The Royal Canadian Mint just announced a new alternative to BitCoin

[Phinnaeus Gage]

http://envelopeeconomics.com/2012/04/11/canada-has-unveiled-the-bitcoin/

Once mints and central banks around the world start unveiling similar portable digital wallets, and developers swiftly move in to ensure that transactions can be done anonymously, the Bitcoin experiment will end.

I find it curious as to why an economist thinks or cares about the "end" of Bitcoin. He clearly doesn't even begin to understand that these technologies he describes are insignificant compared to Bitcoin's capabilities.

This is fucking nuts! I quit reading after the first paragraph. Somebody inform me if I should have read further. Here's the first paragraph:

The Bitcoin currency – an online, anonymous currency, ‘mined’ by computing power – was fraught with problems from the start. Bitcoin’s supporters champion that it’s ‘safe from the instability of fractional reserve banking‘. Hardly. Bitcoin has proven to be a volatile currency, with only a tiny market for goods and services, no available deposit insurance, no use offline, and no central authority to calm rough markets.

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[ShadowOfHarbringer]

The Bitcoin currency – an online, anonymous currency, ‘mined’ by computing power – was fraught with problems from the start. Bitcoin’s supporters champion that it’s ‘safe from the instability of fractional reserve banking‘. Hardly. Bitcoin has proven to be a volatile currency, with only a tiny market for goods and services, no available deposit insurance, no use offline, and no central authority to calm rough markets.

They are afraid. Good.

[DeathAndTaxes]

They are afraid. Good.

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they attack you, then you win.

Ignore - check
Laugh - check
Attack - check
Win -

[evoorhees]

Go vote:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=76410.0

[Stephen Gornick]

Jon Matonis' article in Forbes:

 - http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2012/04/12/mintchip-misses-the-point-of-digital-currency/

[herzmeister]

Jon Matonis' article in Forbes:

There is still hope, is there not?

[zer0]

So apparently the plan is to use this to replace regular coins (lol inflatacoin), as they already officially killed the penny and now are looking into not minting any coins for the future since it costs untold millions to manufacture for some reason.

That is of course if this is actually secure and functions as promised, and somebody 70yrs old can figure out how to use it. Unlikely since it's closed source, old people are still scared of automated doors and credit cards, and I wouldn't trust anybody in the Cdn govt right now to be at all competent to implement this.

[DeathAndTaxes]

If the integrated circuit chip is not hacked first, I can imagine a prestigious future gathering in the beautiful resort city of Victoria, British Columbia (similar to Jekyll Island in 1910) where the Royal Canadian Mint officials and the Government of Canada carve up the country into 12 MintChip Reserve Districts and bestow the privileged monopoly of issuance to their well-connected financier amigos. May the odds be forever in your favor.

This.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

Jon Matonis' article in Forbes:

 - http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2012/04/12/mintchip-misses-the-point-of-digital-currency/

Now, I find this very, very interesting:

I am reminded of the Mondex experiment during the 1990s which is actually when I first met MintChip Challenge judge David Birch of Consult Hyperion. Originally and laudably, Mondex wanted to replicate the characteristics of physical cash via a smart card but due to centralized authorizations, it only embraced partial and contingent privacy for the user. The true test of any anonymous cash-like system is what happens when your device or digital tokens are permanently lost or destroyed similar to burning a paper $100 bill. If they can be recovered and returned to you, then you don’t have full privacy.

[Bitcoin Oz]

By chance would this "mintchip" be embedded in the back of your hand ?

If they destroy cash and the only way you can pay for things is by using this chip it becomes a distopian night mare where they can stop you spending money on what you want and instead make you spend it on things they "allow". Say goodbye to buying things the government doesnt agree with

[evoorhees]

By chance would this "mintchip" be embedded in the back of your hand ?

If they destroy cash and the only way you can pay for things is by using this chip it becomes a distopian night mare where they can stop you spending money on what you want and instead make you spend it on things they "allow". Say goodbye to buying things the government doesnt agree with

Bingo.

Thank goodness Bitcoin was created and will grow in adoption before the governments were able to implement purely digital and tracked money. Humanity dogged a bullet there.

[cbeast]

By chance would this "mintchip" be embedded in the back of your hand ?

If they destroy cash and the only way you can pay for things is by using this chip it becomes a distopian night mare where they can stop you spending money on what you want and instead make you spend it on things they "allow". Say goodbye to buying things the government doesnt agree with

Bingo.

Thank goodness Bitcoin was created and will grow in adoption before the governments were able to implement purely digital and tracked money. Humanity dogged a bullet there.

Think of Mint Chip as free advertising for Bitcoin.

[Bitcoin Oz]

By chance would this "mintchip" be embedded in the back of your hand ?

If they destroy cash and the only way you can pay for things is by using this chip it becomes a distopian night mare where they can stop you spending money on what you want and instead make you spend it on things they "allow". Say goodbye to buying things the government doesnt agree with

Bingo.

Thank goodness Bitcoin was created and will grow in adoption before the governments were able to implement purely digital and tracked money. Humanity dogged a bullet there.

Think of Mint Chip as free advertising for Bitcoin.

If they know who and where you bought your bitcoins from does it matter if bitcoin itself is anonymous? Once bitcoin leaves the closed ecosytem they can track it at the exit and entry points like they can do with tor.

[cbeast]

If they know who and where you bought your bitcoins from does it matter if bitcoin itself is anonymous? Once bitcoin leaves the closed ecosytem they can track it at the exit and entry points like they can do with tor.

Bitcoin is not a network. Sure, networks can be used to trace some Bitcoin transactions at entry points. Exit points are another matter, and by the time the entry point is traced, it could be long gone. Exit points can be addresses never registered anywhere online.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

If they know who and where you bought your bitcoins from does it matter if bitcoin itself is anonymous? Once bitcoin leaves the closed ecosytem they can track it at the exit and entry points like they can do with tor.

Bitcoin is not a network. Sure, networks can be used to trace some Bitcoin transactions at entry points. Exit points are another matter, and by the time the entry point is traced, it could be long gone. Exit points can be addresses never registered anywhere online.

Could someone please tell me why tens of thousands of people who practice payola aren't fully on board?

~Bruno~

[cbeast]

If they know who and where you bought your bitcoins from does it matter if bitcoin itself is anonymous? Once bitcoin leaves the closed ecosytem they can track it at the exit and entry points like they can do with tor.

Bitcoin is not a network. Sure, networks can be used to trace some Bitcoin transactions at entry points. Exit points are another matter, and by the time the entry point is traced, it could be long gone. Exit points can be addresses never registered anywhere online.

Could someone please tell me why tens of thousands of people who practice payola aren't fully on board?

~Bruno~

I thought about bolding that. You read my mind.

[marcus_of_augustus]

If they know who and where you bought your bitcoins from does it matter if bitcoin itself is anonymous? Once bitcoin leaves the closed ecosytem they can track it at the exit and entry points like they can do with tor.

Bitcoin is not a network. Sure, networks can be used to trace some Bitcoin transactions at entry points. Exit points are another matter, and by the time the entry point is traced, it could be long gone. Exit points can be addresses never registered anywhere online.

Would you mind expanding upon this, technically speaking, it's not clear what you mean for a casual user I don't think.

[cbeast]

If they know who and where you bought your bitcoins from does it matter if bitcoin itself is anonymous? Once bitcoin leaves the closed ecosytem they can track it at the exit and entry points like they can do with tor.

Bitcoin is not a network. Sure, networks can be used to trace some Bitcoin transactions at entry points. Exit points are another matter, and by the time the entry point is traced, it could be long gone. Exit points can be addresses never registered anywhere online.

Would you mind expanding upon this, technically speaking, it's not clear what you mean for a casual user I don't think.

Here's the thing: just because Bitcoin is decentralized like bittorrent, it's not a network like that. A bitcoin transaction is not like downloading files. Normally you can trace file transfers by their origin and who is connected to the file by their IP address. With Bitcoin, there is only one file. It is the block chain, and nearly every bitcoin user has a copy.

To create a transaction requires only the sender to connect to the internet. The recipient of the transaction is merely a bitcoin address that gets added to the block chain by the sender. The recipient only needs to go online when he becomes a sender.

I'm oversimplifying this statement for clarity. The point being that Bitcoin can be very private and even anonymous, though I am advocating neither.

[bitlizard]

does anyone else think it's funny that mintchip keeps comparing their presently non-existent product to bitcoin? If I knew nothing of bitcoin I might assume from the mintchip press releases that bitcoin is the gold standard in the digital currency and electronic payment game. It almost seems like they are aspiring to be 'as good as bitcoin!'. Are trying a fight with what they believe to be the dominant digital payment system? And they are talking a whole lot of smack right now. Why do they keep referencing bitcoin? Does the centrally controlled mintchip have an inferiority complex? bitcoin has achieved some great things, mintchip has done nothing more than spreading it's propaganda via a few press releases. From my perspective mintchip has positioned itself in such a way that if it does not achieve full spectrum dominance of bitcoin in every way, shape and form, then their efforts will only serve to legitimize decentralized payment systems (bitcoin) it a really big way.

[FreeMoney]

Think of Mint Chip as free advertising for Bitcoin.

I don't care what you say. I'm going to think of it as a Girl Scout cookie.