I wish I could write like that guy. The article exaggerates the threat posed by Bitcoin and the will/ability of the custodians of state money to shut it down. But the argument prompts a question that has bugged me for a while now. How does it come about that one, but only one online exception to the old regime is allowed to flourish in each sector: Amazon, E-bay, Facebook, Paypal? Is it the logic of winner takes all or because a licence is granted to one exception that can be made to toe the line? I recall once an official of the Fed said they were in two minds whether to classify Paypal as a bank which would of course shut it down since it couldn't afford the overheads imposed as a result. But they didn't.I am sure there is a big fight coming up, but I don't think it will pit the new network economy against old bureaucratic power. We will not build a better worldindependently of the institutions that have organized humanity's leap in 200 years from living off the land to the threshold of global society: states, cities, capitalist markets, corporations, organized science and technology. It is more likely that successful developments will build on selective partnerships between large-scale bureaucracies and self-organized movements. In Latin America from the 90s the idea of "popular economy" sustained a new kind of alliance pushing for social democracy and linking small farmers, urban informal workers, industrial unions and branches of the state. Brazil's government under Lula organized a system of community banks which combined local currencies and microfinance with devolved decision-making. Some governments do play an indispensable role in support of bottom-up initiatives (think Jaures' associationisme). Just as the shipping firms of Bordeaux and Nantes played a major role in the French revolution and the industrialists of Milan and Turin in the Risorgimento, some capitalist firms today may also play a progressive part in bringing about greater economic democracy. Safaricom's sponsorship of mobile banking in Kenya (M-Pesa) is a striking example. So 'old radical' may not have much to offer the young after all, a perspective that reproduces the tired polarities of twentieth century revolutionary discourse. Keith On Fri, Oct 26, 2012 at 1:40 PM, Nick <nettime@njw.me.uk> wrote:

Interesting read.

States, and traditional financial authorities, seem to be a pretty good job of ensuring peoples use of bitcoin is outside their remit, by closing down the practical use of bitcoin exchanges which consider themselves 'legitimate,' c.f. the closure of intersango & mtgox's UK bank accounts.

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