| I don't see where the issue of whether it is economically a good idea is brought up? The article focuses on the history of money, specifically how governments have increasingly monopolized it. And the conclusion is summarized here: > Anyone who thinks that Bitcoin will triumph has to believe that it will succeed where earlier generations of private currencies failed -- that Bitcoin will, improbably, manage to overthrow more than century’s worth of accumulated state power, jealously guarded and ruthlessly enforced. In other words, the argument here is that governments will kill bitcoin (if it becomes big enough). The basis for the argument is that, while bitcoin is new and unique and in no way similar to those old types of money that existed in the past, it is still money, and it is still being used by people within the reach of national governments. And the argument is that those national governments will keep their monopolies on currency by fighting bitcoin. That leaves open the question of whether they will succeed. Certainly governments have not succeeded at killing another bit* thing, bittorrent. However, the story is not quite a parallel, as bitcoin will be used in different ways, and likely require far more of a connection to "normal" monetary markets - people will want to exchange bitcoin for standard currency. Governments might be capable of fighting that very effectively, even though they have proven mostly powerless against bittorrent. |