H'ok
This is the shit coming down the hall:
1) climate change
2) mass-extinction / ecosystemic destabilisation
3) peak-oil
This stuff is definitely going to happen - in fact it's already happening now. We will be lucky to societally survive any of these - and they're all happening at the same time.
4) In addition to that, we also have encroaching fascism/freedomism world-wide, which is happening as the web threatens every hierarchy. This is no small thing. We've been through this before, and it was incredibly messy.
5) In addition to that, we have uber-weirdness in the shape of a gen-tech revolution, which is also going to happen at the same time. It's hard to understate the potential impact of this. It'll change what it means to be human.
The creeping fascism/corporatism we're seeing today is going to crash the global economy. It's already in the process of this... NO lessons were learned from the last crash. The banks are bigger and more conglomerated, still gambling, still with the same toxic debt on the books, and still addicted to the ferocious, blind short-termism driven by fucking astronomical bonuses... which have gone up.
...
Now into this is thrown bitcoins - and I'm guessing the main impact of bitcoins is that it teaches people that they CAN use alternative currencies... and the main purpose of alternative currencies is for people to do business when there isn't a viable alternative (see:
http://bit.ly/13dJy )
So my guess is that bitcoins will not bring a crisis - because the crisis that are already starting will totally eclipse them (in fact bitcoins is contained in 4). What bitcoins might do though is teach us how to temper some of these crisis.
If you believe all that stuff I'd think you'd be against bitcoin. Since bitcoin is a "freedomism" (libertarian) sort of thing. Although I agree the current system will collapse, but only after the world population maxes out and the current growth rate becomes impossible. Bitcoin could bring an end to the system sooner than that.
