For The Love Of Bitcoin

[karmicads]

>> Yeah, sorry, my passion for bitcoin, knows no bounds.

>Understood, but finding gems in the rough takes time that, frankly, I
>don't have. 

OK, I´ll try to help sort out the gems a bit.

>> I suppose I´d like to see bitcoin supported as a mainstream currency,
>> despite the lack of official ISO recognition. I imagine GnuCash not only

>I don't know what our policy is on adding non-ISO currencies to the list
>of currencies.

That would be a great start. In revision of this policy, I think it may be
poignant to consider the nature of currency, as shared information about
what the wider populous values. There are distinct qualitative differences,
between the officially supported ISO fiat currencies and that of an online
´viral´ currency like bitcoin. Firstly, bitcoin´s value is derived by direct
supply and demand of the marketplace, rather than being authorized by any
government mandate that it must be used as legal tender. The most obvious
problem with government fiat currencies in general, is that the extent of
their value, extends only as far as the legal mandate of their issuing
government authorities.

In an emerging global economy, the regional nature of our governments tends
to be problematic. As an Australian I have no need for American dollars. I
have nothing I can spend them on locally. Moreover, there has been a
noticeable vacuum in the market, for a unit of currency that transcends
national boundaries. There may then be a danger of one currency becoming the
predominant universal one. It would be a great pity if that currency
happened to be the US dollar, simply by the pervasiveness of American
culture. Itś not a race issue of course, but a re run of the old VHS vs
Betamax non-compatibility issue. No one government deserves the liberty to
control the global economy, just because itś currency has become a defacto
standard. 

Another obvious qualitative difference, is that physical cash currency,
can´t be sent over the internet. The ´information´ about shared value, is
stored on a physical medium, with obvious physical limitations. Of course
banks can transfer digital representations of any currency, but then we are
at the mercy of the global banking system, as we then require a trusted
intermediary to implement our transactions for us. Banks in turn, are
subject to the regional law and the regulation of national governments. The
existing fiat currency system, is locked into a nationalistic, centrally
authorized and controlled paradigm.

Without the advent of peer to peer information sharing, and then Satoshi
Nackimoto´s solution to the double spending problem, we might have been
forever stuck in this gridlock of a national monopolist impasse. The
American system of money distribution is particularly frightening, owing to
itś farming out of the money supply to private enterprise. I heartily
recommend the developers of GnuCash, reconsidering their whole concept of
money and the process by which the application itself might (perhaps
inadvertently) play into the existing paradigm, by exclusively honoring the
ISO standard of currency definition. Itś something that should give us all
pause. Might I humbly recommend that anybody interested in these matters,
Google ¨Money as debt¨ and ¨Money as Debt II¨

>> So, thatś a static exchange rate then is it? Iḿ under the impression that

>No.  It means that every transaction has a 'static' exchange rate.  But
>every transaction can have its own distinct exchange rate.

I think that´s what I meant actually. It´s static in the sense that itś not
updated in real time. So, every transaction will require a manually advised
exchange rate requiring user input. That´s the crux. As I understand it, for
the application to ´know´ what the current exchange rate is, it needs to be
informed by manual user input.

So the other side of the coin so to speak, is being able to have a live feed
to a currency with a known exchange rate that can be updated automatically,
in ´real time´. I don´t know how difficult that is for fiat currency, but in
the bitcoin world it appears to be a cake walk.

So those are the basic principals I would like to se GnuCash strive for.
Thanks for your time.

Regards Karmicads.



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