
The Rise and Fall of Bitcoin - ashishgandhi
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/11/mf_bitcoin/all/1
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johncoogan
This is a fairly old article at this point but I think it's cool that Ashish
posted it. Despite being a bumpy ride, I think Bitcoin confirmed some pretty
crazy hypotheses and set the stage for some pretty incredible things.

I would love to see the Bitcoin model paired with some of the ideas Muhammad
Yunus has been espousing recently. His point that creating a sustainable
social enterprise requires creating wealth within communities makes perfect
sense to me, but as long as that wealth-creation relies on direct peer-to-peer
lending, the potential for usurious lending will exist. I would love to see a
company administer micro-finance algorithmically and then distribute equity in
the company through a cryptological model similar to Bitcoin.

The standard lifecycle of a company typically involves raising large financing
rounds prior to major expansions. Uncertainty about dilution adds additional
risk to equity investing and an infinitely expanding system may be able to
solve this problem. Naturally, this would do nothing to solve the problems
inherent to relative valuation, and just like Bitcoin, such a company would
likely see very choppy pricing. Nevertheless, it would be nice to cure some of
the problems caused by inflation / dilution.

