The title of the actual article is "With Euro Instability, Can Bitcoin Now Compete with Hard Currency?". It's a question, where as this title was submitted without the 'can' and is therefore posed as fact, which is misleading.
One of those times when changing the title would be good :-)
I find that people who believe that 'Bitcoin' could replace an actual currency don't actually understand what 'currency' actually is. As a criminal 'marker' system I think Bitcoin excels in all of its goals, but without understanding that a nation's currency is a marker for its economic capacity, you can't make durable statements.
And the Euro isn't "melting down" by the way, it is the fact that the economies that are tied to the Euro have some unsustainable fiscal policies. And correcting those policies is politically hard, so between now and when the corrections are in place, the Euro tries to price the actual economic capacity.
I don't understand why the article says Bitcoin is still alive "against all odds". Why would the June 2011 speculation bubble kill Bitcoin? It is like saying the dot-com bubble should have "killed Internet entrepreneurship".
There is a core group of users who understand Bitcoin's technical merits and cryptographically sound design. This group is growing every day, and certainly not loosing interest in Bitcoin. So short of a major design flaw, Bitcoin should continue to survive and grow.
All the price bubble did was to kill greedy speculators, not Bitcoin.
I tend to agree with you but it's fair to say there were a lot of prominent voices out there predicting its demise -- for more reasons than just the bubble, like security issues or looming government regulation (if that was ever even really feasible.)
But you do have a point, the tone is rather skeptical. ;]
Again, I find Bitcoin super intriguing. I think the buzz from Wall Street/prop desks is telling. Bitcoin's going mainstream.
All the opinion pieces predicting its demise were written by authors who, to me, obviously did not grab the concept and strength of Bitcoin's design... They were all easily debunkable.
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[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 41.4 ms ] threadI find that people who believe that 'Bitcoin' could replace an actual currency don't actually understand what 'currency' actually is. As a criminal 'marker' system I think Bitcoin excels in all of its goals, but without understanding that a nation's currency is a marker for its economic capacity, you can't make durable statements.
And the Euro isn't "melting down" by the way, it is the fact that the economies that are tied to the Euro have some unsustainable fiscal policies. And correcting those policies is politically hard, so between now and when the corrections are in place, the Euro tries to price the actual economic capacity.
There is a core group of users who understand Bitcoin's technical merits and cryptographically sound design. This group is growing every day, and certainly not loosing interest in Bitcoin. So short of a major design flaw, Bitcoin should continue to survive and grow.
All the price bubble did was to kill greedy speculators, not Bitcoin.
But you do have a point, the tone is rather skeptical. ;]
Again, I find Bitcoin super intriguing. I think the buzz from Wall Street/prop desks is telling. Bitcoin's going mainstream.