One of the earliest anarchy writers described anarchy as being a system with universal suffrage under one nation, so technically you are wrong with how absolute your definition is for anarchy.

But the thing about anarchy is there really is no definition, ironically so, mostly because all the early writers had different theories under the same name.

It really is just a word that can fit most contexts you want to use it in. Like 'fuck'.

He said nothing about the quality of the currency. He has specifically stated that the quality of the currency is dependent on the quality of the society and the government, as a theoretical endpoint.

He clearly stated here "choice" of currency. People can choose to use bitcoin, government backed currency, or cigarettes.The choice is already yours.

There is nothing that society ever needs to fix about currency itself, as it always has and always will exist. Problems exist with laws that govern currency, bitcoin is likely not The Answer to those problems and doesn't really seem to offer a better alternative to the many problems already present with currency.

In a state of total anarchy, the ability to transfer value safely becomes an even bigger boon to survival: the worse things get, the more useful Bitcoin becomes.

This will be hard to do with no computers/internet in your hypothetical situation. I'll hold on to my AK and cigarrettes in this unlikely scenario and trade them for food/security.

You do realize that empirical evidence shows that the government has maintained a quite stable money system for a long time, yes? Volatility is one of the major concerns with bitcoin, and having a community based decentralized "central" bank in the first place. We are quite good at mitigating volatility in faith at this point in time.

Man this is some good entertainment, I wouldn't stop letting these people have it. For whatever reason I still hold onto tact on this website, but find your posturing quite entertaining.

Your description that people on this site often view things as cartoonish extremes is quite apt, especially considering how intelligent and knowledgable they think they are. /P

Not going to lie, I like this guy. I have seen most bitcoin arguments. They do not answer the questions of "how is this better than current currency" often enough. Yet it has been on slashdot's homepage for a while now.

I also support abolishing IP in favour of more humanistic property laws as is (kind of) mentioned in this guy's sig. I do not support bitcoin.Maybe we should mate or something?

i generally like the news that slashdot posts, but over my vacation over the last week or so I have engaged in many debates on this website with people I can only best define as crackpots.

I am not suggesting that there are no legitimate aspects to the bitcoin currency theory, nor that everyone that uses bitcoin is a crackpot, just that I can totally understand why someone on this site would just resort to trolling something like bitcoin after all the crackpots have exhausted the legitimate angles of their argumentative stance.

Not enough people that use and defend bitcoin know enough about currency and why we have evolved to the current money system over a long ass process of time, testing, and failures.Maybe if there were more knowledgable people in the field of monetary economics that used bitcoin and could help explain to people like me how this is an improvement, I might be willing to help other people adopt this standard.

Who uses cheques anymore? I couldn't disagree with this notion more. There are so many industries where transaction speed is critical. I had never seen the transaction speed issue with Bitcoin raised until I read this article and thread, and really that is a serious hurdle for mass adoption.

Credit is not money. In fact, it is not even included in the metrics for money supply. The 2008 recession was caused by misunderstanding the role of credit as it relates to money supply, and yes, your bank can pretty much always decide when your credit is no longer good with them.

Christ almighty, I did not realize it is already that slow.... If it can't be instant, it can't be The Currency. Sorry.

So glad someone finally said this in this thread. Though, I'm not glad for the same reasons you wrote this.

Everything can be hacked.

To suggest that bitcoin cannot be broken on some level is the same thing everyone has heard every day of the week regarding every computer related thing ever. I'm not sure history and empirical evidence bodes well for this point, though I am certainly no expert in anything.

In 2008, credit broke the value of everyone's money and it is not even a part of the money supply.

What does "fracturing your money supply at the exchange level" mean, and how is this different from the current currency system?

The rest of this comment seems to suggest that every exchange in the modern day in most countries I'd like to live in already isn't its own authority. One has the option of using a government backed currency, or some other form of currency such as cigarettes. How does bitcoin improve this situation?

It is theoretically debatable as to whether or not a centralized or decentralized money supply system is better. I posit that centralized is better, as we can vote for the people and computer systems used to manage the process, as well as maintain better systems of checks, balances, accountability, and transparency for those that are specialized in the knowledge base to manage these processes. I posit that the "community" or "open source" based system will not respond quickly enough when there are shocks to the system, and volatility will be less controllable. When shit hits the fan with the value of the bitcoin money supply, I posit that most in the "community" would rather not address the problem as it is not their job to do so. There has already been serious volatility to the value of the bitcoin due to some pretty minor scares. Currency only has value that its constituents put faith in, and if suddenly someone (everyone) loses faith in bitcoin what happens? Either way monetary supply must be governed in accordance to fiscal policy, as the two have dramatic effects on each other.

What supporters of Bitcoin continuously forget is that we do not have problems with currency: we have problems with the laws that govern currency.

To suggest that Bitcoin is the answer for currency is false as there will always be many types of currency. Like a debate about religion or communism vs capitalism, there is no perfect currency, there is a set of currencies we will continuously use in conjunction with each other.

That being said, when there is finally one world government I can put my faith and vote in (probably won't happen within my lifetime) I can support having one major world currency. This currency might contain elements of bitcoin theory and technology, but I would not put money on bitcoin technology being The Answer in this case either.

Mathematics may be the answer to the universe, but I don't know if bitcoin is.

With every OS/Application/computational process that has ever come out the same story rings true:

My system can't be beat. It is the most infallible and secure of any system.

Then it gets beat.

Umm. If I were to list ten nations off the top of my head, I would imagine that all ten of these nations have a system where Money Supply is controlled by the people.

Why is this? This is because you have a vote. You elect officials to make decisions for you. These officials appoint other officials to specialize in making decisions for them, using computer systems as well as human context.

I would rather vote for my money system in 2013 rather than flip a switch in order to use some non-National currency that bears no relevance to domestic fiscal decisions.

Until there is a world government I have faith in, I will have no faith in a global currency, or online currency.

Even at that point it is entirely debatable as to whether or not a "decentralized" central bank is better than the current models we use, and I sure as hell am giving no power to any groups associated with Bitcoin, especially if I have no vote in the matter.

As it stands in the real world in 2013, currency, by definition is pseudo-anonymous. Bitcoin does nothing to improve the situation here, and anonymity is not always the optimal situation for every transaction (nor law enforcement).

As a non-Muslim, completely non religious person that has recently read the Bible, the Quran, and the Chumash, I feel like this statement is incredibly bigoted. All of your follow up statements only cement my feelings about your bigotry.

The only way you can state this without being bigoted is if you also state that every organized religion is an evil ideology rooted in racism, and not respectful of peace. No religion should be taught in public schools (save for topical interest/history classes) and I have no idea why you brought this into an article discussion regarding CS education. You could have simply stated that some schools are misappropriating their funds/energy on various other types of programs, when there money/energy would be better spent with programs like Computer Science.

To counter your bigotry, I posit that in order to protect its survival and serve its own self interests, every organized religion is constantly waging a war for your "soul," also known as your money/goods/services/time. This is done in many ways with many tactics or justifications, but the end goal of every major world religion is for one religion to reign supreme - be it the Yahweh/Allah schools of thought or some other totally cool god/gods I've never heard of. Faith does not co-exist with other organized faiths, as every faith is right and no faith uses the scientific method to show how much more right said faith might be. How is the Muslim ideology that much different than that of the Jewish and Christian faiths when all three schools of thought believe in the exact same mythical character that governs the universe?

Maybe, instead of more Computer Science education for kids and teens around the globe, we should just have more education focused in logic.

This should help create better theory around computational processes and design anyways, and would prevent entire internet posts from being written - like the one I am responding to right now..

I also had no idea what on earth this K. S. Kyosuke (729550) was arguing about all over this article.

I hope I defended your screename and the position you put forth well over the duration of this thread.