Stumbled across BTC yesterday...

Yesterday, I got bored and decided to look up some information on bitcoins. Now, you may have heard of these in the news recently. Bitcoins are a type of virtual currency whose value is only rising. There are only so many bitcoins, which are actually hashes. These hashes are "mined" using difficult mathematical processes, and are then distributed. When the U.S. treasury determines we need more money, they print it. Well, when more bitcoins are needed, they're hashed, or 'mined.'

What's the big deal?

There are a few cool things about these. One, there is no one person watching over them. So this means no one person to defraud the rest of the group or to steal the money out from everyone's noses. It also means there is no one person keeping things honest, either. Is it possible to steal coins? Yep. It's also much more difficult to get away with it.

Second, there's no centralized point of production. A few years back, a popular game called Second Life had created a virtual digital currency called Lindens, or $L. Now these $L could be cashed out of the game for real money. The feds were going nuts about how they'd control gambling, smuggling, money laundering, etc because you could very easily pay for real life goods and services in game. However, they could be tracked through IP addresses, etc. I remember we weren't sure if the federal government was going to shut down the virtual currency or let it keep going.

With Bitcoins, that's not a concern. These things are being produced and exchanged all over the world. You shut one place down, there are hundreds more popping up like it. Even the original creator wouldn't be able to shut it down at this point, I don't think. Even if he could technically shut down on his end, the people using it have given it value and they'll keep it going. The only way to get rid of these things would be to completely shut down the Internet all over the world. I can pretty much guarantee that if that happened, we the people would simply create our own Internet, even if we had to start from the very beginning and recreate telephone networks.

Third, I hate to be repetitious here, but the people using it are giving it value. Real world stores and restaurants are now accepting bitcoins (btc) as a form of payment. You can load prepaid anonymous credit cards with the bitcoins and use that anywhere.

Are there other virtual currencies?

There are, easily, half a dozen other virtual currencies out there. With Bitcoins rising success, other people want to duplicate it. Competition is good. That's what keeps things honest. Our banking industry has had no competition and therefore, no need to keep things honest.

How well these other currencies take off will be determined by us, the people who do or do not use them. The others don't seem to be set up in the same way, so that could be why they aren't as popular as this monetary system is. The creators of BTC, (bitcoins) wanted to do everything they could from the beginning to protect the users from fraud and theft. Since there is no one person running it, there's no one person to run away with the money. The other systems don't seem to be set up that way.

Why are people turning to virtual currencies at all?

This could be a whole blog post all on it's own, but to give the short version, "Dude, people are MAD!" They are royally pissed off both at the banking industry and at our government. They see that our government is controlled by banks and corporations. They want to return our country back to the people but it is widely known that this cannot be done if we continue to rely upon the very monetary system which breaks us down and controls us.

Everyone thought that the Occupy movement disappeared, but it didn't. This is just one result of that movement.

We have lost so much as a nation and many don't even realize it. We don't even have our privacy anymore. Everything we do is widely known by government and Google. (Sorry Google, but it's true.) Since when are my purchases any of someone else's concern? My online identity and my real world identity are nobody else's business but mine. Internet censorship is alive and well, now. I can't breathe without somebody else knowing about it. And neither can you.

This is why virtual currencies are taking off. A large amount of people around the world are ready to take the power away from government and put it back in the hands of the people. If nobody is using their currency anymore, they don't have that power.

Woah dude! You are talking treason!!!!

Actually, I'm not. I don't want anyone to over throw the government simply because no matter who we put into place, within months they will be just as corrupt as the guys there now. We need government officials to act in our best interest, and 90% of the time, they do. We just don't hear about the times they do something good for us! We hear about the 10% on a daily basis, but not the 90%, ever.

So of course, when all that we hear is the negative stuff, we forget about the great and wonderful things they do for us, such as keeping North Korea from nuking the crap out of our great nation.

In reality, this digital currency, all of the virtual currencies, are merely a symptom of the problem. So, NSA and CIA, as (and if)  you read this post, pass the symptom along to your officials.

The problem is we the people have no privacy, and no voice anymore. We're being over taxed and under represented. The last time that happened, a lot of good tea got wasted.

Part two, titled 'what can we do with BTC' will be posted tomorrow. Unless I forget, that is, which is completely possible.