Bitcoin Forum

Hello,

I'm working on a documentary about private currency as it relates to contemporary geopolitical issues. I've interviewed Donald Norman from Intersango and I have a few more interviews scheduled. I'm writing this post to get the word out about this trailer I've made for the film:

http://youtu.be/ZGnqi_rUoSs

What do you think about my argument that the U.S. Military's primary objective is to keep the Dollar strong? Do you think if oil wasn't priced in dollars we would see the dollar lose its world reserve status? What correlation, if any, do you see in the dollar losing its world reserve status and a reduction in the standard of living of Americans? Do you think Bitcoin and its frictionless promise can offset this loss in standard of living?   

Neil

Link to the Kickstarter page?

Any reason you couldn't also list it in http://PirateMyFilm.com?

The http://PrivateMoneyMovie.com website shows a bitcoin address for donations as well.

Yes just saw it on PMF http://www.piratemyfilm.com/projects/346
I just sent a link to Max Keiser also. The OP should follow up directly to promote; Max is on Twitter.

Neil, what is your email address please?

I would recommend re-recording this video.  You are    speaking    slowly   with    long    pauses    between     words.  The words are good though.  Get energetic, and practice your speech 10x, and you will seem much more confident and capable. 

Hey,

My email is neil at privatemoneymovie dot com

I plan on making a new much shorter trailer for the doc.

I'm thinking of presenting the logistics and the potentiality of private currency to my local chamber of commerce. Has anyone done anything like this before? If we can get one city on earth using private currency as a serious alternative I think this would be a major step in the right direction.

Neil

Bitcoin is not a "private currency" and should not be referred to as such.  Quite the opposite, Bitcoin is completely public and transparent.  I realize that you may be using the term in contrast to traditional fiat currencies.  However, I think it's important to make clear that Bitcoin is a completely decentralized, peer-to-peer, open-source transaction system.  Just my two Satoshis...

Maybe you should update the wikipedia article on private currency. Here is an excerpt:

In the United States, the Free Banking Era lasted between 1837 and 1866, when almost anyone could issue paper money. While there are more restrictions today than in this era, it is still legal to create your own currencies.[dubious – discuss] States, municipalities, private banks, railroad and construction companies, stores, restaurants, churches and individuals printed an estimated 8,000 different monies by 1860 and can still do so today (such as Bitcoin). If an issuer went bankrupt, closed, left town, or otherwise went out of business the note would be worthless. Such organizations earned the nickname of "wildcat banks" for a reputation of unreliability; they were often situated in remote, unpopulated locales said to be inhabited more by wildcats than by people. Yet according to Lawrence H. White's article in The Freeman, "it turns out that 'wildcat' banking is largely a myth. Although stories about crooked banking practices are entertaining—and for that reason have been repeated endlessly by textbooks—modern economic historians have found that there were in fact very few banks that fit any reasonable definition of wildcat bank".[1] The National Bank Act of 1863 ended the "wildcat bank" period.

Good luck with your ventures!  :D

I'm hoping people will see the potential in BTC one day.

Make sure to include how many people got Zhou Tonged!!!

Thanks for this information.  I'll look into.

Watchin'

Zhou Tong himself got ZhouTonged. For realzzzzzz!

This is a good point. "Private money" or "private currency" is usually used to refer to nonpolitical (or non nation-State) issuers, such as Liberty Dollar, e-gold, FB Credits, or Linden Dollars. Bitcoin is private in the sense that it is non-governmental; however, bitcoin is very public in the sense that all transactions are published and that the nodes are collectively managed. It is the ultimate non-Statist public currency.

Definitions are important. Digital currency is a very broad term that refers to issuers, national and private, that operate electronically, with digital cash being a specific subset having privacy attributes more like physical cash. More recently, the term cryptocurrency has come to mean a digital bearer instrument that utilizes cryptography exclusively for its issuance and/or verification. For further information, please see http://digitalcash.org

Only an idiot who doesn't know how to use Bitcoinica would come on here with a name like "Zhou Tonged" and keep talking about it.

Some people are such sore losers.

Neil, at the 1:04 mark in your video, you talk about examining the evolution and history of State-dominated money and I thought you might find the following of interest.

Previously, I set out to answer the question: "How did the State specifically go about appropriating the monetary unit for their own use?" which resulted in my thesis at George Washington University: The Political Appropriation of the Monetary Unit at http://www.slideshare.net/jonmatonis/the-political-appropriation-of-the-monetary-unit

correlation? check gold historical price against gold.

[PA]You know, Bitcointalk is not Twitter, so please stop using shortened addresses that hide the real addresses.

It has been the goal of the extremely wealthy to have a true global currency since at least the early 1900's, unfortunately that hasn't been possible until more recent times. Bitcoin might be that vehicle, at least for the digital world for now, but eventually it may become a true global currency.

Fascinating fact: A Rockefeller consulted a well known psychic on instituting a global currency in the 30's but was told it would not be possible until at least 1994.

I doubt a decentralized Bitcoin was what they had in mind.  Hard to extract an advantage (read interchange fees / payment network fees) when you are competing with a (nearly) free alternative, especially one that is not debt-based.

Awesome!

question: is this project funded via pmf or kickstart or both?

did you select "bitcoin" or "usd" for funding on pmf?

Neil,

Send us a private message as we are creating the  "kickstarter" of bitcoins:  http://www.bitcoinstarter.com -  like to list your project on our site when we launch soon.

Looking forward to this either way!

email:  bitcoinstarter@gmail.com

I'm using bit-pay for PMF funding; I'm going with indiegogo instead of kickstart.

Check out www.privatemoneymovie.com

very nice documentary and very interesting. I enjoyed it a lot.

hm? You watched the intro where Neil talks about making the documentary?

It seems he received a bit more than 1 BTC and $5. I guess he didn't make it ;(

Or am I missing something?

Wow, I started feeling guilty for "going through the motions" with my 5 posts to get out of newbie purgatory, and I spent like 30 minutes crafting a (for me, at least) pretty thoughtful and substantive post.  Apparently I got logged out in the interim or was typing it in a forbidden-to-newbie zone because it got eaten.  But just for the record, I tried.

Ok, I'm going to try this again.

I just got around to trying to understand what the "world's reserve currency"-thing I keep hearing about really means:

From wikipedia:

"A reserve currency, or anchor currency, is a currency that is held in significant quantities by many governments and institutions as part of their foreign exchange reserves. It also tends to be the international pricing currency for products traded on a global market, and commodities such as oil, gold, etc.

This permits the issuing country to purchase the commodities at a marginally lower rate than other nations, which must exchange their currencies with each purchase and pay a transaction cost. For major currencies, this transaction cost is negligible with respect to the price of the commodity. It also permits the government issuing the currency to borrow money at a better rate, as there will always be a larger market for that currency than others."

So if my understanding is correct (very iffy), the U.S. dollar's status as the de facto global reserve currency is helping to prop up its value by being a significant source of demand for dollars (that whole supply/demand thing).  The dollar's primary advantages are 1) network effects (i.e., one you've become the world's reserve currency, it's a lot easier to stay the world's reserve currency) and 2) perceptions of the dollar's strength and stability vis-a-vis other world currencies (i.e., most people aren't worried that the U.S. is going to start printing trillion-dollar bills Zimbabwe-style anytime soon).  The current threat to the dollar's reserve status comes from growing doubts about the second point.  Our debt is growing at an unsustainable pace making it more likely that the U.S. will attempt to inflate its way out of it, thereby screwing over everyone who holds significant reserves.  But doubts about the second advantage also undermine the first advantage.  In other words, it seems like we're ripe for a self-perpetuating spiral.  If a non-trivial number of countries and institutions start to flee the dollar, that will undermine its value which will in turn encourage MORE countries and institutions to do the same. Rinse, lather, repeat.  Or to put it another way, if enough people expect the U.S. to lose its reserve currency status, it basically becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.  If my understanding is correct, we could see a similar spiral on the debt side.  As people lose faith in the dollar, they'll be reluctant to hold U.S. debt driving interest rates up.  But if the U.S. government's cost of borrowing spikes, that will make the debt even more unsustainable, further undermining confidence in the dollar.  Does that all sound about right? Does it also sound pretty much inevitable?

Somewhat related random thought: one of the objections many of my friends have when i tell them about Bitcoin is this question: "what if someone comes up with an even better currency?"  It occurs to me that the same question could be asked of everyone holding U.S. fiat, except the question there is "what if someone already did?"

I think as a currency bitcoin is of enormous value for the simple reason that you can transmit any amount you want instantly across boarders. That and the fact that its pseudo-anonimity and p2p base means it cant be shut down like previous electronic currencies.

Some comments, first to Roger: you pretty much got it about USD being worlds reserve currency and also mainly why it seems to keep that status (for now). Some remarks:

• if/when foreign confidende in the USD tumbles, that money will start flowing back to the US in huges quantities. From a domestic viewpoint, that's hugely inflationary and it will hurt.
• google "Petro-Dollar". Some people go as far as saying the world reserve currency status of the USD is being "backed" by the US military. It's true to an extent: when Saddam tried to sell oil for EUR, guess what happened. Note that Iran is selling oil for gold to India now.
• A strong USD is not necessarily in the interest of the US. As James Rickards point out in his book "Currency Wars", the economies/nationstates of the world are in the process of a race to debase their currencies in order to help their economies by ways of improving exports... a death spiral.

I much prefer to call bitcoin a money, or more specifically a commodity money instead of calling it a currency. I'm not sure why, probably because currency sounds like: "some nations fiat currency".

I think the reasons for bitcoins success are manyfold. the 2 reasons cleanbit mentioned (works rather well as electronic payment system, can't be shut down easily) are important ones, albeit not sufficient for success. I would add: "has known inflation and known maximum total supply". Without that scarcity, bitcoin wouldn't have worked out.

And one more remark to Roger: yes, you're right, bitcoin has the first mover advantage and as long as noone comes up with any substantial improvement, it will remain the cryptocurrency.

Put a BTC address.

Brilliant documentary Neil. I favourited it.

Sadly I live in the UK and I have no idea how the economy system works in America, we have a poor economic system in the UK, which bring me to the subject that this year we have the London 2012 olympics, something I'll never see as I live too far away, the funding for it, is like 4 - 6 billion GBP.

I'd rather they just spent the money on something useful, we have a severe case of job loss as it is! Not being ignorant, just my thoughts :)

Good job guys!, keep on pushing bitcoin to wider audiences.