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[Domrada]

Bitcoin is to money as the internet is to communication.

Bitcoin is Galt's Gulch in Cyberspace.

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[owdbetts]

imagine you are new in this forum and take a look around and read some of the topics. what will your impression be at the moment or if you will also in the last months with all the bitcoinica and pirate and anything else issues. you won't tell me that this is a healthy, non greedy community with a good spirit?

So far I think:

1. Bitcoin is an awesome piece of technology, and Gavin and co are doing an excellent job at maintaining and advancing it.

2. This place is an absoltely aweful advertisement for Bitcoin.  Full of people ripping people to pieces for daring to point out that if an offer seems to good to be true then it almost certainly is too good to be true, for a start.  This place is a hotbed to people soliciting for schemes that are criminally illegal.

Not to mention that civil conversation is non-existent in pretty much every part of this forum.  If I ran this forum I would be thinking about shutting it down, for the good of Bitcoin.

ETA: To be fair, I have learnt a lot from reading this forum.  It probably does server a useful purpose at the moment - but it is certainly not a friendly place.

[julz]

To put people in control of their own money.

[acoindr]

imagine you are new in this forum and take a look around and read some of the topics. what will your impression be at the moment or if you will also in the last months with all the bitcoinica and pirate and anything else issues. you won't tell me that this is a healthy, non greedy community with a good spirit?

So far I think:

1. Bitcoin is an awesome piece of technology, and Gavin and co are doing an excellent job at maintaining and advancing it.

2. This place is an absoltely aweful advertisement for Bitcoin.  Full of people ripping people to pieces for daring to point out that if an offer seems to good to be true then it almost certainly is too good to be true, for a start.  This place is a hotbed to people soliciting for schemes that are criminally illegal.

Not to mention that civil conversation is non-existent in pretty much every part of this forum.  If I ran this forum I would be thinking about shutting it down, for the good of Bitcoin.

ETA: To be fair, I have learnt a lot from reading this forum.  It probably does server a useful purpose at the moment - but it is certainly not a friendly place.

Well, this forum hasn't changed much in many months. I think it's a testament to bitcoins that their price can still rise LOL

Thanks for sharing your perspective.

[jothan]

Bitcoin in itself has no goal. This is like the age-old "What is the meaning of life ?" question.

Bringing down the federal reserve and empowering people are just nice side-effects.

[Transisto]

Having an extensive ignore list help a lot my readings here.

Taking a plunge at /Speculation/ from time to time is the best for finding new users to ignore.

[kokjo]

the goal of bitcoin is not and has never been to bring freedom to money, be anarchistic, or in anyway be a revolutionary force against the establishment. it is on the other hand these ideas the fostered bitcoin in the first place.

the goal of bitcoin is to explore how currencies can function in a system of equal peers, and how to solve problems no one have solved before. in bitcoin's case this goal is accomplished by a blockchain which timestamp transactions in batches, and is based on that on computationally hard to make a fake block. it could be accomplished by some other means like proof of stake(which again is a blockchain layout), or by some awesome-math-stuff that have yet to be discovered.


the goal of bitcoin is therefor not a political one, but a technological one.

(btw. if the governement asked me to pay taxes on bitcoins i have earned i would happily pay them. but as it stands now, i have no idea how to do so, so i don't...)

[n8rwJeTt8TrrLKPa55eU]

I'll go to the source and paraphrase Mr. Nakamoto: the goal for Bitcoin is to provide a functional and widespread peer-to-peer electronic cash system, which would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.

His original emphasis was on disintermediation and removal of third parties from monetary transactions.  No explicit politics.  No kicking of hornet's nests.

Having said that, the beauty of the system is that, while it can be used to make a political statement for those so inclined, it can also be evangelized as a non-threatening, supplemental, more efficient, technology/currency...peacefully extending and abiding by the rules of existing regulated financial and political frameworks.

The fact that with each additional user, Bitcoin erodes and undermines those existing financial and political frameworks...well, that's just a bonus .

[cbeast]

Unity.

[goodlord666]

Fun.

[zveda2000]

Well re the OP's concern about the type of community this forum fosters, I think many people realise we live in a deeply troubled society, and bitcoin is not going to cure that in a few months. Everybody that has grown up in the extreme capitalism of the 2000s would have to be pretty resilient to keep their civility.

Anyway I don't think we should be too discouraged about a lack of a general plan or the type of stuff that goes on in the bitcoin community. It would be like asking what is the plan for the internet during the 90s. BTW, as pointed out by Rick Falkvinge of the Swedish pirate party, one of the main catalysts for the internet's growth in the early days was the porn industry. Only later did many 'wholesome' businesses find they can make use of the internet. Similarly, when Bram Cohen created bittorrent, he gave away free porn in order to get people to join in. Eventually though bittorrent and the internet became about a lot more than just porn. The same way bitcoin will become about a lot more than drugs and gambling, I hope.

[tvbcof]

I share the OP's disappointment at the makeup of the community.  But when I sit back and think about things I find that it is completely anticipated given the nature of the solution and space in which the solution exists.  They say that what does not kill you will make you stronger and that will hopefully be the case for Bitcoin.

I am unimpressed by the various intellectual luminaries here who assert as fact the nature and goals of the Bitcoin solution.  Unless they have had deep philosophical conversations with the creator(s) of the solution, their assertions are no more valid than my own.  The evolution of the solution may take some twists and turns which is utterly surprising to them and not at all in line with the orthodoxy of their philosophical schools of thought.  If it does, that may be as much by design as by accident.

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