Was reading about this today, sounds really interesting. Reminded me a bit of that story a few years back where some guy perpetrated a fraud in game currency on Better Than Life (or something like that) - which raised some interesting questions as the game currency trades on ebay and various other places for real money ie it has an exchange rate with the real world so arguably he'd committed a real crime. Anyway, seems that these Bitcoin things ought to be more secure than that - or are they?
For those who don't know what I'm on about
I'm interested in this lack of central control and how things such as inflation etc will work. I'm also not sure how new ones are generated - it says that they will be generated in decreasing amounts to a fixed finite level but who gets them? - and what it means for the currency. How likely is it to be superseded by another similar system etc etc?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin
Has anyone ever used these?
(I didn't know if this should go in politics or technology or what so I stuck it in miscellaneous)