Quote from: sortedmush on March 27, 2011, 09:53:56 AM

Quote from: eMansipater on March 27, 2011, 09:11:39 AM

I think it's safe to say that this last post brings us full circle to my original point Wink

Nice try.

But let's wait and see what happens when BitCoin takes off. Do you really think government will welcome it with open arms?

I think it depends rather a lot on what percentage of BitCoin users rant on about it being a tool to end all governments and fiat money in an anarchist revolution. If that percentage is low I suspect they will see it the way I do--as just another disruptive technology (in the business sense, not the social) with incredible potential for fuelling online innovation.

In my experience, people never fail to underestimate the difference between established powerbrokers disliking or opposing change, and an organised government conspiracy to thwart it. Some time ago an otherwise highly intelligent friend of mine told me that the concept of open source would shrivel up and disappear because the business interests of proprietary software were far too powerful to take on, and they were all in cahoots with political heavyweights. It hasn't quite turned out that way

. On the other hand, the former hasn't completely displaced and destroyed the latter either. Instead, they exist in parallel segments for the time being, and I suspect it will be a long time before open source truly enters a position of clear dominance. That's the way disruptive technologies tend to work--Linux is finally desktop-usable due to Ubuntu et al, but it hasn't destroyed Windows. It has however, like Firefox-IE competition, kept Microsoft on its toes and been an indispensable force in the push for open standards through preventing wider homogenization of the market.

That's how I see BitCoin--as the Linux or p2p filesharing of the money world. True, established players won't like it and will use dirty tricks of many kinds to slow it down or try and stop it. But there won't be a full-on conspiracy to destroy it. People have to keep things in perspective--currency is one tool of power for governments, but far from the only one. Even people directly invested in the current fiat mechanisms are not quaking in their boots because BitCoin exists. They're just plain underestimating it, and later they'll be fighting it like Microsoft fights open source--sneakily and underhandedly, provided we don't give them the ammunition to do it effectively in the court of public opinion. Don't use bitcoin to trade in illegal arms, fund terrorism, and advertise tax evasion, and we'll all do just fine.