Bitcoin & The End of State-Controlled Money: Q&A with Jerry Brito

Bitcoin is the world's first fully decentralized, peer-to-peer (p2p) virtual currency. It allows users to make anonymous and untraceable cash transactions anywhere in the world without any sort of real-world intermediary. So unlike PayPal and other online services, it can't be squeezed in the same way by governments or other control agents.

Created in 2009 by a shadowy figure who goes by the name Satoshi Nakamoto, there are currently about 6 million bitcoins in circulation. That number will eventually rise, in regular intervals, to a total of 21 million by 2033. A money system without any sort of central bank? A currency whose supply increases at a steady and predictable rate according to a concept elucidated by the Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman?

Just how revolutionary is Bitcoin?

Reason.tv sat down with Mercatus Senior Research Fellow Jerry Brito to learn how Bitcoin operates and what the implications are for traditional state-based fiat currencies. "Whether Bitcoin succeeds or fails is neither here nor there," says Brito, who predicts that currencies in the future will almost certainly be deregulated and decentralized - with or without governments' consent.

Read Brito on Bitcoin here (http://techland.time.com/2011/04/16/online-cash-bitcoin-could-challenge-governm­ents/) and here (http://techliberation.com/2011/04/16/bitcoin-imagine-a-net-without-intermediari­es/). For responses to his critics and more info on Bitcoin, go here (http://techliberation.com/2011/04/20/bitcoin-intermediaries-and-information-con­trol/).

About 2.30 minutes.

Interview by Nick Gillespie; shot and edited by Joshua Swain.

Go to Reason.tv for downloadable versions, and subscribe to Reason.tv's YouTube Channel to receive automatic notifications when new material goes live.

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[DCUPtoejuice]

If you like bitcoin, you'll love Ron Paul

[InquisitionSpanish]

@TheAerosmither You can't touch dollars either. 96% of all dollars exist as 1s and 0s on a computer. At the end of the day, those coins and notes mean nothing either. Money is value added to arbitrary items.

If you want to know why Bitcoins are so much better, search "What is Bitcoin?" in Youtube and watch the video.

Oh, and if you think this is the government's doing, you're wrong. The project is open source meaning anyone can review the source code and see exactly what the program does.

[TheLogicJunkie]

It's so good to see Peter Brady again. I always worry about former child stars.

[ssj4goko4]

bitcoin cost more in power to mine then there value. it died when they had those 2 big robbery's.

[jaberwocky6669]

@diggingforgold "Fiat money is money that derives its value from government regulation or law." -- Wikipedia

[diggingforgold]

If it's not backed by anything, wouldn't that be fiat?

[Cpillin425]

Print out your bitcoin wallet, photocopy it, enjoy counterfeit bitcoins = )

[survivalrod]

Bitcoin rocks!

[FreedomRebel]

wooohooo i already have 0.01063465 bitcoins !

[xboy105]

@Free3dTitles Then that would mean that the person having their wallet stolen stole from another person and that person stole from another person and so on and so on. But wait, something cant be stolen from someone if it wasnt "created" at one point. So yes, we ourselves technically cant forge bitcoins but no they are not something to be stolen. This video explains it pretty well /watch?v=9Xz87uhOPN4

[xboy105]

@ShOwStOpp3rr Check out this video, it explains it pretty well /watch?v=9Xz87uhOPN4