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.
It's not hard to understand what it works, it's hard to understand how it's an improvement.
For physical currency, taxes to the government prevent counterfeiting. For electronic transactions, fees paid to the bank or credit card company prevent double spending. For bitcions, money is spent on GPU cycles to prevents both. If you can prove that it's actually cheaper, and just just a cost shift, be my guest.
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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.
It's not hard to understand what it works, it's hard to understand how it's an improvement. For physical currency, taxes to the government prevent counterfeiting. For electronic transactions, fees paid to the bank or credit card company prevent double spending. For bitcions, money is spent on GPU cycles to prevents both. If you can prove that it's actually cheaper, and just just a cost shift, be my guest.