[ExI] Golden Age

[spike at rainier66.com]

From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of Rafal Smigrodzki via extropy-chat



 

 

### I am looking forward to meeting Hal once his brain is scanned and uploaded. He did have the best possible suspension, it was done under controlled conditions after he chose to have his ventilator switched off. 

 

It's more than the memory of Hal that will (hopefully) live forever.

 

Rafal 

 

 

 

 

May it be so sir.  Hal Finney was a very special person.  He was a very rare combination of smart, kindhearted, insightful, activist, modest along with even athletic.  That combination is seldom found in the same guy.  I will never forget our discussions: I was nobody, but he treated me as an equal.  What a guy!

 

This is his critically important insight: he was the one who realized that anything which can be owned and which was inherently limited in quantity could be used as a currency of sorts.  Currency didn’t actually need something backing it.  In the old days, currency was backed by gold, but governments quietly stopped backing currency with gold (or anything.)  Proles kept trading in it just the same.  They weakly promised to not print it in arbitrary quantities, and most governments mostly keep that promise, but eventually Zimbabwe, Venezuela printed their own currency to worthlessness.  Now the USA appears to be following their lead.

 

But the way BitCoin is designed, it is inherently impossible to generate arbitrary quantities of it.  Hal recognized that a currency doesn’t need gold behind it, or anything else, so long as its supply is limited.

 

spike

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