's right.

~~~
bhickey
Gold is used in jewelry because: * It is malleable * It is resistant to
corrosion/tarnish

~~~
javert
The thing that makes it most unique WRT jewelry is that it's pretty.

It's easy to make jewelry out of wood, glass, and lots of other things.

------
luigi
This violates two simple, and obvious, tenets of investing:

1\. Don't put all your eggs in one basket.

2\. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

~~~
richardw
The basket many people are holding all their eggs in, is the USD. That has
depreciated significantly in the last few years, with a very good chance that
it'll continue to do so.

My home currency isn't the dollar but my app is priced in dollars and that
sucks. I'd far prefer to have Euro earnings and earn a few bitcoins a month as
a speculative investment.

~~~
tectonic
Does investing in foreign stocks hedge against this?

~~~
hugh3
Investing in _any_ stocks hedges against this. For instance, I have shares in
General Electric. That means I indirectly own part of all GE's assets. Some of
their assets are in US dollars, but the vast majority of their assets are
tangible things -- factories that make jet engines and diesel locomotives and
dishwashers and... whatever the hell else we make. If the US dollar drops in
value, the US dollar value of these real assets goes up correspondingly.

~~~
nradov
That's only true for some stocks, and GE is a bad example. The majority of
GE's assets are not tangible things but rather debt owed to GE Capital. As of
2010 only 9% of GE's assets were tangible property, plants, and equipment.
<http://www.ge.com/investors/financial_reporting/index.html>

------
zhoutong
"There is currently about USD 50 million in the bitcoin system, and just over
six million coins in circulation, valued at $8 each. Up until now, demand has
largely been driven by enthusiasts. The value of a bitcoin can’t be held
constant — if 12 more million dollars is exchanged into bitcoin, the value of
a coin will rise to $10. The more people who want to use the system, the more
people will need to exchange a portion of national currency for bitcoin, and
the more money will go into the system. The more money there is in the system,
the more a particular bitcoin will be worth."

This statement lacks economic sense. The total market capitalization of
bitcoin ecosystem is $50m doesn't mean that $50m has been transacted. If I
accept your offer of $800 per bitcoin, the market cap based on this
transaction will become $5 billion instead.

Therefore, the author has severely over-estimated how much money that people
have put in to the market. He is probably thinking "So there are $50 million
investment here, my savings are so insignificant that I don't have to count
the risk."

~~~
nasmorn
Thanks I didn't catch that myself. Sounds awfully much like real estate where
suddenly everyone was feeling rich because some idiot bought a house for too
much money. (in this case aggravated by the fact that the idiot put zero money
down.)

------
Someone
Take away the interesting technical aspects, and BitCoin, to me, looks like a
pyramid scheme.

The BitCoin economy is like a small country with a novel monetary system. Now,
a big country, say the USA, wants to join because it sees benefits in that
system. Normally, such a transition would have the USA print new money. In
this case, the answer to "OK, sounds useful, how do we introduce this kind of
money into our economy?" is not "together, we pick an exchange rate, then you
can 'print' a BitCoin for every X dollars you destroy", but "you buy it from
us, who got there earlier".

There also are huge problems integrating this "nobody can check where money
flows" scheme into current economies. Income tax? Forget it. Indirect
government control over inflation and interet rates?. Forget it.

In the end, I think some of the ideas of BitCoin may live on, but I do not see
it live for more than a couple of years. Meanwhile, it will make quite a few
people rich.

~~~
scotty79
> Take away the interesting technical aspects

BitCoin consists only of technical aspects. The rest is just noise that people
do around them.

~~~
eropple
All human-created phenomena are social phenomena. "It's just tech" is said
only by those who fundamentally don't understand this or want you to ignore
those social aspects for their own gains.

Contrary to what lots of the Bitcoin aficionados might like people to think,
the social aspects of it are the only part that really matters outside of a
crypto mailing list. And they're also the reasons it's insane to expect people
to actually use it.

~~~
scotty79
Bitcoin is as much social phenomena as neodymium magnets.

Lots of people buy bitcoins but thats just consequence of the fact that
bitcoins are excelent at being scarce and seem to be excelent at staying
scarce and at some other things.

------
vaksel
I recommend reading up on the MMM company.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMM_%28Ponzi_scheme_company%29>

there is also a Russian movie called PiraMMMida that came out a few months
ago, which is the fictionized version of history. Now that movie, is pretty
much exactly how bitcoin tends to be covered by the fanboys.

And as the movie points out, it comes down to pure greed, people give up real
money in order to buy worthless paper, which they are hoping to unload before
it depreciates...but they never do, because they keep seeing big
returns...until the point when the whole "economy" crashes and you are left
with nothing. An important point, is that these people knew that the currency
was worthless, but because of their greed they continued buying it up and
promoting it to others.

~~~
Tichy
BitCoin doesn't promise any returns, and doesn't distribute anything to new
people who sign up. It is only a Ponzi scheme if the real world's economy is a
Ponzi scheme. I don't know if it is.

~~~
hugh3
You're right. While bitcoin has certain similarities to Ponzi schemes (i.e.
the fact that the people who start the scheme get rich while the folks who
come later lose their money) I think it's really more accurately described
simply as an asset bubble.

Except, y'know, without any actual underlying asset. I don't think I've ever
seen an asset bubble in something that was _literally_ worthless before. Even
the tulip bulbs of the Dutch tulip mania
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania>) could be planted in your garden
and would look quite pretty, even if not _ten years' salary_ worth of pretty.

~~~
Tichy
Money is just a tool, and BitCoin is a particular variant of that tool. It has
unique properties that can be used for lots of things. Therefore I wouldn't
say that they are worthless.

~~~
hugh3
_It has unique properties that can be used for lots of things_

Well, no, it doesn't have any unique properties. For instance, as I've said
before, I'm running an alternative currency called "bitcoin prime" which has
these two properties:

1\. Every string of bits that is a bitcoin is also a bitcoin prime, and

2\. Every bitcoin prime extant as of April 1, 2011 belongs to me (all
subsequently mined bitcoins prime belong to whoever mined the relevant
bitcoin).

Mathematically there's no difference between bitcoin and bitcoin prime. And
that's just one of an infinite number of possible bitcoin alternatives which
can be arbitrarily declared, at any time, to exist.

~~~
premchai21
Hrrrm. This redefinition, while trivially possible, seems irrelevant.
Possession of assets is first and foremost a practical matter. (I think you
understand this, but for the benefit of the discussion…)

In the case of primary real-world goods, possession comes from being able to
physically access the state of various matter and energy: I physically own a
house to the extent that I can reliably live in it and make modifications to
it and so forth. I physically own food to the extent that I can make use of it
by eating it. Other people can alter the game by acting as environmental
forces to change the set of available interactions.

In the case of fiat currency and economic goods, practical ownership
(including but not strictly identical to theoretical legal ownership) is
similarly determined, but with more of a focus on laws of people rather than
the laws of physics; the former are backed by the latter, but usefully form a
separate conceptual layer.

The case of Bitcoin is also analogous, but there is now a focus on the laws of
mathematics as they apply to the state space in which the Bitcoin system
operates, and in particular to the practicalities of computing—a strong
cryptographic attack could still destroy the system.

So the reason that owning all the early Bitcoins prime is not useful is the
same reason owning all the virtual dollars in a parallel system to the US
banks is not useful despite being able to invent whatever such system you
want. Because no one will recognize this, the amount this changes your set of
available physical interactions with regard to primary goods is very small. (I
haven't taken weird social goods into account in the above, but I think a
similar argument applies since they also require external recognition.)

That said, I think the GP poster would do well to clarify what ey meant by
“unique properties”, and perhaps whether (as I interpret it) “unique” is meant
to be “of the set of currently active systems, for some fuzzy activity
threshold”, thus excluding Bitcoin prime and the infinite variations thereof.

------
raganwald
A few points:

1\. There is a difference between "This is useful, I will use it," "This is
useful, many people will use it, I think it is going to succeed," and "This is
useful, I will invest in it." I have recently started using a text editor
called Byword. I quite like it. But I am not rushing out to invest in it.

2\. There is also a difference between "I will invest some of my money in it,"
I will invest all of my money in it," and "I will invest all of my money and
all of the money I can borrow in it."

If we take a thousand people and instruct each of them to invest their life
savings and everything they can borrow into a single, randomly chosen
investment, some will get very rich, richer than anybody who avoids borrowing
money for speculative investments, and much richer than people who take a
balanced portfolio approach to investing.

But that doesn't mean it's a good strategy.

~~~
palish
Does anyone know of any balls-out investments that paid off (or didn't)?

(I'm referring to "if this investment doesn't pay off, I'm jumping out a
window" risk.)

I'm just looking for interesting stories, and that sounds promising.

~~~
rsheridan6
Bob Parsons had already made tens of millions from an earlier startup, and he
put all of his money into starting up GoDaddy, to the point where he would
have been broke if it had been failed and he was almost out of funds to keep
it going, before it turned profitable.

He wrote an article about it but I can't find it right now.

~~~
salemh
Good interview which goes into this.
[http://www.npost.com/blog/2005/12/07/interview-with-bob-
pars...](http://www.npost.com/blog/2005/12/07/interview-with-bob-parsons-ceo-
of-godaddy/)

------
ZeroMinx
Let's be clear that this is Rick Falkvinge, founder of the first Pirate Party.
His title is now "political evangelist". It's not surprising that he's in
favour of a currency that is free from government control.

(Not that I disagree with him in general, I just thought this is something to
take into account reading this article)

~~~
puredemo
Not to mention that he probably already owns a lot of bitcoins and has a
massive vested interest in seeing them become worth more.

------
hugh3
This article is crazy, and actually fills me with a little bit of
schadenfreude.

Asset bubbles run on the bigger fool principle, and they end when you run out
of bigger fools to sell to. If folks have really started cleaning out their
bank accounts _and_ borrowing money to buy bitcoins (an amount of bitcoins
which, incidentally, you probably could have picked up for twenty bucks just
six months ago) then it seems to me that the world is about to run out of
bigger fools.

~~~
dualogy
Far from it because right now this is only being discussed in Hacker News...
not in USA Today or FarmVille. However one defines "fools", I don't see a
shortage. That said, I'm not invested, only observing here.

~~~
hugh3
_However one defines "fools", I don't see a shortage._

In this particular case, foolishness is denoted merely by their willingness to
pay high prices for bitcoins. While there may be out there in the general
population plenty of people objectively more foolish than this guy, they're
less likely to fall for this.

This is the other big problem I have with bitcoin: it seems to exist in a very
insular, very geeky world filled with people who don't really understand the
non-geek world out there. Bitcoin will never really jump from the geek world
to the real world, because the general population won't even _understand_ its
supposed benefits, much less give a damn about them. A few geeks may be able
to talk their poor grandmas into buying some, but that's about it for general
market penetration.

~~~
dualogy
But then, so was 15 years ago that whole Internet thing "too geeky", very
insular with no connection to the non-geek world out there. So I suppose the
BTC crowd sees that as a promising beginning.

------
rheide
This person lost all credibility to me when he said that he borrowed money to
invest. I'm a huge admirer of Bitcoin's technical aspects, but I would never
even think of borrowing money to invest in anything, let alone bitcoins.

~~~
carbocation
Leveraged positions are common, but leveraging yourself to the maximum
possible and not leaving yourself a safety net, as is implied by the article,
is crazy. I assume the author is speaking hyperbolically.

~~~
henrikschroder
Knowing Rick, this is exactly the kind of thing he would do. You gotta give
him credit for putting money where his mouth is, though. He previously took
all his savings, and a bank loan to start the Pirate Party, and that worked
out pretty well.

~~~
po
There's nothing more dangerous than a confidant gambler. Taking one high risk
may wipe you out or make you rich, but taking a series of high risks will
almost certainly wipe you out. His past success has nothing to do with this
wager he's making now. It's like playing russian roulette 10 times in a row.

~~~
niklas_a
Yep. But it is those kind of people that end up making a difference in this
world (for better or worse).

------
tpatke
Bitcoin is a market which has buyers and sellers. Just because one more idiot
is willing to buy $10, or $1000 for a coin does not mean there is a market to
SELL $50M worth.

This market sounds easy to get into and hard to get out of - especially in a
hurry.

...saying that. I think the value of a bitcoin is probably going to go up.
Everyone loves a bubble.

------
bcl
bitcoin is somewhat interesting, I've been experimenting with it recently. One
thing to note is that transfers aren't instant until your client catches up
with the network -- when you first connect you currently have about 127k
blocks to download before you are current.

At first I had some trouble understanding why you couldn't just had a client
and create easier coins. The thing is, you can, but the network won't
recognize them. The key to the system's security is that as long as 50% of the
bitcoin nodes agree on that the current difficulty level is you can't inject
'fake' money into the system.

Right now moving money into and out of the system is a bit difficult. Mining
is not worth the electricity it costs you, unless you have a GPU and join a
mining pool. The 'value' of a bitcoin is _very_ volatile, as tracked on the
<http://bitcoincharts.com> site.

~~~
FooBarWidget
> The key to the system's security is that as long as 50% of the bitcoin nodes
> agree on that the current difficulty level is you can't inject 'fake' money
> into the system.

Isn't it quite easy to spawn a few million malicious nodes?

~~~
njs12345
You have to have the computing power to beat 50% of the network - given the
current size of the bitcoin network that's certainly not trivial.

~~~
wcoenen
The individual in control of the DeepBit mining pool already has about 50% of
the network's computing power.

[http://www.bitcoinminer.com/post/5328668205/deepbit-50-perce...](http://www.bitcoinminer.com/post/5328668205/deepbit-50-percent-
threshold)

------
weavejester
Investing in Bitcoin is akin to investing in a startup. There's a chance the
startup will become wildly successful and you'll make a tonne of money from
it. But you also have to be prepared for the more likely chance that you will
lose everything you put in.

Investing all your savings in _anything_ is a risk. Investing everything in a
risky startup seems the height of madness... unless you don't have a lot of
savings, I guess.

------
tobias3
"[Bitcoin is] an entirely new kind of currency that can’t be seized or frozen
by governments" Simply not true. At the end of the day you need to change
Bitcoins back to real money. The money that actually has some value because it
(is supposed to) represents goods. The stuff you need in order to survive and
live (food, clothes, ...). Goverments can declare these "banks" that change
bitcoins back to real money illegal - mabe because bitcoins can be used to
launder money (because it's advantage is, that "you can transfer any amount
anywhere instantly without any authority knowing or interfering"). In this
case all your money is worthless. But you can still write nice blog entries
and get other people to buy the stuff from you ;)

~~~
mdonahoe
People accept bitcoin as direct payment for things already, removing the need
to switch back to dollars. Granted it's not a big selection

~~~
tobias3
But can you pay your rent in BTC or at the grocery store... As long as the
essential things are not available via Bitcoins it is not an independent
system and thus successible to goverment intervention. And even then. People
tend to trust currencies issued by the government more and money is just an
artificial thing based on trust.

------
igrekel
Its hard to accept the author dismissing the threat of bitcoin being banned
and then admitting it is difficult to buy bitcoins. If it is difficult to buy
bitcoins, its most likely hard to get useable currency from bitcoins. Until
you can buy groceries or other real life things in bitcoins, I'd say it is a a
very real threat.

~~~
stuhood
You can buy groceries with Bitcoin: <http://bitmunchies.com/>

~~~
igrekel
Bitmunchies probably pays its suppliers using usual currency. I'd guess its is
just a way to trade money for bitcoins and that they don't really convert
those bitcoins to dollars to pay their suppliers. Just a guess.

------
dspeyer
He seems very impressed with the privacy: "In fact, nobody knows that he got
it except me and him", "nobody can ... look at your account balance".

But every transaction is public. Is there anything stopping the NSA (or
Amazon, or me) from subscribing and adding up his current balance? Sure, it'll
be linked to his bitcoin address, not his name, but that can't be all that
hard to map, can it?

~~~
swolchok
You create a new bitcoin address for every transaction. Some money goes to the
actual recipient, and the "change" goes back to your new address. In addition,
you can attempt to "launder" bitcoins by executing bogus transactions from
yourself to yourself.

Posting a static bitcoin address on your website and saying "send money here"
is not considered best practice.

~~~
gulbrandr
> "Posting a static bitcoin address on your website and saying "send money
> here" is not considered best practice."

Can you explain why?

~~~
swolchok
It breaks anonymity. Transactions are public and that static address is
public, so anyone can tell how much money that static bitcoin address has
received.

------
jpadvo
"The secondary uptake wave after enthusiasts is not going to come from those
who use legacy banking daily and are comfortable with it. It is going to be
people who don’t want or are not allowed to use the legacy banking system for
their everyday transactions."

This is also the point when governments will start aggressively working to
shut it down.

------
netcan
Interesting side effect of these bitcoin discussions is the back & forward of
"this is a scam" --> "This is insane social engineering hack" --> "This is no
different from any other money" :

Makes you think about what money is. We're so used to it that it seems trivial
but if someone explained to you about their idea for this new thing called
money you would probably think it was stupid, pointless and a way of scamming
a goat for some stupid round things.

So much of our world wouldn't exist without money.

Serious question: Is there currently some easy way of buying and holding
bitcoin without having to know anything about it, install anything, compile
anything or be able to justify it or explain why to your wife? Perhaps some
relaible online wallet?

~~~
maxwell
MyBitcoin and Mt. Gox are OK, but are only for exchange. As far as I know,
there isn't a web app for trading _and_ mining yet. With browsers moving
toward supporting hardware acceleration, it won't be long. The desktop client
is pretty unfriendly to normal people; the whole scene reminds me of
BitTorrent a few years back.

~~~
netcan
I don't want to mine. I want to buy $100 of bitcoin, without having to do much
more than put $100 in paypal and forget about it.

Just an incentive to learn a bit more about it.

------
synctext
"I predict that it has at least another thousandfold increase to go in the
coming few years"

Clearly a 'Bernard Madoff 2.0' pyramid scam. Only profitable for the early
adopters, pay by the last suckers whom enter.

~~~
weavejester
Bernard Madoff ran a Ponzi scheme, not a pyramid scheme, and Bitcoin cannot be
classed as either.

~~~
gamble
You're right, Bitcoin is actually more like a penny stock pump-and-dump
scheme.

~~~
weavejester
Except there doesn't appear to be a whole lot of dumping going on. I suspect
the majority of Bitcoin investors are more interested in seeing how far
Bitcoin can go rather than dumping all their coins the moment they've made a
reasonable profit.

~~~
synctext
Yes, that is the interesting bit. A lot of people are not in Bitcoin for the
money primary. They are hoarders or altruists.

Once some person tries to cash a $50,000 BTC account it will go down. The
market depth is simply not there it seems. The money supply is not regulated
vs. the trade volume, right?

------
cobri
My primary worry would be liquidity.

-Because the demand to buy bitcoin is low, the likelihood being able to sell the bitcoin whenever he wants (ideally at height of bitcoins worth) is also low. This is the same reason that penny stocks are difficult to make a profit it. While the value may go up significantly, you can't realize this profit until you find someone to sell it to (and in order for them to buy it, they have to think it's going to go up even further).

-Currently there aren't too many companies that accept bitcoin for products or services.

-Any currency is only as valuable as the people using it believe it is (ie. the dollar is only a piece of paper, but because the seller believes that its worth is equivalent to a candybar, he will trade it).

-Once people realize that they cannot use bitcoin for goods or services, the likelihood is that there will be a mass exodus, and the price will fall rapidly as people want to sell their un-useable bitcoin for a currency that still has value. With so few buyers, the discount will likely have to be pretty hefty in order to attract other buyers into a falling investment.

------
cletus
> In the past three months, the value has hundredfolded

If this trend continues, my $8 invested for 1 bitcoin will be worth $800
million in a year!

Seriously?

~~~
limmeau
$800 millions should be enough to live comfortably by for a lifetime; no need
to go all-in on bitcoins.

------
ecounysis
The fundamental question is whether enough merchants will accept it in
exchange for valuable goods and services that people want. A currency is as
valuable as the tangible benefits you can trade it for. It seems unlikely that
it will replace the major systems of exchange, nonetheless, I still hold a
small amount of my portfolio in bitcoin denominated assets because you never
know. Twenty years ago no one could have predicted the impact of the internet
on the banking system. Hell, ten years ago most people were still reluctant to
use the online banking services offered by their financial institutions. And
now we are at a point where a cryptography based ecurrency is the content of
this discussion, which seems to be evidence of the validity of the concept.
It's just a matter of whether it will catch on.

------
eli
These endless bitcoin articles seem to have less and less to do with hacking
or startups. I suspect there are more appropriate forums for debating
economics.

------
orijing
This reminds me of those penny-stock pump-and-dump articles/spam emails I used
to receive.

"Why I'm Putting All My Savings Into BITC". As soon as the pump scheme drives
up the stock, you dump it and move onto the next thing.

I'm not saying mazsa is doing this, just that it could serve the same purpose.
"Now that I'm fully invested in bitcoins, please buy it up so I can sell it
later at a better price."

------
pbreynolds
It seems to me that a key move to stabilizing bitcoin would be finding a high
demand product that can only be purchased with bitcoin. That along with
offering retailers incentives (aside from the "no fees" aspect). A group of
heavily invested bitcoin owners would be wise to organize such efforts.

~~~
limmeau
That would have to be something that cannot be resold. Still, a company which
sells its product (which would have to be unique within its market segment)
for "real" money today would have to say goodbye to all those dollar-wielding
one-dot-oh customers and hope they come back tomorrow with bitcoins.

Why would a company do that?

------
tobylane
The history of bitcoin is 14 months. How stable has it been over that time?
It's only been in the news 2-3 weeks. I see the three bc/$ figures given, but
it says nothing of stability. Other than that, it's fairly sensible. I'll
stick with my 4.2%+ tax free isas.

------
motters
This is probably a very bad idea. It's too early to tell where Bitcoin will
go, and whether it will achieve widespread acceptance as a currency. Putting
all of your savings into something highly speculative isn't very wise, unless
you can afford to lose them.

------
scottkrager
Can I short bitcoins? If this guy is buying, I'll take the other side of that
deal.

------
synnik
Even if this were an otherwise good investment, I want know know: What stops
the guys who run bitcoin from simply shutting it off?

EDIT: And before people reply, "it is P2P", someone runs the web site. Someone
owns the code repository. Or some group. There will always be a small group
with power to muck with the system. What stops abuse?

------
leon_
> Please make it possible to use milli- and microbitcoins as soon as possible

Bitcoin supports transactions as small as 0.00000001 (1e-8).

~~~
bluedanieru
What shall we call those? Micro-cents?

~~~
gulbrandr
nanocents I guess

~~~
bluedanieru
That's 10^-11, this is 10^-8.

------
littleidea
Summary question for the author: <http://bit.ly/aorWMz>

------
Duff
"They built a house of straw. The thundering machines sputtered and stopped.
Their leaders talked and talked and talked. But nothing could stem the
avalanche. Their world crumbled. The cities exploded. A whirlwind of looting,
a firestorm of fear. Men began to feed on men. On the roads it was a white
line nightmare. Only those mobile enough to scavenge, brutal enough to pillage
would survive. The gangs took over the highways, ready to wage war for a tank
of juice. And in this maelstrom of decay, ordinary men were battered and
smashed. Except for one man armed with an AK-47, and a Honda full of silver"

~~~
safeaim
Where's that quote from?

~~~
hugh3
I have no idea, but you'd be surprised how little silver a Honda can actually
carry.

