Peer2Politics

But Bitcoin isn't a currency. It's a Ponzi scheme for redistributing wealth from one libertarian to another. At least that's all it is right now. One day it could be more. Venture capitalists, for their part, are quick to point out that it's really a protocol, like the early internet, and its underlying technology could still be revolutionary. What are they supposed to say, though, when they've bet hundreds of millions of dollars on it?

Toward the end of 2009, I was approached on two separate occasions by people claiming to be “representatives” of a digital alternative currency format. I was intrigued by the initial proposal, being that I had been writing for some time on the concept of non-participation as a way to insulate average Americans from the dangers of our unstable, fiat-driven mainstream economy. Before that, I had already dealt with just about every currency alternative one could imagine: from paper scripts backed by goods, to scripts backed by time or labor, to gold- and silver-laden currency cards, etc. All of them had the advantage of not relying on private Federal Reserve notes, and all of them had flaws as well. The proposed digital script, which the representatives called “Bitcoin,” was no different.