The CIA's mission is to defend the interests of the Fortune 100. This includes drug running, blowing up people, toppling countries with resources they covet. They do their dirty business in the U.S. all the time. I still find it hard to believe there are adults walking around who can't figure this stuff out. Do you really think 9-11 was pulled off by bearded men from caves?

I think "open" means one can update one's account, not open for trading.

Criminal proceedings in what country? Japan?

A) He's a genius
B) He's incredibly lucky
C) He knew the plan

Wait a minute. Where did the 500K btc number come from?

Uh, that's thief...I AM a true grammarian.

What kind of theif hacks an account and sells for $.01?

But still unexplained is why Mt Gox reported out that the btc price fell to $.01...

Paypal would become the dominant payment system in the world if it stayed with the vision of the founders: anonymous transactions.  But the founders got paid by ebay and it was made to play by the rules that The Big Boys laid down. 

Bitcoin is doing an end run around the Big Boys' rules.  It can't be inflated and it can be anonymous.  It can be moved effortless across borders.

I don't really see your point about something "of value" backing a currency. Gold has backed currencies, indeed gold has been USED as currency, but even gold is valuable only because there is sufficient consensus for it to have such status. Bitcoin has a lot in common with gold: it is rare, it is divisible into large and small units, it is durable, it is mobile.  If there is sufficient consensus giving something valuable status, isn't that enough to make it tradable for other things and as such, a currency?

Well then, good job to YOU!

DamienBlack...such a boy scout. It's one thing to be naive, but another to be ignorant and arrogant, which is what you are, unfortunately. Tell me how did building 7 fall into its own footprint like that?

This editorial reminds me of an article I read many moons ago on a defunct website called "Laissez Fairy City Times" wherein a future was described where software would live "on the network" and not be anchored to one server or servers.  This was still in the 90s so it sounded fantastic at the time.

Flash forward to present where such a future now exists. The author makes it clear that bitcoin is a prototye, a building block, an enabler of a whole new class of software solutions. (And I had read--from outsiders--that the enormous activity mining blocks was wasted effort.  Nay, it is an essential enabler of the decentralization.)

The time has come for decentralization of software and of society. The trend is toward privacy and freedom. The nation state is obsolete and the world is starting to realize it.

It is fascinating to watch these freedom trends happen when the Establishment is pushing so hard for the opposite. These are exciting times, indeed.

This is one of the most insightful commentaries I've read about bitcoin. Wonder why it's falling off the first page.

I don't know what you mean. First, what is a node? Is this each instance of the client? Second, what is 'infrastructure'? Is this the block chain?

Wow, what a BAD interview.  Many of us know that a bitcoin leader lecturing at the CIA was just about the most important event for bitcoin this month and yet it seemed to get two sentences.  Now we know that the CIA doesn't tell what they're thinking...how helpful. 

We don't know what Gavin presented, we don't know what questions were asked.

Does anyone else get the impression that Bruce is absolutely giddy about how well his bitcoin investment has done and he can hardly contain himself as he envisions his vast fortune?

I would like the station to do well, though, so I don't want to be too harsh. Some attention to audio quality would be a really good idea.

BTW, was that $500,000 worth of bitcoin? or $25,000 worth of bitcoin?

Once bitcoins are declared illegal, all of the statist chickenshits--and there's a lot of them on this forum--will pee their pants and sell out. This will hurt the price for sure. But there will remain a market for bitcoin because a) it's time has come and there will be too much demand and b) there will be a surge of interest in online anonymity, which will become much more common than it is now. (This will be difficult for mobile apps, btw.)

I can't envision being able to transact in bitcoins using a mobile app in an environment where theyve been declared illegal and not being traced.  Can you?

Of course, I've observed people like you before, many times. You live in the matrix, believing what you are told to believe by the mainstream media. You are taught to mock anyone who doesn't believe as you do and call them 'conspiracy theorists'.  The evidence undermining your beliefs is all around you and yet you can't see. Don't look now, al qaeda is under your bed!

You are too quick to dismiss governments. Do you not think they know all about bitcoin? Do you not think they expect to hear nothing from Andresen that they don't already know? Do you not think they have traced all the bitcoin transactions they can, from whom to whom? (They can't track them all, but they sure have traced every one they can.)

I don't think they know exactly what to do about bitcoin, but they DO things to targeted groups to observe the responses, which are fed into super-computer driven software prediction tools like Caesar III. Our responses result in new predictions about us and new actions are taken.

You may recall that the TSA arbitrarily started getting aggressive around a year ago, which is another example of this phenomenon. They wanted to see how people would react, wargamed the reaction, revised their plans. We here at bitcoin represent an important group for them to study. We are being wargamed.