Left a comment on gigaom

[blogospheroid]

In gigaom, there is an article with a particularly bad heading.

http://gigaom.com/2011/06/15/bitcoin-virtual-currency-may-be-the-worst-of-both-worlds/

I left this comment on the same.

The writer didn't understand that two sentences in this article right after one another, contradict each other.

"The system is setup as to reward early adopters"
"Because Bitcoin is completely decentralized, no one is completely invested in the long-term success of the system"

The early adopters are not rewarded with usable cash or wealth. They are rewarded with BITCOINS, nothing more and nothing less. These bitcoins maintain value if and only if there is a community around them, using them. The early adopters are the ones with the maximum incentive to keep bitcoins valueable, developing the community and clients.

This makes the bitcoin community structure more similar to that of a startup than a pyramid scheme. It might be the first structure of this kind in the world, melting together aspects of startups and open source. It might be a one-off, It might be a new way of doing things.  The point is nobody knows as of now.

Criticism is good for strengthening bitcoin, but please concentrate on valid criticisms.

[1715578972]

1715578972

[NothinG]

Criticism is good for strengthening bitcoin, but please concentrate on valid criticisms.

//Thread.

[neneko]

The "(although that may or may not be his real name)" part made me laugh. He sounds a little like a lawyer from a 60s movie.

Although this guy clearly haven't bother to read much about bitcoins before making this article he do keep pressing on the one thing that is keeping bitcoins from growing, security.

Obviously there are ways to be more or less completely secure. The guide on how to secure your wallet on this forum for example. That's not real solutions though. You won't be able to convince any business to have any serious amount of money invested in bitcoins or any regular non-geeks to use it if you tell them that you need to boot up a fresh system from a cd and put a extra wallet on another cd from that OS and put that cd in your bank deposit box.

There need to be a system in place that have at least the same amount of security that you get when handling other currencies online.