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BitInstant Continues Bitcoin Paycard Plan
judgecorp writes "Virtual currency exchange BitInstant says its BitCoin credit card is still on track. even though Mastercard denied any involvement with the plans yesterday. BitInstant says it is applying through a third party bank which will broker a Mastercard application. BitInstant is still taking signups for the card. Oh, one clarification: the card will not be anonymous."
Some very talented folks I once had the pleasure of meeting just went out of business. They had formed Bitcoin Harbor, an exchange for buying and selling items strictly in bitcoins. I suspect the undue lack of popularity for bitcoin is to blame, but there has been some pretty fierce efforts against bitcoin which might also influence the stagnation of what I consider a great system. One example of government hostility against alternative currencies I think is no better illustrated than in the case of Bernard von NotHaus.
Some fear the forced introduction to a "cashless society", and maybe I do as well. However, If such is the unavoidable future, I'd rather it be in bitcoin. It's peculiar the vehement government defense of what might reasonably be considered amongst the most unstable and fantastical currencies in the world, in contrast to their hostility toward arguably less deformed competitors. When speculation suggests bitcoin may be more worthy of confidence than the euro, I pay at least one ear of heed. But when Alan Grayson asks Lord Ben where $500,000,000,000 went and he can't reply, I reach for my Adult Depend Undergarment.
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
Something like the Dollar, or the Euro, or the Renminbi is backed by a standing army and a society with a functional government and a banking industry. Governments and banking industries that engage in shenanigans and with horrible screw ups that test the patience and faith and trust of all of us. But I still trust in actual social institutions that actually represent the value behind an actual currency, then some protocol for fringe types who don't trust anyone or anything.
Bitcoin is not the dawn of a new stateless economy. Bitcoin is the dawn of a new ghetto for the kind of person with a high level of distrust in society. Distrust not born of actual experience, but the kind of distrust that is a function of that person's personality issues. Such people will always exist. I'm glad the Internet and some dude with a Japanese pseudonym have given them a new toy to exert their prodigious antisocial energies on.
Enjoy, fanboys, but please don't imagine your alternacurrency has more meaning than it actually does. It's a project for you to waste your antisocial frustrations on. Good for you. All hail the small but growing psychosocial ghetto called Bitcoin.
There are just people in this world with a hobbling deficit of trust in any social institution. Considering how the banksters have screwed up over the last decade, some of that distrust is earned. But there never is, and never will be, an alternative to an actual, real, social institution, no matter how badly it is mismanaged. The problem is in not understanding that, not understanding that your currency has to be backed by SOMETHING. Some people are just too antisocial to understand this.
So let the fools exert their energies on Bitcoin if it provides a harmless waste of time for them. This alternacurrency ghetto will bubble and pop and limp along, and eventually peter out into obscurity if and when someone responsible is actually able to take hold of our broken and mismanaged financial system.
Either that, or drug traffickers and other illicit activities will glom onto the idealistic fanboy's new toy, and then the authorities will go after Bitcoin ONLY FOR THAT REASON. But the paranoid crackpots will claim this is proof the state is out to crush anything good in this world, when the simple truth is there is always a lot of ugliness in this world, but there is a heck of a lot more ugliness without a strong government. Sorry fanboys.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
...and if you are using it for an actual application, it's frustrating how expensive the damn stuff is. As an electronics designer I'd much rather just gold plate everything for durability, rather than having to fight the cost-engineering department every time.
Gold bugs are a very real part of the reason why consumer electronics are unreliable. Remember that every time a crappy tin-plated connector fails. Heck, silver bugs too: for high-current connectors and RFI shielding silver is usually the best option, but again it's unaffordable for a lot of applications.