re: #201 wheat-dogghazi

I’m dabbling in bitcoins mostly to see if I can make some money on its volatility, but I have serious doubts it’s going to be around very long. For one thing, governments and law enforcement agencies hate anonymous, or semi-anonymous currencies. Bitcoin fans live in their own little libertarian fantasy world, imagining that their pet currency can survive free of government interference. It’s not going to happen. Outfits like Coinbase are already following FinCEN regulations. Eventually, everyone will have to provide some ID to buy bitcoins, or trade online, and then it will become just another electronically traded commodity.

On the other hand, it does seem to be shaking up the normally torpid banking world. JP Morgan Chase may introduce its own digital “currency.” Western Union seems rather non-plussed, and PayPal has made it impossible to use PayPal to buy crypto-currency.

That last is going to be the rudest surprise to the dudebros. If Bitcoin survives for a while, much of its trading will be done by large trading institutions, simply because those are the places that deal in currencies. I predict 2014 will see a number of dudebro stories saying “The Big Banks are taking over our Bitcoins!!1”.