Quote from: prg99 on October 01, 2013, 09:45:43 AM

I am a newbie to the forum. I started out with bitcoins years ago, [...] I lost most of the coins through neglect and computer hardware failures, like many others I suspect. So now I only have a few left. More recently my interest in bitcoins has been renewed, both in terms of actually using it as a currency but also I am an academic and I have become interested in it as a disruptive (potentially) technology.

+1

When this all began, I was too young to fathom the real potential of Bitcoin. I am just starting to take it seriously, and in such a short time I have already learned more about the U.S. Dollar, which I have been using my entire life, than I would have ever guessed I didn't know. Socially, the extent to which decentralized control over currency removes dependency upon entrenched interests and resolves the barrier created by lack of trust between actors, is simple and fantastic. Bitcoin (and possibly other cryptocoins) are leveraging technology in a way to make all this accessible to the masses, and this is very exciting. What the internet has done to knowledge, I see Bitcoin doing to currency. But the best part of all of this is that the community is mostly transparently. I can jump in and participate. I am free to fail or succeed based on information we can all access and I know the system itself is not slanted against me even though market forces are not in my favor.