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MIT May Help Lead Bitcoin Standards Effort
gthuang88 writes: With everyone from PayPal merchants to Rand Paul starting to accept Bitcoins as payment, the race is on to develop technical standards for the virtual currency. Now MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito is getting ready to unveil a plan for MIT to become an independent, neutral home for standards development. Ito is enlisting cryptographer Ron Rivest and economist Simon Johnson to help with the effort, which could provide an academic alternative to the Bitcoin Foundation for conversations about the currency's future. Ito says, "I’m not pushing it, but I’m offering MIT as a neutral academic home for some of the conversations and the technical coordination. Which I think will give a lot more stability to Bitcoin, which right now is a little bit fragile."
Fiat money also has no real value. Just like bitcoin it is based on trust, not on authority or enforcement.
Not-government-supported currency like gold has value besides its means as an exchange rate
Gold doesn't have much real value either.
Fiat currency is supported by a government
Didn't work well for Zimbabwe, or Weimar republic. Ultimately, fiat currency is simply based on trust that it will be accepted by others tomorrow like you accept it today. The government can help to provide stability, but the trust comes from the bottom, and can't be enforced when it's failing.
I disagree. Bitcoin has major value in sending money worldwide without fees. Also, it can be used with only a cellphone and an account. Bitcoin could revolutionize 3rd world involvement in the world economy without the blockades that banks have traditionally put in their way.
Right now, Bitcoin is the only way to send money to Wikileaks or mega.co.nz. If you believe in free speech without the government bankrupting foreigners even before a trial just because the banking industry or the MAFIAA doesn't like them, then you should be pro-bitcoin.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
The industrial use of gold is fairly small on the total gold market. Most of the value comes from people's desire to possess it, and people like to possess it because it's valuable.
If it was just for the industrial use, the price of gold would be a lot lower.
Since the invention of coinage there has never ever, not even once, been a currency based on trust.
This is absolutely not the case.
As little as 200 years ago, there were many competing currencies, typically backed in gold. There was even merchant's associations and regular publications on how much you should discount certain bank's currency because the redeeming bank was far away, or not as trustworthy. Wikipedia has a whole catalog of these notes.
Wonder what the public key field is for?