Quote from: zooitje on March 16, 2013, 12:26:39 AM

Thank you for your time and effort writing this thorough explanation. I will certainly spread this around as i've seen the question pop up but never saw the answer you provided here.

In combination with your earlier remark (many practical reasons why we can expect that the distribution of bitcoins will improve over time as the value increases and early adopters choose to divest) a very plausible explanation.

Thanks again!

Another consideration is the ways in which we have all been brainwashed by what is called "Bretton Woods II". This was an agreement which, as I understand it, attempted to transfer the control of the world's money supply from mother nature (in concert with human nature) to International Bankers. We think of value in terms of dollars or euros or some other fiat currency that we grew up with, and that is the great tragedy that bitcoin is helping to alleviate. Value is in things - food, metal, people - and money is whatever people choose to represent that value, usually something that has intrinsic value to just about everyone (fish, salt, gold, silver - many commodities have been used by different cultures).

Check out The American Dream for a pretty good explanation of how the brainwashing got started (hint: banks cheated and governments defined their cheating as legal).

Bitcoin has two features that make it intrinsically more valuable than any fiat currency, and destroying that value requires preventing bitcoiners from communicating with digital electronics. One feature is the competitive and balanced nature of proving the blockchain (mining requires so much work that it proves the accounting ledger is correct). The other feature is the public nature of the ledger: Everyone can see every transaction (whether they know who's behind the transaction is a different story, but immaterial).