According to Greg Bensinger, writing in "Will Bitcoin Be Accepted by PayPal?", the eBay subsidiary PayPal is considering adding Bitcoins, a virtual currency which has fluctuated wildly over recent weeks, to the set of currencies amongst and between which it currently facilitates money transfers. According to its chief executive, PayPal appears to be attracted to the increasingly accepted Bitcoins precisely because "it’s a new disruptive technology" (2013, ¶ 3), even though the US government has recently said it will treat Bitcoins the same way it deals with other money transfers.
I first heard of Bitcoins a couple of months ago, when it was, I think, relatively unknown, but already on the way up. Then over the past few weeks, there was an explosion of news reports on this new currency in all of the newspapers and magazines I regularly read: not just the regular news sources such as BBC News, The Economist and The New York Times, but also the science magazines I follow, which include New Scientist and Scientific American. Why would a science magazine be reporting on a strange new financial tool? Because of the mathematics and computer techniques that underlie this virtual currency. I don't want to give away too many details before we conclude our discussion on the inherent inflationary tendencies of Bitcoins, but it uses encryption, which is mathematics, to store and transfer money between online wallets, and everything is wholly outside of government support and interference. I'm not about to start using it, but I like the idea and will be watching to see how it develops since it seems to suggest how citizens might free themselves from the grasp of excessively controlling governments.
It also reminded me yet again of how increasingly quickly technology is changing the world we live in. The Wall Street Journal article mentions as examples of other disruptive technologies Kazaa and Napster, which have come and gone, but left in their trails a world of online sharing that did not exist even ten years ago. And I'm now looking forward to getting rid of my 600+ collection of DVDs when Thailand joins the rest of the world of online movies, which progress is being hindered by the massive intellectual property theft that is still too common in Thailand, with citizens who mistakenly think they are honest regularly stealing by buying pirated DVDs, software and the like. I've already given up buying paper books these past couple of years, now buying Kindle versions of every book I want: paper had a long run, but I think it's going the way of film photography. Do you remember that? Once upon a time, about ten years ago, taking photographs meant buying a roll of film, putting it into a camera, snapping of a mere 36 shots, changing to a new roll of film, taking it all to a shop and paying them a fortune to have the film developed and paper copies of the photographs printed, and paying more if you wanted to post (as in an envelop) to a friend a relative. Today, taking a photograph means whipping out your mobile, clicking, and viewing the uploaded photograph online before sharing with whoever you want, to the great relief of the millions of trees and other resources that are not gobbled up to indulge our little pleasures.
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