That all seems fine.

However, it is FAR TOO COMPLICATED for anyone wanting to use bitcoin for ordinary, everyday transactions.
And if you can't use it for such things, what good is it?

Finally, although I am no expert and therefore might well be wrong, I simply don't trust any encryption since somebody somewhere always has the key and it can be given. Furthermore, I don't believe there is such a thing as secure online cyber anything.

The internet is a great way to exchange information, but because of it's all being digitally encoded, it is also the most efficient surveillance system ever invented. And given it was funded mainly by intelligence agencies (and/or their think-tank, university proxies), anyone who thinks there is such a thing as security online is, I think, being naive.

Put another way: if Bitcoin takes off to the point of being a serious threat to fiat, privately issued currencies, it can be closed down instantly at the touch of a button.

I gather the inventors of Bitcoin say that isn't so. But the material is too complex for me to understand and/or there is so much of it I can't be bothered to find a simple one-page explanation if one exists.

So I don't trust anyone.

Especially online.

Nor Bitcoin.

Though I hope for all of our sakes that I am wrong in this case and that you guys end up making a viable alternative.

Until it has been firmly established for several decades, however, at which point I will be long dead no doubt, I won't trust it!

My name is Ashley. I live in Cape Breton Island Nova Scotia. I am concerned about where the world is headed and suspect Bitcoin might be offering some form of positive contribution / solution but am becoming increasingly leary of anything online, indeed am scaling back computer use after having spent far too much time online since the 1980's, and moreover can't make head or tail of what Bitcoin is. The description makes no sense to me. The forum is far too vast with millions of posts.

It all seems fantastic and I wish you well.

But for myself, I shall continue to turn away from the para-local, international, global, cyber world and get back into the real world. My big projects this year are, along with continuing to run a small organic brick oven bakery, learning how to plant and grow vegetables and other plants, along with helping a neighbour set up a 160 acre organic farm and forest property to which I hope to move one day.

Maybe in a few years when you guys have established bitcoin and it is widely available and proven safe, then I can offer it as a payment option for my breads rather than central bank issued promissory notes, but for now I suspect a better system would be the current currencies, albeit not issued by private corporate creditors to populations, rather publicly issued interest free as a simple medium of exchange.

I joined the forum because I had stumbled onto the thread by ZeroDay about his losses in Cyprus and wanted to refer many of the more confused readers there to an article about Economic Hit Men, an interview with John Perkins who wrote the book of that name. The article is on the Global Research site.

Link: http://www.globalresearch.ca/rise-of-the-global-corporatocracy-an-interview-with-john-perkins/5329456 

People on that thread seem confused about whether the banks in Cyprus were responsible, or the govt or whatever. It seems that many people, even Bitcoin enthusiasts, still don't understand just how corrupt the entire machinery of modern finances is.

And - don't take this wrong - for all I know Bitcoin is going to be part of that corruption later on.

Anyway - all best, I hope it works and if it does, I'll be baaaaack.....