When you rely on incentives, you undermine virtues. Then when you discover that you actually need people who want to do the right thing, those people don't exist because you've crushed anyone's desire to do the right thing with all these incentives.
I think we do have to take off the gloves in some areas, but within balance, and at the right time and the right way, and for the right reason and with full understanding of what the consequences of that might be.
When the Bitcoin white paper emerged in 2008, it was completely revolutionary. The amount of concepts that had to come together in just the right way - computer science, cryptography, and economic incentives - was astonishing.
And when you take something like the changing colour of autumn leaves and start to ask why, you're starting off on an intellectual journey which will take you beyond that moment of visual satisfaction, while robbing nothing from that experience.
I think the fact that within the bitcoin universe an algorithm replaces the functions of the government is actually pretty cool. I am a big fan of bitcoin.
Within my social circle, there is a large group of people who will take bitcoin as legal tender; like, you can go to them and settle debts in Bitcoin, and they will happily take it.
Isn't the purpose of bitcoin mining simply to get rich - or not, as the case may be? Well, at 21, we are less concerned with bitcoin as a financial instrument and more interested in bitcoin as a protocol - and particularly in the industrial uses of bitcoin enabled by embedded mining.
Because the supply of Bitcoin is limited, the price of Bitcoin is going to have to increase and increase very substantially over time. My advice is that if you're interested in Bitcoin and excited by Bitcoin, then buy some Bitcoin and hold onto them, and you're likely to do very well over time.
Putting on weight is easy all the way through. But after the first couple of weeks, the novelty wears off very quickly, and your body is groaning and starting to really shout at you, saying, 'Why? Why? Why? Why are you doing this?'
Well, bitcoin is a currency. Bitcoin has no underlying rate of return. You know, bonds have an interest coupon. Stocks have earnings and dividends. Gold has nothing, and bitcoin has nothing. There is nothing to support the bitcoin except the hope that you will sell it to somebody for more than you paid for it.
Bitcoin was created with security in mind. The Blockchain is Bitcoin's public ledger that records every transaction in the Bitcoin economy.
The scripting language in Bitcoin is important because it is what makes Bitcoin 'programmable money'. Within each Bitcoin transaction is the ability to write a little program.
The bitcoin protocol is about mining bitcoin, not pricing bitcoin. There is nothing in the protocol about establishing a market price for bitcoin; you need a market for that, but what if all the exchange markets are shut down?
It's completely reasonable, even if some Bitcoin currency purists wouldn't like it, to have credit and debit card payments denominated in Bitcoin rather than dollars, and net settled on Bitcoin instead of on Fedwire.
Gold actually has properties - you can use gold for all sorts of things. People value gold for the metal. Nobody values bitcoin for the bitcoin; they value it because they believe that they can exchange it for something else.
Bitcoin is valuable as a currency because of the economic efficiencies the bitcoin network is already creating as transactions flow over it. As with the Internet, more applications will flourish which will make the bitcoin network, and thus bitcoin as a currency, valuable.