Bitcoin for the Befuddled – Our fancy new book and website
befuddled.org
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When I write newspaper opinion pieces on bitcoin (only one so far) I make sure it says in there that I own bitcoins.
I definitely agree though that bitcoin raises new questions about conflict of interest when writing about technology.
I would agree authors should disclose their participation, but I think disinterest/divestment on such matters is an unrealistic goal. Any stake or non-stake implies some personal preferences, and some personal stake is practically a prerequisite for motivating enough attention to understand and explain.
(Or as VC John Doerr has said: "No conflict, no interest".)
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11616697/how-to-use-og-me...
http://themisescircle.org/blog/2013/03/19/bitcoin-and-the-re...
From "Human Action":
No good can be employed for the function of a medium of exchange which at the very beginning of its use for this purpose did not have exchange value on account of other employments. And all these statements implied in the regression theorem are enounced apodictically as implied in the apriorism of praxeology. It must happen this way. Nobody can ever succeed in construction a hypothetical case in which things were to occur in a different way.
Bitcoin is (since its beginning) exchanged for something else at market rate (e.g. dollars), so that a more convenient transfer can be made later, and then exchanged back into something else (e.g. dollars). At no point did it have "no exchange value on account of other employments".
Right? It's the same way how physical money works. They were exchanged for goods (e.g. horses), so that a more convenient transfer can be made later, and then exchanged back into goods (e.g. horses).
It is more convenient than our existing currencies, and you should be able to see our existing currencies as being similar to "goods" like horses.
But since the dollars themselves had no inherent value, its value was derived simply from the cumulative belief that they could be redeemable by gold. I could even say that when the dollar was first created, the rest of the world was wary of it since it was so new.
I don't see how bitcoin is much different, except for the fact that a large organization (e.g. government) didn't state that it had value when it was first created, which is actually one of the strong points of bitcoin (a currency by the people for the people.)
http://themisescircle.org/blog/2013/03/19/bitcoin-and-the-re...
The 'thing' that becomes money doesn't have to have a real world use. It must be desired by some people. People can desire bitcoins expecting it to become a widely used currency. Yes, it's circular, but there's nothing preventing a self-fulfilling prophecy from being compatible with the regression theorem.
Now, if you absolutely need to have some kind of basic usage to feel better, know that to use the Bitcoin blockchain, you must pay a fee in bitcoins. A bitcoin enables you to use the blockchain, the world's most secure distributed financial database.