2013-04-12 Time - The real significance of the bitcoin boom

[kiko]

http://business.time.com/2013/04/12/the-real-significance-of-the-bitcoin-boom-and-bust/

The volatile rise and fall of Bitcoins has prompted lots of stories explaining why the online virtual currency is a classic bubble. Many compare it with Tulipmania in 17th Century Holland, where the prices of rare tulip bulbs soared to absurd heights and then crashed, ruining the speculative investors who had bought them. But the Bitcoin phenomenon is more than a bubble. It says something important about the current and future state of the global economy.

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[grondilu]

Is that the website of the newspaper that was quoted by Satoshi in Genesis?

PS.  Good article, btw.

[kiko]

Is that the website of the newspaper that was quoted by Satoshi in Genesis?

PS.  Good article, btw.

No, Time magazine is a US publication. Satoshi quoted 'The Times' A UK Newspaper.

(For the benefit of newbs: The bitcoin software includes a quote from the days newspaper when mining bitcoin began, this was to prove that Satoshi hadn't pre-mined tonnes of bitcoins to make himself rich. Something which in retrospect seems silly, because Satoshi has now undoubtably (and deservedly) been made very rich.)

[Largo]

Once alternative currencies are frictionlessly available on the Internet, every laptop will become its own Cayman Island. However the current boom-and-bust plays out, Bitcoin is the beginning of something, not the end.

So true 

[grondilu]

(For the benefit of newbs: The bitcoin software includes a quote from the days newspaper when mining bitcoin began, this was to prove that Satoshi hadn't pre-mined tonnes of bitcoins to make himself rich. Something which in retrospect seems silly, because Satoshi has now undoubtably (and deservedly) been made very rich.)

It's not really about showing that he did not made himself rich (he did actually, as you noticed).  Showing that there are no pre-mined blocks is a way to prove that Satoshi does not hold a "destruction key", i.e. a secret unknown longer chain (it's quite unlikely today but it would have been a possibility earlier)