Do you like money? Sure! Have you ever asked yourself why money is valuable? Maybe. Perhaps you’ve even asked yourself how you could make money better. Well, a few years ago a guy named Satoshi Nakamoto did that and more. He invented Bitcoin, the peer-to-peer digital currency that’s taking the Interwebs by storm. Here to discuss the economics and philosophy of value surrounding this revolutionary concept were BF regulars (or irregulars?) Kevin Saunders and Kiki Canon. We were also blessed to have Washington D.C. native and contact improvisation dancer Darrell Duane of BitcoinBonus and BitcoinCambio as our very special guest. So hop in the back seat, set your miners to Generate and come join us on a journey through cyberpunk economics, cryptographic currency, and squeeze-tastic sexual pairings. We so excited to have you along for the ride!
BONUS: Donate to BF using Bitcoin! Direct your donations to 14Lua9coLL5pEDfyMmeU8dRPT5uQSBTTs9
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This Week’s Post-Show Song Pimpage: “Friday by Rebecca Black” Cover by Matt Mulholland
31/03/2011 at 6:30 pm Permalink
First time I’ve heard your podcast, I’ll be adding it to my podcast playlist.
“[…] from then on, I just have been obsessed with [Bitcoin]”.
I can relate!
p.s., Did Rebecca Black rip off the Beatles?
http://music.witcoin.com/p/493/Rebecca-Black—Friday#r-1278
02/04/2011 at 12:44 pm Permalink
“Haha! I win at beer!” — you guys are awesome.
04/10/2011 at 1:57 pm Permalink
Bitcoin is the product of an epic category mistake on the part of some very smart engineers who, perhaps due to their (necessarily) extremely narrow and exclusively technical education, don’t have a f*&%$ing clue about how money actually works, and/or how it fails to work when things go badly.
To give just one small illustration, consider all of the flippant remarks and occasional ravings about the evils of “fractional reserve banking” in this podcast. I rather suspect that most of Bitcoin’s overwhelmingly geeky boosters are familiar with the concept/practice known as “statistical multiplexing,” i.e., the thing that makes the packet-switched Internet more interesting/useful/efficient than the old switched telephone system…? If only they understood that fractional reserve banking is *the exact same practice* applied to (what would otherwise be) idle monetary bank reserves, perhaps they might recognize that they are parroting the same arguments that the telcos made back in the 1980s (when they realized that the nascent decentralized Internet threatened their cozy monopolies)… the same argument that some telcos continue to make even now, using new terms like “guaranteed QOS.” Too bad Bitcoin advocates seem to be completely unaware of the fact that in parroting this line, they are unwittingly advocating a return to the same static, deflationary, and (often oppressively) hierarchical conditions that predated the rise of modern analog and digital technology-mediated liquidity systems (e.g., monetary-banking systems and the Internet).
I share the same disgust with modern-day financial criminals that seems to animate many Bitcoin enthusiasts, but ignorance of what other/older monetary liquidity mechanisms have taught us — both in how they worked (when they worked), and how all but the current iterations ultimately failed — is *not* a virtue, especially for would-be monetary liquidity system pioneers who aspire to do better.
MH