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Finnish National TV Broadcaster Starts Sending Bitcoin Blockchain
New submitter Joel Lehtonen (3743763) writes "The Finnish national digital TV broadcaster Digita is co-operating with startup company Koodilehto to start transmission of Bitcoin blockchain and transactions in Terrestrial Digital TV (DVB-T) signal that covers almost the entire Finnish population of 5 million people. The pilot broadcasting starts September 1st and lasts two months. The broadcast can be received by a computer with any DVB-T adapter (like this $20 dongle). A commercial production phase is planned to begin later this year."
The point of the service is you can use cheap and small receivers on embedded systems to confirm transactions, for example for vending machines etc. The mobile internet coverage is not as wide as radio signal, nor is it as cheap.
The summary was quite lacking. For those not wanting to rtfa, here's what it says under why broadcasting the blockchain in a way that can be picked up by low cast receivers is or might be useful. An AC post below also mentions that TV coverage may be better than mobile internet coverage.
Intrinsic value is not what keeps a currency strong. Devising a way to prevent cheap unlimited production of new currency is what we need. In the old days money was tied to gold - you can't simply print up more gold. These days the powers that be can steal the value of dollars you hold just by printing a new piece of paper with a big number written on it. The strength of bitcoin is that it is limited by design.
Julian, is that you?
The Bitcoin payment network has utility value, because it can perform a useful function (move value from place to place, fast, with low fees). The digital currency unit within the network has value derived from the usefulness of the network it is part of. By itself the currency unit is as useless as a UPS shipping label would be without the rest of UPS.
It should be evident that a network of relay and processing nodes, databases, user software, websites, and smartphone apps can have non-zero value. We could differ on exactly what the value is, but given how much people pay for similar items elsewhere, I don't think you can argue it is zero.
*sigh*
The Nordic countries comprise Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. Scandinavia is basically your geographic definition; it's not quite clear cut, though, but we mostly care about being Nordic. Finland is the odd one out in terms of linguistic roots, but we share most of our culture with the Nordics -- we were basically a province of Sweden for centuries, and gained independence after a brief stint with Russia.
For some odd reason people elsewhere say "Scandinavian" when they mean "Nordic".
I wonder where you get the part "north Finland speaks partly swedish". There is a vocal Swedish-speaking minority in Finland, but they mostly live on the coast of the Baltic Sea. Might be some Swedish/Norwegian speakers up North, but there you also have the Sami people of Finland, Norway and Sweden mixing up things and blurring the political boundaries.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.