BitCoin Melbourne meetup Sep 2013
There was a slightly strange feeling to this meet up, in some ways it felt a little insular (I guess those who are actively involved with BitCoin are a small and intriguing community), but it could also just be because it was for once a crowd of folks I didn’t recognise. There was an underlying feeling of “Everything old is bad” and “Everything new is good”, which isn’t always completely true or as black and white as that. I find Bitcoin interesting technically and as a concept, if you think about the history of money, then bitcoin is no different really, it’s an agreement to trust that a concept has a mutual value between people. The money we use everyday is no different from BitCoin really, it’s just decentralised. This could be an entire post in itself, so take a read of Wikipedia’s History of Money article. Back to tonight, which contained several interesting discussions:
- BitCoin Point of sale units - These are emerging in a couple of places, such as pubs in the UK, but also soon to arrive here thanks to Mikey Nelson.
- How useful BitCoin could be for foreign travel and exchange
- A Bitcoin association is being founded in Australia
- The BitCoin ATM, a Lamasu
- If you want BitCoins to be accepted in certain stores, then ask for it, if more ask, the more chance it will happen.
- Apparently Elsternwick high st may be attempting a street wide acceptance of BitCoin.