10 Apr 2014 / The Guardian – No, you can’t open a Bitcoin bank account at JP Morgan Chase just yet.
And you certainly can’t pay your IRS tax bill in bitcoins: the taxman views the fledgling cyber-currency as an asset, not a means of exchange.
We can’t hold it in our hands, use it to fill up our cars with gas, or do much but grab the occasional sushi dinner in places like San Francisco, or shop online at the handful of merchants that accept bitcoins.
So is there anything at all that ordinary consumers can learn from the ongoing hullabaloo surrounding Bitcoin, the digital currency catapulted into the spotlight over the last year?
Most of us have been spectators as the drama has unfolded. First came the October 2013 raid that shut down Silk Road, an “underground” online marketplace billed as the Amazon.com or eBay of illegal drugs (as well as all kinds of other merchandise) for which users paid in Bitcoins. Bitcoins are created – or “mined”, in geek jargon – by computers competing to process bitcoin transactions, avoiding the need for a government’s central bank, like the Federal Reserve, to create dollars, Euros, yen or Swiss francs….. Read more
