Bank of England explains why Bitcoin is unique and innovative

Gaming board.....

Fantasy Sports Board may work too.

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Are you beginning to notice nobody cares anymore?

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I expected that to happen when people began to realize they were wrong. The next step is to ask where this technology will begin to rear its head.

*hint*

The Internet of Things (ie, everything and everywhere)

*hint*

Well when IBM says it's the future... Hard to argue

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Your article argues in favor of the concept of a blockchain, not bitcoin itself.

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Josh isn't into facts.

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It doesn't. It even says bitcoin is risky.

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It's like I'm talking to apes.

How does one secure the network with a blockchain?

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Well when IBM says it's the future... Hard to argue

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How can you read something and come out with a totally different interpretation than everyone else on the planet?

Missed this thread, but got to read the report last week.

Did you actually read the full BoE report? Kind of echoes what many others here have been saying too.

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The article also argues that the economics of the schemes, as currently designed, pose significant challenges to their widespread adoption:

At a microeconomic level, a key attraction of some digital currency schemes at present is their low transaction fees. But the incentives embedded in the current design of digital currencies mean that these fees may eventually need to rise significantly, as usage grows.

At a macroeconomic level, most digital currencies, as currently designed, incorporate a predetermined path towards a fixed eventual supply – a feature which, in a purely hypothetical scenario in which the digital currency were used as the predominant form of money, would likely cause greater volatility in prices and real activity due to the inability of the money supply to vary in response to aggregate demand.

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At a macroeconomic level, most digital currencies, as currently designed, incorporate a predetermined path towards a fixed eventual supply – a feature which, in a purely hypothetical scenario in which the digital currency were used as the predominant form of money, would likely cause greater volatility in prices and real activity due to the inability of the money supply to vary in response to aggregate demand.

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Our money supply doesn't vary in response to aggregate demand (even if such a concept could be accurately measured and forecast). The broad US money supply (M2) has followed a very steady exponential function for the last two decades, compounding at 6-7% per year with very minor deviations through boom and bust. That's the amount of monetary inflation currently required to prevent a growing mountain of debt from defaulting, and the compounding rate of that monetary growth is gradually increasing even as interest costs on debt are driven closer to zero.

Monetary "stimulus" (inflation of the money supply) is essentially a permanent fixture now, and it must continue whether real economic activity increases or decreases. The true variable isn't money supply, it's how extreme the fed's actions must be to maintain that parabolic money growth curve, and how much they distort financial decisions in the process.

Bitcoin will fail, because in the end it will be subject to catastrophic value destroying manipulation. But that doesn't distinguish it from the current monetary system. And if the supply of bitcoin could be reliably constrained, over a long period it would prove superior to other forms of fiat money that inevitably succumb to human nature and government overreach.