
A Short Introduction to Bitcoin - A Peer to Peer Cryptocurrency - wglb
http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/2010/10/10/a-short-introduction-to-bitcoin.html
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pault
Ever since reading Cryptonomicon in the lat 90s I have wished that something
like this would become widely adopted. Alas, as it was with eGold, once a
digital alternative currency gets on the radar of the Feds, it will be wiped
from the face of the earth. Of course, by that time it will already have been
taken over by carders and scammers. Sigh...

~~~
DennisP
eGold was a company, with legal exposure to U.S. jurisdiction. Bitcoin is an
pseudonymous, decentralized cryptographic protocol. The Feds could criminalize
its use by U.S. citizens, and pressure other governments to do the same, but
it's going to be rather difficult to shut it down.

The biggest threat is that it just won't catch on. I was pretty surprised to
see that bitcoins already have significant real-world value. Maybe with the
fading confidence in national currencies, the time is right.

