"To be successful, money must be both a medium of exchange and a reasonably stable store of value." - BitCoin isn't 'money' though. As for the Charlie Stross l

"To be successful, money must be both a medium of exchange and a reasonably stable store of value." - BitCoin isn't 'money' though. As for the Charlie Stross link and the claim that BitCoin is 'designed to damage central bankers' - that depends. It certainly is likely to have the effect of making central bankers more honest. Up until recently there were real consequences to printing free-money but after the 2007 financial crisis it seems central bankers banded together to collectively print money from nothing - it became ok as long as others were doing it too. Well the reality is that printing money does have repercussions and one could well argue that the rise of BitCoin is one such repercussion. Same with the global attempt to eliminate physical cash - it's all great to go digital but when the central bankers decide they want to force everyone to spend more with negative interest rates it can indiscriminately hurt an average worker trying to save money to buy a home! Same goes for taxation - governments think its easy to raise money by increasing taxation, the offshore finance industry used to keep a lid on that until they were cracked down on - digital currencies can fill that gap. Now there's no doubt that governments and central bankers might dislike control being taken away from them but to claim BitCoin hurts them is a bit like claiming jails hurt convicted felons... IMO.