casascius
Mike Caldwell
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Activity: 1386
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The Casascius 1oz 10BTC Silver Round (w/ Gold B)
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November 01, 2011, 11:23:27 PM |
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I just did a Skype interview with a CBS affiliate in Arizona. If I recall correctly, they said they expect to air their piece a week from Thursday (which would be Nov 10). Questions I was asked centered on two themes: one, the security of Bitcoin and what I thought about the hackings and thefts, and two, why Bitcoin, what Bitcoin is "good for" besides illegal things, why exactly I was interested in Bitcoin, like whether I was against government, etc.
Regarding security, I basically told them that the first run of Bitcoin required people to keep their coins on their computer or a website, both of which are unsafe and that theft was bound to happen. He asked if I was worried that my bitcoins would get stolen, I said no, I have never been a victim, because I keep them on paper. I held up a bitaddress.org paper wallet, told them bitcoins are just numbers and that if you keep the numbers on a piece of paper, they aren't going to get hacked.
Regarding what Bitcoin is good for, I acknowledged that illegal things happen with Bitcoin (just like cash) and that Bitcoin may not exactly be a more convenient way to pay for groceries, but that there are a lot of use cases that just haven't caught on - like remittances to Mexico and payments for goods from China - compared it to PayPal and noted that some people just philosophically don't like someone saying who they can and can't pay, they just want to send money from point A to B without a lot of questions, and that Bitcoin will survive as long as there's a demand for that.
He asked if I was anti-government, noted that others are reluctant to reveal their identity, and I basically said nope, I'm not doing anything illegal, nothing to hide, I'm just a fan of the technology and believe the government could adopt it for their own uses once they understood it. That we have a constitution of checks and balances, and that bitcoin is just another check and balance available to the people on their government. That I'm a geek - other people go to bars for fun - I get off on this kind of stuff. Told him that if the government knocked on my door, they'd find me cooperative, that it's an open source project they have just as much right as anybody else to understand, and that they probably would have a better idea of what they want to do next if they knew more about how bitcoin worked.
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