{"id":15882,"date":"2014-01-21T21:53:17","date_gmt":"2014-01-22T02:53:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=15882"},"modified":"2014-01-21T22:12:45","modified_gmt":"2014-01-22T03:12:45","slug":"why-bitcoin-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2014\/01\/21\/why-bitcoin-matters\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Bitcoin Matters"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New York Times<\/em> has the article Why Bitcoin Matters<\/strong><\/a> by Marc Andreessen.\u00a0 It is hard to pick just one of the reasons to quote here from all the reasons that Andreessen makes clear in his article.\u00a0 Here is one that I thought might get your interest.<\/p>\n

In addition, merchants are highly attracted to Bitcoin because it eliminates the risk of credit card fraud. This is the form of fraud that motivates so many criminals to put so much work into stealing personal customer information and credit card numbers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You have to read the article for many more reasons why Bitcoin matters.\u00a0 One that particularly interests me because I have talked about it on this blog a number of times is:<\/p>\n

A third fascinating use case for Bitcoin is micropayments, or ultrasmall payments. Micropayments have never been feasible, despite 20 years of attempts, because it is not cost effective to run small payments (think $1 and below, down to pennies or fractions of a penny) through the existing credit\/debit and banking systems. The fee structure of those systems makes that nonviable.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

My first discussion of micropayments was in my proposal in the post Monetizing Internet Content<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0 I then tried another post to get alternative news media to consider micropayments instead of begging for subscriptions in Alternative News, Please Stop Your Pathetic Begging<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Bitcoin can be a major component in my proposed solution for monetizing internet content.\u00a0 The “Publisher’s Clearing House”, “Google”, “Amazon”, or “PayPal” type of company could create a business using Bitcoin internally to offer the service to small operations trying to monetize their internet content.\u00a0 With Bitcoin, a small startup could make a business providing this service before the big guys even figure it out.\u00a0 For all I know Marc Andreessen’s venture capital firm may already be funding such a startup, since he already mentions this use in his article.<\/p>\n

For all you people who are having trouble getting your mind around fiat money, Bitcoin ought to boggle your mind.\u00a0 Marc Andreessen’s article make take a little of the boggle out.<\/p>\n

Other previous posts that have touched on Bitcoin are The Behavioral Economics of Bitcoin<\/strong><\/a> and The One Crucial Detail That Could Sink Legal Pot in Colorado<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

This Andreessen article may dispel a myth that might have come to mind in the legal pot article.\u00a0 That is that Bitcoin makes these transactions anonymous and untraceable.\u00a0 In that one way, it makes Bitcoin unlike a $20 bill.\u00a0 Oh by the way, the traceability also does not make it like a credit card transaction either.<\/p>\n

Thanks to Cedric Flower for posting a link to this article on his Facebook page<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The New York Times has the article Why Bitcoin Matters by Marc Andreessen.\u00a0 It is hard to pick just one of the reasons to quote here from all the reasons that Andreessen makes clear in his article.\u00a0 Here is one that I thought might get your interest. In addition, merchants are highly attracted to Bitcoin […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-15882","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-stevegsposts","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15882"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15882\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15887,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15882\/revisions\/15887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}