That's a great point (and a great presentation). In an earlier draft of the article, I actually did start with the "why." That  draft focused more on the creation of Bitcoin and its reason for existence. Unfortunately, my text editor crashed (and I stupidly hadn't saved the file) taking not just that draft, but every other document I had open with it. When I rewrote the post, I decided to scuttle some of the rationale and just get straight to the "what."

In truth, I actually think the substance of my second draft was better (at least for what we were trying to accomplish, which was a digestible way of understanding the basics of Bitcoin), but if I could do it again, I'd likely start with more of the rationale, as you pointed out.

Actually -- maybe the why would be a worthy article in and of itself. I could reach out to the community and to those involved deeply with the project for their take on why they are involved with Bitcoin, why it's important and why it needs to exist. Thoughts?

Disclosure: I'm the author of the article.

Yeah, the goal was flat-out to be 100% introductory. When we were coming up with ideas for this series, we were floating around various topics and the subject of Bitcoin came up and everyone basically went, "what?" I made the mistake of answering the email with a succinct answer and drafted myself into writing the piece. My goal (and I hope I achieved it) was to be technically accurate but explain Bitcoin to people who have heard the term but have no idea what it is or how it works.

I'm actually quite interested in writing something longer-form about the arbitrage around Bitcoin as well as the "investment funds" as I think it's an interesting macro economics study, but realistically speaking, it's difficult to dive into that sort of subject with our audience unless we have a primer first.

The good news is that the response to the article -- niggles about Mint Chip aside (and to be clear, I wasn't trying to say Mint Chip is just like Bitcoin, merely that it carries along some similar ideas, albeit with different requirements and executions) -- was positive and readers seem genuinely interested in learning more about the subject.

In fact, I was talking with one of my co-workers today about the possibility of exploring more topics in this vein. You have to start somewhere.

Indeed. I've toyed with the idea of a pure Cocoa client but I doubt the interest would be worth the time investment.

Oh totally -- I'm more curious (regarding rMBP) than anything else.

Daily encrypted backup to USB, Dropbox and S3.

I'm curious what the retina MacBook Pro would be able to deliver -- especially if you drop the screen res all the way down. It's discrete GPU is good enough to power 4 external monitors. Not saying it'd be a good allotment of resources, but it'd be an interesting test. Makes me want to test this at the Apple Store to see.

I'm FG. I've been aware of BitCoin since mid-2010 and I bought in after the crash last year but have remained largely inactive. I finally decided to register because of all the pirate drama, because it fits with my multi-pronged obsessions with niche subculture, Internet drama and Ponzi schemes. Figured it was time to properly join up.

Lurk no more