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Bitcoin Mining Startup Gets $500k In Venture Capital
Sabbetus writes "Seattle based Bitcoin startup CoinLab secured a $500,000 investment from various investors such as Silicon Valley firm Draper Associates and angel investor Geoff Entress. CoinLab is an emerging umbrella group for cultivating and launching innovative Bitcoin projects. CEO Vessenes said 'if there is a currency that can trade around the world, it's semi-anonymous, it's instant, it's not controlled by government or bank, what's the total value of that currency? The answer to that is, if it works, it's gotta be in the billions. It just has to be for all the reasons you might want to send money around the world.' This type of talk is common from Bitcoin enthusiasts but apparently seasoned investors are starting to agree. Forbes explains the details of their business plan but in short it has to do with tapping the GPU mining potential of gamers, more specifically gamers of free-to-play games. This would add a new revenue stream for online game companies that are trying to provide free games profitably."
Shouldn't that be BitCoin mining scam bilks idiots of $500,000?
I just don't understand Bitcoin and "mining" whatsoever.
When it comes down to it, am I going to be losing performance in their game because they would rather be making money? I hope they state plainly their intentions from the get-go, but we all know that won't happen.
I officially declare Internet Bubble 2 as confirmed!
In the 21st century, humans have invented fake mines to work in, and fake mining companies that mine in them.
Not fake mines likes the ones in Minecraft that might actually be interesting, of course. And not a side-effect of something else, like WoW's "gold farmers". Fake mines that exist solely and purposely to be tediously mined by fake mining companies! Now that's creating value. Value that's "gotta be in the billions".
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
If a game is going to use my GPU to mine bitcoins for the other end, they should have to tell me. Because otherwise they're just taking money from me and having my electric utility do the billing for them.
Note that anyone who is on a pay-per-bandwidth internet plan is in the same boat with ad-supported software. You are paying the maker of the software, just your ISP is doing the billing for them.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
I am going to laugh so hard the first time I see and hear someone playing farmtown while their video card is at 90 decibel turbo speed.
'if there is a currency that can trade around the world, it's semi-anonymous, it's instant, it's not controlled by government or bank, what's the total value of that currency? The answer to that is, if it works, it's gotta be in the billions. It just has to be for all the reasons you might want to send money around the world.'
It's also going to be top of the list of every law enforcement agency across the globe. Governments tend not to like their citizens taking part in transactions that don't have a paper trail.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
... in bitcoins?
there's a new dot-com bubble
congratulations on the investors here on seeding the hype to attract the rubes
just remember to step off the merry go round before things tank
i'd give it a few years
any VC want to fund my innovative paradigm shifter? i call it flooz. whoopi goldberg is going to help me spread the good word
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Forbes explains the details of their business plan but in short it has to do with tapping the GPU mining potential of gamers,
So 'in short', they're going to trojan a video game and turn a bunch of PCs into a botnet to generate bitcoins. But because it's a business doing this, and not some teenager in his mom's basement, they're going to make billions instead of go to jail? That sound about right?
If any other kind of software you ran was doing something in the background other than what you wanted to do, it would be called malware.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
never seem to understand the advantages of it is a form of exchange and yet they will cry and moan every time the government takes another one of their freedoms, another step into their privacy, another step towards authoritarianism.
Bitcoin is an incredible idea: decentralized exchange, totally anonymous, no central body to print it out of existence, no government to track who your exchanging with and for what, a limited stable inflation on the money supply with no one to dictate that "the crisis would end if we just gave the banks more money".
Would I want to store all of my wealth in bitcoin? No. Do I like the idea of being able to convert my money into an exchange medium that is untraceable? Of course.
How many stories have we read of governments steering us towards a cashless society where all forms of exchange are withing their monitoring (not to moention all forms of communication.)
To me bitcoin is the currency equivalent of TOR and shouldn't be hated on.
Control the 'net and you control bitcoin. Do you think pippa/acta / cispa and variants are limited to the riaa and mpaa agenda only?
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
You don't understand the nature of fiat currency. Money (most currencies anyways) has a value because people want it to have a value. Bitcoin is no different.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
This is the same kind of bullshit that was flying around in the late 1990's. Time to short the NASDAQ 100.
The difference is that there aren't anywhere near as many big idea/no income tech IPOs this time around. Groupon is the only major Web 2.0 (or whatever the buzz-phrase is these days) IPO. Facebook may be the next, and will almost certainly be over-valued and over-subscribed - but it'll wilt in isolation. The economy in general is in the toilet. Glencore (global resources - you know, mines and oils wells and such.) was the biggest, I think, IPO in history and they lost about 15-20% of their launch price when the economic slow-down hit resources. The world isn't awash in the kind of money for people to throw around at companies without a revenue stream.
You don't understand the nature of fiat currency
Money (most currencies anyways) has a value because people want it to have a value
Government back currencies have value because the government creates demand for those currencies through taxes. The US dollar has value because millions of Americans have to pay their taxes, and they cannot use Bitcoins, gold bars, or Tulips to do so -- they have to use US dollars to do so. Governments also create demand by charging for various services, assigning damages in court, etc. -- people are compelled to pay in government issued currency.
Bitcoin, on the other hand, has nobody creating demand for it, just a lot of hype and promises of secure and anonymous payments.
Palm trees and 8
No, he's right. A currency with those properties would be worth billions. However, for it to have those properties it would have to be backed by something. It doesn't really matter what it's backed by, it could be lumps of metal, the value of a company, the promise of a government, or even the promise of doing some computational work in the future, as long as all parties agree that it's something of value. The problem with bitcoin is that it is backed by the promise of doing some computational make-work, not even useful computation.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
In 10 years, someone is going to look very stupid, and it will either be Bitcoin's shrill proponents, or its shrill detractors.
The suspense is killing me.
Don't the editors read what they post?
We just had an article about billionaires funding a crazy mining scheme a few days ago.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Forget losing performance, think about your GPU running 100% when it only needs to be at 10% and what that will due to your powerbill. My GTX460 eats 150watts and newer cards will be even more.
And fan noise as the various fans in your system desperate try to cool things down.
Well a lot of people are concerned about the security of the BTC notion. I'd like to bring up something that a lot of Slashdoters are familiar with.
That is that as an individual trader you are at the low end of the reliability spectrum when it comes to trading and finances. If your bank goes bust you will probably not receive your money. If there is a sudden drop in markets, your trades won't be processed for hours or days. Probably not an issue unless there's a war or some other kind of major event, like the U.S. black swan.
Second there are currently 2 senate subcommittees trying to figure out what to do about BTC. While a lot of people think that the government will simply outlaw the currency it becomes an issue in that anything can conceivably be considered a currency. Outlawing barter in a country is probably a bad idea.
Third Bitcoin is a problem for government because it is essentially impossible to tax at this point, that's not saying it will always be that way. If you've been watching the pips carefully you can see that there's been pressure to keep the price stable (and low) many many Bitcoin traders are simply cashing in on this to increase their share. It's relatively cheap to push the price of a stock down, but it does cost a bit and that cost is being soaked up.
So: buy 1 BTC. If it becomes viable for microtransactions, you win. If there's a war, you win. If you trade it every day for a little piece of the money being spent to keep the price stable, you win! If you get to stop reading articles about BTC because you have one... you win!
Money (most currencies anyways) has a value because people want it to have a value.
gold included
why do they care? they aren't paying the electric bill.
Bitcoin: Change you can believe in
To the best of my knowledge (IANAL), if you were to buy goods and services with Bitcoin, you would be obligated to assess the value of goods and services in terms of dollars and pay the appropriate taxes. This is not any different from barter, which is practiced here in America and which can be taxed (in dollars, of course).
Palm trees and 8
I'm surprises it doesn't already happen with web based adverts. OK so even with modern JS engines you'll not get much mining done per minute per user, but if your ads are spread widely enough you could potentially make a bit on it.
The other option I've not heard happen (which is considerably more practical) is for a miner to be included in malware. Given malware tends to disable task manager and related things that could report the extra CPU use, and many users would not think to look anyway, this could pull in some cash for the botnet runner. Unlike the browser based option this could run native code on the CPUs (and GPUs where appropriate). To avoid detection a little more by not slowing down other CPU intensive tasks, just check to see if your process has less than (plucking a number from thin air) 80% CPU time over a few seconds and assume that means something else is trying to be CPU-busy and pause for a while.
Of course it could be that the malware authors have considered this and decided it simply isn't worth the time. If so then that does not bode well for other projects (like the one that has just been invested in) because if the crooks can't make enough money out of it to make their time worth spending then it can't exactly be an easy win.
Bitcoins are no different then Disney dollars, you can use them to buy certain goods but at the end of the day you still need real currency. The electric company will not take Disney Dollars, alternative currency will always have this problem.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
Lovely, now everyone's machines will be infected with bitcoin mining viruses, I mean bundled software. It will be up there with all of those useful toolbars they got.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
You have to give the initial adopters a reason to pay attention to you.
It is a scam. The value proposition is an utter fabrication that preys on people who have a poor understanding of central banking and currency valuation.
What exactly was Vanderbilt's scam? Did he lie about building railroads? Did Rockefeller lie about being able to use oil to fuel ships and vehicles? You're right that Zuckerberg doesn't have a scam either. He built a popular website that people want to use, and makes money by selling their data and advertising instead of an access fee.
Maddoff didn't get caught because he used an old scam. He got caught because he used a scam. He took investor money under the pretense that he was investing it, lied about where he invested it, and lied about his performance. Can you tell me the names of the people at "Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, etc" who did this? What exactly was their crime?
If you buy something from an overseas website in Euros, you are supposed to assess the value of that in dollars, and pay the appropriate use tax to your state (if it has one, like say, California). Bitcoins would be no different.
Say I'm writing drivers for these GPU's and I want to give my customers the ability to block this. In theory, the calculations required to mine a bitcoin follow a particular and repetitive pattern, which means I could probably identify the pattern of instructions being sent to my GPU. Could I code a driver to render the functions that draw the screen for the game normally but just return '0' every time I'm asked to mine a bitcoin?
I feel like I would invest in a graphics card that offered such a feature, as it should indicate to any gaming company trying to profit on my extra GPU power that I do not view this hijacking of my hardware as 'OK'.
Nobody's been threatened. You agreed to follow the laws of this country when you took up residence here. Those include paying your taxes, and paying them in US Dollars.
Unless of course you don't believe that a people has the right to govern themselves, which is a downright retarded idea to hold.
Bitcoin mining is barely profitable now. Bitcoin "difficulty" self-adjusts so that the number of new Bitcoins created per unit time remains constant. Currently, that number is about 6*50*24*30 = 216K bitcoins per month, worth about $900K/month. Every few years, the number of coins created per unit time drops, so that eventually there will be a fixed number of coins, 21 million. Around the end of 2012, half of all Bitcoins that will ever be created will have been created, and the production rate drops in half, according to a schedule built into all the programs that accept Bitcoins.
All Bitcoin "miners" are thus in competition for a fixed and declining amount of revenue. Many have already dropped out, as can be seen from the hash rate statistics. In areas with high electricity costs, even running existing hardware doesn't pay. Buying new hardware in bulk was popular in early 2011, but not any more.
Of course, if you can find some sucker to provide a GPU and pay for the power, the economics looks better. Hence the Bitcoin trojan. The concept of a VC-funded Bitcoin trojan is a bit much. Putting in $500K to suck money out of the system might pay off in the short term, but it's not something that can grow. If you put in $5M, you'd be competing with yourself for a finite revenue stream. Also, running a background GPU job on anything that isn't plugged in will produce some very angry users as their batteries die.
If you think mere rarity will make Bitcoins grow in value, go on eBay and see what collectable stuff from the Franklin Mint (once a big maker of "collectables") goes for.
No, no, gold is special! It's shiny! People always want gold, despite the fact that it has no actual uses, aside from that as a conductor. When society collapses, everyone is going to want gold. Not food, or bullets, or medicine. Gold.
Means that financial transactions must be believable. A bitcoin-like currency might achieve believability. But no the specific bitcoin currency which has been hacked and stolen from disks.
The value of the government. Despite what you want to believe, that is actually quite valuable.
Banks waste several orders of magnitude more energy than Bitcoin mining.
And all fiat currencies are, like Bitcoin, backed by nothing.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
You bilk libertards out of their hard earned money by selling them worthless bits
FTFY. You don't need to say idiotic, it's redundant. They are all idiots or they wouldn't be libertarian in the first place.
I got here through a series of tubes
It is becoming more and more obvious who is on which side of the bitcoin "debate". This thread honestly isn't even worth reading, everyone who knows what they are talking about is spending all their time explaining the most basic info to idiots. Admittedly there are a few lazy, but intelligent sounding posters mixed in, but this is mostly just troll FUD. 95% of normal people either think it is interesting or just don't care.
This is not any different from barter, which is practiced here in America and which can be taxed (in dollars, of course).
Are you sure barter can be taxed because I don't see how. In barter transactions two people exchange different goods of equal value. At the end of the transaction the net worth has not changed. No income, no sale, no tax.
i would bet that a non zero number of employees have active accounts (and may be in world while ON THE CLOCK) i do not think that they are in world as part of their official duties.
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Huh? By force of law I was referring to the legal requirement that dollars be accepted as tender for debts. The 'and' was there to combine two distinct reasons. It's value to holders of dollars is backed by the output of our eonomy and it has value as an exchange through force of law requiring it be accepted as legal tender of debt.
Yes, there's a lot of people who are in Bitcoin because of become-a-billionaire-overnight fantasies. Yes, they are silly. But you remove all that and you're left with a really fascinating system that should appeal to everyone on Slashdot. It's a mix of cryptography, freedom of speech, computing, networking, finance, economics, and even politics -- most of us here dig that stuff.
Get over the hype and take Bitcoin for what it really is: a fascinating experiment that has, so far, withstood the amazing barrage of publicity, hacking attempted, legal uncertainties, and remains valuable for reasons completely contrary to everyone that says it's worthless. It may become worthless one day, but consider the possibility that Bitcoin is disproving all your wildly oversimplified assumptions about what makes something valuable. It is completely different, and there's plenty of reasons to believe that it could succeed as much as it could fail.
I like to think of Bitcoin like gold. Nothing is backing gold. It's a material for which there is a limited supply in the world, and which is universally regarded as value because of various properties it has: perhaps beauty, fungibility, density, etc. Bitcoin is really the same, with a limited global supply, except that it has different properties, mainly ease of transfer over the internet, fungibility, storage efficiency, near-anonymity and built-in escrow.
I don't think it's any more ludicrous for Bitcoin to have value than it is for gold to have value. And in the end, when I want to sell WoW weapons, buy webserver space, or play a few games of poker online, why would I use gold, cash or paypal, which all require me to remember log-in creditials, give away information and/or a bunch of third party fees. There's plenty of value in being able to pay people across the world, instantaneously, without sacrificing your privacy, and without paying any fees. Why is that not valuable? Seriously... quit focusing on the get-rich-quick kids, and start appreciating Bitcoin for it's unique properties and philosophy.
Yes, it can.
There should be a set of laws written to cut down on the amount of BS bits in EULAs
1 standard definitions for certain words so that the first 3 "pages" are not taken up with defining US and YOU and other garbage
2 a code/flag block to summarize what all that legal stuff is saying (1 key = X licenses and such things)
3 disclosure of what is done with a Customers data (who do we sell that info to and on what terms)
4 forbidding any edits to the EULA that decrease what can be done with the software (so no redefining "unlimited" after the fact)
5 limits on font size and how buried a clause can be (so no "gotchas" in page 25 paragraph 3 that cuts out something "legal" in page 5 and no using 3 point type to contradict/limit whats in 48 point type)
Oh and any changes to the EULA (or linked docs) require you to physically Mail a notice that the contract can be dropped without penalty unless you have a Judge (who is paid by a consumer friendly org) sign off on the changes. (and you must post the same notice on your primary customer contact method for 30 days prior to the change going into effect)
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
What value are dollars backed by?
The ability of the U.S. government to put your ass in jail if you do not pay your debt to them in dollars. For everybody outside of the U.S., the value of the dollar is backed up by two things. First, the large market of those living in the U.S. who will accept dollars for goods or services in order to have dollars to pay their taxes. Second, the willingness of the U.S. to use its military to force people in other countries to trade with the U.S. (look up Admiral Perry and Japan). The willingness of the U.S. government to do so is less than it was at one time, but its ability to do so is greater than it was 50 years ago.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Whoa boy are you miss informed. money has value because it has supposed scarcity. Government backed just means that the government or one of their agents controls that supply and does or doesn't screw it up. Bitcoins are limited by a mathematical theory/proof.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
That's because you're misinterpreting that statement. It's saying that the States cannot make a form of tender to pay back debts unless it is a gold or silver coin. It is not saying that you have to pay your debts to the state in gold or silver.
nothing says states can't stick with federal legal tender, they just can't make up their own unless it's gold/silver
"coin money and regulate the value thereof" as one of Congress' powers means the Feds aren't so restricted. I guess paper currency would fall under debt
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
http://www.cracked.com/article_18570_6-companies-that-make-money-solving-problems-they-made-up.html
#5, Cracked is right on the mark (they're often great at humor that makes a point)
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
They should demonstrate they can use their own currency before others trust it.
And all fiat currencies are, like Bitcoin, backed by nothing.
If the issuing country means nothing to you... I.e. United States of America.
But if USA and its laws actually mean something to you - then it's backed up by Section 5103 of Title 31 of the United States Code.
Other countries have similar laws and acts by which they back the values of their currencies.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
The gold standard was abolished a couple of generations ago.
However, some of the dollar bills in circulation are still marked "Silver Certificate", and the theory was that you could take your notes to a federal bank and trade them in for bullion.
An unchanging money supply in a growing economy and population = automatic deflation. A simple example:
Suppose you and 3 of your friend create your own little currency. You each get two "favour tokens". Any time you want someone to do a favour for you, you pay them a token, and you get paid a toekn if you do a favour for them. This works so well that someone else decides they want in. You all say fine, but they don't get any tokens, they have to work for their first token. Soon, you have 10 people in your little economy.
However it is being badly hamstrung by the lack of tokens. At most, 8 people can have a token, there will always be at least two people without a token. So you start having lots of situations where people want to do a favour, but the person who wants it has no token.
That right there is deflation. It gets more complicated on a larger economy, of course, but if you have a fixed amount of currency and the economy grows, deflation is inherent.
In barter transactions two people exchange different goods of equal value.
That's how monetary transactions work too.
I've seen it promised as a money-making scheme almost everywhere. You don't often see a BitCoin discussion, article, or sales pitch that doesn't position it as a future-safe currency outside of the reach of central banking, like gold. This is the scam. You spend electricity on digital bits that you're told entitle you to a chunk of a market that will be worth billions (like in TFA) in the future, or pay a fee/spread to an exchange to get in on it while they still cost very little.
You can buy gold with bitcoins @ http://coinabul.com/
Bitcoin is fundamentally backed by public key cryptography and computational power. That proof-of-computation done is real and valuable, for instance, you can currently 'safely' transact thousands of dollars in a single bitcoin block without worrying about forks or cheating. Two years ago, you could only transact 10 or 20 dollars without worrying about forks or cheating. The difference is that it is FAR more expensive to cheat the bitcoin network now, coming on to non-feasible.
This is a real increase in value, and it's because of the computational resources thrown into the system.
Spending 500k$ just to troll Slashdot hard.
I'm sure if they took your dollars, they'd be bringing in the military right away :)
Don't forget that you can buy a bitcoin/gold hybrid at https://www.casascius.com/.
You can get a coin that is 1 troy ounce of gold, with a 1000 BTC electronic redeemable value.
Of course, it's kinda expensive at 1415, but it sure is pretty... and liquid (financially).
How can there by any equivalency between these two as a vehicle of exchange? I'm not saying BitCoin is a scam or worthless. But to say it's anywhere near the level of gold is ridiculous.
I used to think Bitcoin was stupid because it's another fiat currency, no real value, poor store of wealth, etc.
Then I realized - its real value is not as a safe full of gold but as a replacement for Western Union.
Never store your wealth in Bitcoins, but always conduct your transactions in it. This mindset sets an upper bound on the amount of Bitcoin needed, but with a growing and developing world population, I don't see this as a real problem for its success.
It also speaks to tremendous opportunities for currency exchangers in and out of Bitcoin. Its real threat then isn't economic or technical, but from gangs who want a piece of the action (mostly governments).
Coins' value may well increase to meet demand, but focusing on the coins as a store of value is sure-fire way to miss the boat on Bitcoin.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Would you be interested in my farts? They are a much limited resource, and there is only one who can produce them at a very limited rate. No, scarcity does not imply value. Scarcity can surely increase the amount people are willing to pay, but not if they weren't interested to start with.
><////>
Except that's not how the net worth is calculated for tax purposes. Otherwise, nothing would be taxable. Even ordinary employees labor for dollars of equal value.
When you trade A for B (whether A is labor, or B is labor, or A is dollars, or B is Bitcoins, or B is beer, or whatever) your change in net worth is calculated by what you got minus what you gave. But the value of what you gave is not the fair market value. It's the *lower* of the fair market value or what it cost you to get it. (Called your "basis".)
This means if you buy some stock, or Bitcoins, or wine for $50 and its value goes up to $500, that's not taxable. But if you sell it for $500, your profit is $500 minus the lower of $500 or $50, hence $500 - $50, and thus $450.
So if you barter, say, a paint job for a trailer, your profit for tax purposes is the fair market value of the trailer less what it cost you to provide the paint job. Sadly, if you bought a car for $35,000 and then traded it something after its value dropped to $8,000, $35,000 is not your basis. (Too bad, because that would be a great tax evasion strategy) $8,000 is, because that's lower.
By the promise of the US government to accept them in payment for taxes. With the federal income tax rate at over 10%, this guarantees that there is always at least one group that will be consuming a lot of US dollars every year, and another group (US taxpayers) that will need them for this purpose. It also derives a lot of its value from the fact that it is used as the currency for trading oil - if you want oil, you need US dollars.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
tapping the GPU mining potential of gamers, more specifically gamers of free-to-play games
So people buy gaming hardware, and then play F2P games that... don't actually utilise the hardware to run games, but for other purposes?
Consider the alternative: firing up a Bitcoin miner on background and running some other game that doesn't require a sophisticated GPU. The gamer can keep the profit all to themselves. The only upside is that the mining company can give the gamers different games. But the fundamental problem is that people think they're buying gaming hardware, you're saying they have gaming hardware... while downplaying the fact that they're not actually using the gaming hardware for gaming at all.
Ye gods, it's like 1999 again, people get venture capital for only slightly retarded business plans
That's not what being backed by something means. It just means that computational work is done to create bitcoins. A gold-backed currency is not backed by the miners' effort in digging gold out of the ground, it is backed by the fact that you are guaranteed to be able to exchange it for gold. The US dollar is not backed by the effort involved in printing bits of green paper, it is backed by the promise of the US government to accept it in payment for taxes (and the legal requirement that US citizens must accept them for settling debts).
Bitcoins take real effort to create, but this is not effort that creates something, and that's the problem. It's like using ash as a currency and saying 'well, you get energy when you burn whatever you needed to create the ash, so it's backed by that energy'. You can't take the ash and turn it into that energy, and you can't take a bitcoin and change it into useful computational work. That proof-of-computation is not useful, because it is not proof of useful computation. It is just proof that you've run an algorithm that generates a magic number. The only value comes if you can persuade people to all share the illusion that that magic number is valuable. Historically, there have only been two ways of doing that:
Bitcoin has neither.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Scarcity does not create value. Example: how much would you be willing to pay me for a gram of Ununquadium, an extremely rare element that can only be produced in a lab, and which has a half life of less than one minute? Value is created by supply and demand -- money is no different.
Palm trees and 8
The easiest/efficient way to protest Govt hegemony is to print/circulate/use your own banknotes exclusively among your friends/family/community.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-14774526
Casteism
Proponents of bitcoin are expecting regular users to be responsible for their own bitcoin security. Consider for a moment how many botnets are out there. Imagine people losing their their life savings in a "download to papa" moment. Or hell, a hard drive crash. Yes, you could conceivably print out your bitcoin keys. But you need to type them back into your computer to actually spend them. Who is going to enforce security against fraud? What if a merchant doesn't send the goods?