Free Talk Live

Bitcoin is apparently no better than a fiat currency.

littering, of course, that would mean that the paper fiat currency is, in fact, trash...

Max F. Albrecht turned an old vending machine into a Bitcoin vending machine. You feed [fiat] coins into the machine and it prints out a box with an easywallet.org link in it. Navigate to that link and you’ll see your bitcoin, which you can then send to whoever you want.

Manchester, New Hampshire - The Free State Project is using the new online currency Bitcoin as a creative new
promotional tool – ironically giving away free money, literally, to every subscriber on its mailing list.

The issue is whether Bitcoin will ever be so widely adopted that it acts like a real, stable currency. Right now, it’s more like a commodity with wild price swings on rumors, articles, anonymous chat-board postings, and well-publicized problems with theft. Most people should wait at least until those issues are resolved. Generally, however, average folks shouldn’t be making direct forays into currency trading; Bitcoin feels a bit like online investing, but it’s more like diving into foreign exchange with even less information on which to make currency calls.

Secretive Internet currency’s server hacked; money stolen

Upwards of $90,000 worth of Bitcoins have been stolen from an exchange service website this week, marking the second time in nearly two months that the cyber-currency has been compromised due to a security breach.

A few weeks ago the Royal Canadian Mint rolled out MintChip, a digital currency that is “better than cash.” It isn’t an alternative currency in that it’s a digital representation of the sovereign currency — the Canadian dollar.

The dollar may fall below 75 yen next year as it becomes the world’s “weakest currency” due to the Federal Reserve’s monetary-easing program, according to long-time partners-in-crime, J.P. Morgan.

Bitcoin sounds like something from science fiction: A purely digital currency, created by an anonymous hacker, that operates outside the world's traditional banking systems. The four-year-old currency is very real, though, and it's trading an all-time high, tripling in value in the last two months alone. One bitcoin is was worth about $40 U.S. dollars on Tuesday, and surged on Wednesday to nearly $49. That's up from around $13 in January, and 5 cents in 2010, according to Mt. Gox, the bitcoin market's main exchange.