The crying of bitcoin lots

[kelber at mindspring.com]

OK, drug dealers use containers of Tide as currency, the Choco Pie is worth about $10 in the North Korean black market (to trade, not to eat), Chinese prisoners are forced to farm for virtual gold on World of Warcraft, people trade in bitcoins. The first two have inherent value (though those Choco Pies must get pretty stale), the latter two have value only as long as people keep the volley (or scam, more accurately) going. 

But there seems an additional value in bitcoins - the heady feeling of "we're on new ground, virtual though it may be, in a world of our own making, where we can create any social structures we want." Isn't that kind of what those there American Forefathers felt? Bleeding Edge is precisely about that loss of romance that the early internet first provided: we can dance if we want to! But that virtual world hasn't been completely tamed, and as long as oligarchs, capitalists, sex traffickers, drug dealers, and assorted techies of all stripes feel there are still places to hide there, the bitcoin can suck up value that it wouldn't have out in the real world. If anything, the bitcoin is the opposite of W.A.S.T.E. - a clandestine courier service not for the powerless and marginalized, but for the Big Boys.

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/01/14/why-would-drug-dealers-use-tide-as-a-currency

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/north-korea-bans-workers-from-receiving-choco-pies-as-black-market-trade-flourishes-9576923.html

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/may/25/china-prisoners-internet-gaming-scam

On Sun, Jul 6, 2014 at 7:33 PM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:

 Bitcoin always makes me think of Inherent Vice's gentle mockery of the
 folly of Beanie Babies. Scarcity (esp manufactured scarcity) does not
 equate value, and makes the bubble's burst even more inevitable.

-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l