NP - Bitcoin and the Bleeding Edge

[Prashant Kumar]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/apr/10/bitcoin-new-high-losing-160

"Bitcoin <http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/bitcoin>, the digital
currency, lost more than $160 (£104) in value on Wednesday, just hours
after hitting a record high.

The currency hit a new high of $266 before falling to $105 and then
bouncing back to $130. The fall is unlikely to put off speculators. Two
months ago, a Bitcoin was worth $20"

See data here:
http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg60ztgSzm1g10zm2g25zv

Intro para at wiki is good summary. The money supply is automatically
generated, and transactions are processed and secured
cryptographically. Basically
one uses idle CPU time to process transactions, so called
"bitcoin-mining". There
is some transaction fee paid to "miners" according to the difficulty of the
calculation (how much CPU time is used).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin

Everyone is calling it unstable; as per the article "tulip-mania" is the
phrase of choice. A US SEC report noted that it shares some features of a
Ponzi scheme (!).

On Friday night some people on the Bitcoin subreddit /r/bitcoin posted that
they'd just become millionaires; by now they'd have lost half their wealth.

Dotcom 2.0? Wondering what our resident financiers think of it, and its
recent "crash"?

Prashant
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