After being bombed by e-mail requests for several months, we finally hid a "freaknomics radio" podcast on Bitcoin. The episode is called "Why people who do not hate Bitcoin, love it. " The core - thinks of Bitcoin, for just a digital currency similar to thinking of the internet as just an email. Bitcoin's prospective is much larger and more interesting than that.
Bitcoin is described once as "Virtual Gold" and the entire Ponzi system for a refuge to buy black market products. But what people encourage some people, like the Silicon Valley Veteran Marc Andreess, it is likely to Bitcoin, which will probably be subject to a number of transactions, well on the simple currency exchange.
Andreess remarkably founded Netscape and is now on the board as Facebook and eBay. He is not an unexpected observer in the Bitcoin debate: his investment capital company Andreessen Horowitz invested as $ 50 million in two bitcoin related companies, such as CoinBase and Andreessen says his company plans to invest much more to facilitate Bitcoin.
Why so much confidence? The reason, Andreessen says to our own Stephen Dubner, is that Bitcoin is the "solution to an elemental problem in computer science". "One of the things missing on the internet for 20 years is a kind of domestic concept of money," Andreess explains. "The ability to easily pay a little online, the ability to charge a content, the ability to easily replace a digital title or a digital key, or a digital contract that is only missing because you do not have a device to establish faith. And then the Bitcoin usually holds The promise to be the first solution to create faith through a reliable network. "
An assigned economist at Stanford University Susan Athey who has a background in computer science is also a good lawyer in the technology that supports Bitcoin. For atey, Bitcoin's control must be made with its simplicity: "The beauty of a new currency, which is part of a virtual currency protocol, is that what I move from me to you is just an entry on safe, public book. And the public ledger is supported by a set of a set Computers all talking to each other using a protocol. So I don't have to worry about any bank that gives me IOU and then give it to the same as delivering it to another bank. Instead, if I make a transaction over the virtual The currency, it's just an entry into the leader. So I don't need a manager. "
There is obviously flip side to the simplicity of a transaction that Bitcoin provides. The New York Supervisor of Financial Services Benjamin Pysky, who leads the accusation to check the digital currency in the United States, says that he is concerned about Bitcoin's freedom gives criminals: "It is very difficult to transport $ 1 million in a hard currency abroad. You can Not just put it in a backpack and get it on a very simple airplane. But it is very easy to do it now digitally with Bitcoin. "
This is said that Pysky is motivated about the possibilities of technology as Bitcoin, which can prevent all forms of transaction fees. It can be a bad news for local banks, credit card companies and other quotas seeking managers. But as questionnaires warns, many other benefit are: "Immediately there are thousands and thousands of New York residents who work every day to send money home to their families in any country they are. And how. A. Now they pay fees for these Thread transactions every week at the end of the week. And there is a lot of money for people who do not often afford it. "