You Can Now Donate Bitcoins to the EFF

Bitcoin is really two ideas: an unforgeable digital datum based on "proof of work" or "hash collision" ideas; and a global, decentralized, distributed database to keep track of which data tokens have been "spent". The tokens don't yet have any true monetary value, but due to the design of the system, only a finite number of tokens will ever exist, so they would be candidates for being the basis of a monetary system. IOW they might be worth something someday.

The interesting part is making the global DB immune to attack or takeover. Bitcoin relies on the long tail effect. The total compute power of the great number of honest users must outweigh that of a well-funded attacker. So long as this is true, token forgery is impossible.

The effort to convince the EFF to put up a bitcoin donation address is a culmination of writing and revising a letter over and over again, collecting donation as well picking escrow, and a whole lot of patience. Just about when everybody in the bitcoin community is going to give up, the EFF suddenly put a link to a bitcoin address for anybody who wishes to donate.

http://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=804.0

What is bitcoin? It's a Neal Stephenson plot device! http://bitcoin.org

For comparison purposes: using a Core 2 Duo @ 2.6GHz and the official bitcoin binary, it would take around 45 days before there's a 90% chance to get a block (50 coins).