Bitcoin Day 22 (What is Bitcoin?)

Tuesday.

For those not following, this is a crazy experiment explained in this post.

So not much happened today, as I was sick at home. To have some content, I will talk a little bit about bitcoin pros and cons.

So first, what is Bitcoin? Bitcoin is an innovative payment network and a new kind of money. It was designed by an anonymous person in a short paper. There is some good questions answered in the FAQ on the bitcoin.org website.

So what is it good for?

  • Low transaction fees
  • Secure network, distributed around the world
  • No single controller (for example, a government)
  • Fast international transfers
  • No "holidays", money goes when you send it

What are some things that could be seen as bad?

  • Volitility, it is still a new system, going to have growing pains. Been reasonably stable this month!
  • Not accepted widely (as seen by this blog)
  • Not well known
  • Yet another system (though POS integration is coming quickly).
  • It's mainly used for illegal activities (though not in my month!)
  • It's seen as potentially illegal

I've also had people compare it to something like the Barter Card in New Zealand, though I'm not so sure on that. Very loosely similar.

Feel free to leave comments on what you see good or bad about bitcoin!

If you can offer assitance, just do it! I'm on twitter as haquaman, on reddit as haquaman, on IRC as aquaman (no h), and email at hugh AT davenport DOT net DOT nz.

Feel free to donate to 155WivS5TdBdU1UMQVZNLodywzCUdLdBBk.