Bitcoin, just die already!

I'm a Bitcoin guy. I believe in the liberty from fiat that Bitcoin provides. I am sold on the concept of having no central authority that has the power to devalue currency. I believe that Bitcoin is the solution to the payment problem that startups have been working on for a decade. It is too expensive for business owners to get paid.

We have credit card companies taking 3% off the top of our revenues. Credit cards are the major method of taking customer money in America and the real costs of taking credit cards can end up being 7-10% after considering equipment costs, start-up costs, transaction charges, and end-of-month fees. This is ridiculous and needs to end. Bitcoin solves the problem. Up to the current $2.3B market cap of Bitcoin, payment fees on unlimited purchases are essentially zero. No central agency can take a cut. Bitcoin is the most revolutionary thing to come to money since the advent of paper currency. It is money in the digital age.

Minimum wage misery

There is currently a media storm over the minimum wage. McDonalds workers in the US are complaining about their $8.25/hour wages and want $15/hour. The mainstream media is currently putting out articles about the suffering of hardworking employees earning low wages. What's the real story behind the wage situation in restaurants and retail where much of America works?

Where is the best place to travel?

I am from America. Today, a doctor from India told me that America is the best country in the world. Other days I am told that Americans should be wiped from the face of the Earth. Being from America, I have a less extreme view but have an intense belief in freedom that makes life in America unsuitable for me at the present time. I am a product of a melting pot where we have numerous ethnicities, religious groups and ways of seeing the world. Through living in NE Asia, I have learned to welcome ideas that diametrically oppose my own. I have lived in or traveled through twelve countries in NE and SE Asia. It is the region of the world that I feel most comfortable and where I hope to stay for a long time.

A New Moral Paradigm

The source code for an anonymous black market (non-gov't approved) website was found and published by a hacker. When the owner of the black market site realized that his code was public, he took down the site for the safety of his users.

The hacker explained: “It was not our aim to bring the website down, we just published the leak because if we had it, enforcement and private hackers could have it as well, trouble could arise if the leakage would have been exploited without people knowing. We have no contact with any of the involved parties (the owner of the site).”

The question is, "Is this behavior moral?" Of course most logical for the hacker who found the source code is to simply tell the site's owner. The owner was public and could be easily communicated with on the site.

However, hackers have a slightly different moral system. For hackers who believe in "open source," of course it makes sense to make the source code of the website public. They take no responsibility for the repercussions that the revealing causes.

Julian Assange and Edward Snowden are believers in this same morality of transparency for all. Google and Facebook as well. In this new moral system, all information is public and extrapolated to find out more than what is voluntarily released. What is the result when nefarious governments share in the knowledge gathering?

Click here for the answer: We're All Edward Snowden Now

My Deep Dark Secret

I'm going to let you in on a secret of mine that no one in the world knows about me. Are you ready for it? OK, here it goes...