Hi!
I just want to clear up some misconceptions about Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a digital, decentralized currency that is not controlled by any government or single entity. It has a supply cap of 21 million Bitcoins that will ever be produced so it is long term deflationary. Those 21M Bitcoins will take 140 years to be created at a rate of 25 BTC every 10 minutes which will cut in half in about 2016, and every 4 years after that. Bitcoin can not be counterfeited, is pseudo-anonymous, and cannot be charged back like a check or credit card (so recourse is difficult). You can send it anywhere in the world for little or no fees, so it makes transferring wealth cheap, easy, and difficult to tie to a name.
There is a public ledger of every Bitcoin transaction that takes place, so every coin is accounted for, and for processing these transactions (mining), the miner is paid for verifying/validating the transaction with the 25BTC block reward + fees, if any.
So you see, there are some pretty attractive traits to Bitcoin and the protocol behind it. Of course, there are also some downsides to it...
It is indeed believed that Satoshi Nakamoto controls around 1M Bitcoins. There has also been a lot of bad press surrounding the closing of MtGox (a Bitcoin exchange) and the customer funds locked away in the mess. These are not "Bitcoin" problems. Those are issues with bad programming of internet facing websites. The Bitcoin protocol is still being heavily developed and improved upon by some very brilliant developers. (BTW, it was coded in English because that is what C++ is written in, and it's the best language for the job.
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Bitcoin is backed by nearly 31 petahashes of collective distributed computation and by the protocol itself.
Let me ask you this; What is the USD backed by other than a government/military who forces you to accept it and will devalue it to oblivion on the whims of a few people? Definitely not Gold! This is not meant to be rude. I am really on your side and while I agree that a mass breakdown of electric/network infrastructure will render Bitcoin relatively useless, right now, it is a good thing as it puts control of your wealth back in your own hands. You are your own bank! If only to transact with someone across the globe, it has very real utility.
I prefer Silver or Gold when the $#!1 hits the fan, but for now, I do trade Bitcoin and use it to make online purchases, so I'm pro-Bitcoin!
Hopefully I covered all the bases.
I came here to get a BoB ready. I was actually quite surprised to find a Bitcoin discussion here.
~ZK