[kylsq0Ln]

I posted the following post in another thread, but figured that I should start a generic Bitcoin thread, for discussion, questions, comments, criticisms, fun, entertainment, ballyhoo, tomfoolery, and general what-have-you.

I have been a little loathe to seriously bring up bitcoin here, because it is still experimental, and it's easy to dismiss as "non-existent" compared to the tangibility of our beloved metals.

But in a nutshell... it is internet gold, (not like e-gold though) that you hold yourself with no fees and no middleman and no one can stop your transactions or freeze your accounts. You can even create a deterministic wallet that is based on a passphrase (or pass-sentence... hopefully with high entropy to cryptographically protect the keys).

Here's a thought... I could convert goods/metal/FRNs to bitcoins, then send the bitcoins to a certain address that corresponds with a private key that is created from a passphrase that exists only in my head. I can travel the world with millions "in my head", then, in a destination country, run a bitcoin client, and recover the private key from my passphrase when I want to spend the coins.

"I got my mind on my money and my money on my mind" as the old negro spiritual goes.

Bitcoins can be converted directly into gold and silver and vice verse, no FRN middleman.
People WANT bitcoin. They will steal and scam and extort to get them. You don't hear about many thefts of things that aren't valuable or aren't capable of transferring value.

I love gold and silver, but I can't transport them across the planet without taking them myself or trusting someone, and it certainly would not be within an hour... but bitcoin is different... I can send it virtually instantly anywhere in the world... there are services now that allow you to send them to cell phones and email addresses, although those systems rely on third-parties, and thus, trust.

You can't send value in the form of gold across the world without trust and you can't do it instantly, and of course, it could be seized.

You can't send value in the form of USD/FRN across the world without the same problems as with gold or without using the banking cartel as a middleman, who then decides when and if to process your transactions, and who can freeze funds and charge-back transactions on a whim.

Bitcoin puts you in the driver's seat in regards to transferring value instantly over the internet, without counterparty risk in the form of middlemen.

Bitcoins have risen from $0.001 to $30, to $10 currently, and the supply is mathematically limited to 21 million bitcoins total (they are currently divisible by 8 decimal places, which allows for a great deal of "units").

A couple years ago someone bought two pizzas for 10,000 BTC (which was a fair price at the time based on exchange value). As of RIGHT NOW, valued in USD at today's BTC exchange rate, that guy paid $107,500.00 for two pizzas.