Friday, May 20, 2011

Encrypted currencies and darknet economies

Bitcoin ushers in the Diamond Age.

Amplify’d from c4ss.org

Jason Calacanis and his colleagues at LAUNCH describe it as “The Most Dangerous Project We’ve Ever Seen” (May 15, 2011).  Not only is it “the most dangerous open-source project ever created,” but “possibly the most dangerous technological project since the Internet itself.”  It “could topple governments, destabilize economies and create uncontrollable global bazaars for contraband.”

The beauty of it is there’s no central server network to shut down. Just as with file-sharing, Bitcoin is traded from one desktop or mobile device to another via public key encryption.  So short of catching and prosecuting end-users with harsh punishments, there’s no way to stop it.  And we all know how well that’s worked out for the proprietary content companies.

Read more at c4ss.org