

Hold on to your wallet: Doug Henwood on the Bitcoin scam - kaa2102
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2014_05/hold_on_to_your_wallet_doug_he050189.php

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zaroth
Bitcoin has many flaws, but it also has incredible number of potential use
cases. The sheer flexibility in how the shared ledger concept can be applied
is like a siren song to us engineers. And new coins will continue to be
created which facilitate these new use cases efficiently and at ever
increasing scale.

The one huge development which has just hit is something called atomic cross-
chain trading. It's barely Alpha quality software at this point, but it's
based on my Payment Channel protocol, with some key enhancements to enable
safely trading your bitcoin for any other altcoin. The current spec (proposed
BIP) is up, it needs a lot of work, but ultimately what it means is this; the
specific type of coin(s) you are holding at that moment will eventually become
a setting you can toggle in your wallet.

If I'm lucky, I'll be able to release some really amazing software for this.
If it's something you want to work on too, please contact me.

Bet against "bitcoin" if you want, but definitely don't bet against this
technology completely changing our lives. Eventually.

~~~
officialjunk
what altcoins are you focusing on first?

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zaroth
The first proof-of-concept is actually trading between Bitcoin's MainNet and
TestNet, but I think Litecoin would be next.

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sidko
Another extremely ill-conceived criticism of Bitcoin. "However, the cyber-
currency’s greatest proponents are libertarians" and thus the entire piece is
about an idiotic and narrow vision of politics without, obviously, any
consideration to Bitcoin as a technology. I mean, who cares about an emerging
technology right?

Also, " the insights of a Marxist-feminist professional dominatrix named
Mistress Magpie". Yes, we should all be looking at developing the next
generation technology that might or might not be a cornerstone to get 6
billion people banking services based on the insights of a professional
dominatrix. You can't make these up.

There are many valid criticisms of Bitcoin. The article, unfortunately,
mentions not a single one.

