Slashdot Mirror
Why Bitcoin Boomed During the Government Shutdown
Daniel_Stuckey writes "Just two weeks after the Feds shuttered the Silk Road, the notorious online drug bazaar, Bitcoin prices have touched a five-month high — with a single Bitcoin fetching nearly $156 on Tokyo-based exchange Mt. Gox. Bitcoin's resiliency can no longer be denied, especially as the digital currency continued its ascendancy even against the backdrop of a U.S. government in utter disarray. At the 11th hour of the crisis, President Obama signed a bill that ended the partial government shutdown and, more importantly, raised the debt ceiling, an arbitrary limit on the amount of money the country can borrow that would have been surpassed today. If Congress had failed to reach a deal and the U.S. was unable to pay its bills, the results might have been catastrophic, eclipsing the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers five years ago, the domino that could trigger the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression."
the domino that could trigger the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression
Since the US is so outrageously in debt and has no way to reduce it without selling the rest of the government assets, there's going to be plenty more opportunities for a global financial catastrophy. Then the knights in shining globalization armour will have the opportunity to save us all from terrible governmental mis-management, handing world power over to a single central body with another currency not backed by anything real or stable. Much in the same way as bitcoin isn't backed by anything real or stable, just demand.
This demand will continue to fluctuate wildly based on the extraction of gold deposits, the bribery of 13 lower house members of the United States congress and ancient religious predictions about the four horsemen of the apocolypse.
Or maybe because what I buy is my business and my business alone? ... Couldn't possibly be any other reason I don't want folks up in my business.
Well, if you don't want anyone else in your business, and what you buy is your own business, then you're buying from yourself... I imagine the "employee discount" is amazing.