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Comment by modarts | Hacker News Reader

The whole point of Bitcoin is to act as a decentralized currency free from the controls of banks, other financial institutions and government fiat.

How does Bitcoin-Central square with those aims?

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Bitcoin needs to interface with the legacy banking system, so that people can easily exchange bitcoins with EUR, USD, etc. (Don't you, critics, always complain it is complex/shady to buy bitcoins?)

Well, bitcoin-central is precisely that, an interface to the decentralized Bitcoin system.

Bitcoin doesn't care about the "whole point of decentralization". It's like saying that the purpose of the personal computer and smartphone is to democratize computing.

The designer may intended that bitcoin to combat governments and banks, but anybody can use bitcoins, including the governments and banks, agorists, drug cartels, heroes and villians alike.

Frankly, if bitcoin wants to dominate the world, it must be as useful as possible and non-discriminatory in who use it.

I don't see this as a bad thing, quite the opposite. This will make it an order of magnitude easier for people to buy Bitcoins in Europe, simply by using their bank accounts. Once everyone uses Bitcoin as the preferred currency to buy stuff, it won't matter if the governments shut down this specific bank. People will continue to use their Bitcoin addresses through other services or tools.

The most important goal right now is to get people to use Bitcoin, and for services to adopt Bitcoin as well, so it can have a real economy behind it. Once it has a large enough global economy behind it, it should be unstoppable.

Those may be reasons for the development of Bitcoin, but Bitcoin itself is simply a technology. Any number of use cases may emerge from it, even ones we can't foresee. It's entirely possible that Bitcoin transactions will largely occur between big "banks" and behind-the-scenes, and people will simply use their bank accounts.

This is significant, because Bitcoin exchanges are illegal in Europe, unless they get a payment processor license.

- Converting to/from BTC will become easier

- Accepting Bitcoins as a merchant will be easier

Bitcoin exchanges are illegal in the whole of EU? When they did they pass such a law?

Sounds like more of a 'currency exchange' blanket law that was probably on the books, but applies to Bit Coin.

How do you define "currency"? Really anything could be a currency. If my friends (who are they? :) and I wanted to trade with cocoa beans today we could. Would it then be a crime for us to buy cocoa beans from each other using our country's fiat money? One possible way of defining "currency" would involve fiatness, but Bitcoin doesn't have fiatness. It would at least be debatable if such a law would apply to trading back and forth between bitcoins and local fiat money if "currency" isn't nailed down well for the purposes of that law.

You're looking for an debate in the wrong place. I'm just speculating that the parent was referring to some law that pertains to something generic like 'currency exchanges.' I don't think that anyone has been to court over such a thing (yet) so it could mean that the parent doesn't know what they are talking about too (e.g. said law doesn't apply to bitcoin).

I assume parent is referring to the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payment_Services_Directive. Not a Bitcoin specific law.

Thanks for clarifying

"The whole point of linux is being able to not needing to use other operating system or propiertary software".

This is clearly bollocks. Bitcoin is just a tool, like linux, and can be used for numerous different purposes in numerous different ways. There is no "point" in Bitcoin, it is open source software that everyone can use as they will.

Some people clearly seem to think that bitcoin is meant for something special, in bitcoin community and outside of it. The funny thing is that even they can't have any control over how bitcoin is used, except for their own usage of course.

People want it to be a financial solution to political problems. It won't do that.

In all the universes in which bitcoin succeeds, it first succeeds as a protocol for which traditional currencies circumvent their own limitations, as this value is immediate, palpable, and unaffected by bitcoin's scarce use. Only then, once this niche is established, will bitcoin succeed as a widespread end-user currency on its own right.

This paradigm is present in so many innovations. It's simply tapping more readily accessible value as a way to construct a launching pad for further growth.

> a protocol for which traditional currencies circumvent their own limitations

Could you explain what you mean by that.

Sure - the oft cited strength of bitcoin is the ability to send value instantly (if you trust the party, 10 minutes otherwise) and with near zero fees. As a currency, bitcoin is limited in using this advantage because so few businesses accept them, but as strictly a protocol it can enhance dollars (for example) by being the currency of currencies, so to speak. So instead of using Moneygram to send dollars half a world away, I just exchange for bitcoins, send, and exchange out into dollars (or pesos, euros, etc). Further, since it is has such low fees, microtransactions are possible (web content monetization?), since storage requires no 3rd parties, people (worldwide) can avoid bank runs, and since it is mathematically scarce, they can also avoid (hyper)inflation. All with trivial and possibly automated currency conversions. For bitcoin to become a worldwide currency, it must first become a currency of currencies.

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lol - take a moment to look at https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade - there's rather a substantial list. You know that Wordpress now accepts btc as payment for addons for their blog hosted service?

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