"A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial in

"A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution." - Abstract from https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf The first line of the paper says: Commerce on the Internet has come to rely almost exclusively on financial institutions serving as trusted third parties to process electronic payments. Aside from the technical solution proposed in the paper, the points related to "trusted third parties" and "financial institutions" are key. This is a product designed to circumvent institutions. It would most probably not be received well by the institutions. There is too much philosophy, religion, politics, and drama around Bitcoin - and is a great vehicle for all human folly to be on display - greed, fear, prestige, cultism and so on and so forth. Of course, No one really knows how this experimental product will play out but it is intellectually engaging and largely serves the function it was designed for. It is fascinating to read critiques of this product (esp unsubstantive ones). There is no CEO, Customer Service, Executives, Managers etc that are really listening - unlike say, criticizing a company like Uber or Comcast. Therefore, most of the feedback just goes...nowhere and is just echoed amongst "people" (Echo chamber?). The inventor's mystique and politics further add to the cult-like qualities of this product - probably cognitive dissonance - because we have never seen a product launched like this ever before. As an author of these type of posts, one must really focus and ask what do they want to achieve. If they are warning the public about avoiding speculation (which is good motivation) then they need to make much better arguments. This article is lazy. I would even generalize and say that this constant "thought leadership" around Bitcoin is one of the most tiring things about Bitcoin - with people doing it for themselves and not really making good deep arguments for furthering everyone's understanding. It is tiring because all the points have been made - there is no new original thought (which would be great to discuss, actually). Bitcoin is an experiment. It is a pretty decent product, with some downsides (like inefficiency) for being "like money". Like a mycelium network [1] or Facebook, it spreads largely on its own. In some respects, Bitcoin is an amazing product. Maybe we let the experiment play out. We will see what happens. What is playing out is truly fascinating :) It would be great to see some new points being made so one can have an interesting discussion. [1] http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141114-the-biggest-organism-in-the-world http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141114-the-biggest-organism...