With this weeks lawless -governmental -attacks on Wikileak and -free -speech, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can -not be trusted to handle money transactions. -A blog post from -Simon -Phipps on bitcoin reminded me about a project that a friend of -mine mentioned earlier. I decided to follow Simon's example, and get -involved with BitCoin. I got -some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me -some bitcoins to get started. I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon -for helping me remember BitCoin.
- -So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder? It is a digital -crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer -networks. It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central -control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments -and companies alike to block donations and other transactions. The -source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9 -for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command -line client builds just fine. Hopefully Jonas -will get the package into -Debian soon.
- -Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR. -There are companies accepting -bitcoins when selling services and goods, and there are even -currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided. There -are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising. If you -want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare, -you can even get -some for free (0.05 -bitcoin at the time of writing). Use -BitcoinWatch to keep an eye -on the current exchange rates.
- -As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my -machines. If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin -donations to the address -15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b. Thank you!
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