What I find most interesting about Bitcoin are its inherent contradictions - the tragedy hidden amongst the tensions in the inventor's world-view. Some of the

What I find most interesting about Bitcoin are its inherent contradictions - the tragedy hidden amongst the tensions in the inventor's world-view. Some of the aspirations are really interesting - a currency which no-one controls, a currency without built in inflation, which is stable in value, a financial system with low fees and without government control, untaxable and ungovernable. A currency where the people own the means of production. The implementation however expresses the contradictions hiding beneath the surface of these seemingly benign ambitions: A stable currency cannot simultaneously be a valuable asset. A money supply which cannot be manipulated means an economy completely at the mercy of economic cycles. A system not amenable to government also means one not amenable to regulation. A fully distributed eventually consistent ledger cannot form the basis of a fast global payment system. A partially anonymous yet public ledger is open to abuse and but not redress. An immutable ledger doesn't match how we think of social transactions (which are usually reversible or revokable). A fixed money supply in practice means deflation, with all the problems even a little deflation causes. If nothing else I hope the bitcoin and cryptocurrency experiment brings us all to question just how much inflation is good, just how well politicians manage our economy, and how much good a fractional reserve banking and arbitrary money supply manipulation really does. Are the fictions and confidence tricks we live by at present much better than the cryptocurrency systems proposed? Perhaps marginally, but they too will be replaced in time with something better, hopefully something which no one government controls. This development though hints at a darker future, where corporations issue or control their own money supply, and force others to use it.