Hacker News Reader

> That is a strange argument.

If Bitcoin was closed source, I'd agree with you.

But it's not, and I don't. Bitcoin is 100% transparent and reviewable: the code, the transactions. The same cannot be said for any national or bank electronic monetary system.

As a technical person, I'd trust an open source system more than closed source system any day of the week.

View on HN

It's not that you need to trust the implementation, it's that you need to trust that the currency will remain useful and usable over time. If nobody believes that they can purchase things using bitcoins tomorrow, nobody will buy them today. There's just as much (if not more) blind trust required in bitcoin, because at least fiat currency is backed by a government. Bitcoin isn't.

I think there are two different senses of the word "trust" being used here.

The big play is requiring that taxes be paid in the fiat currency, creating a known future demand for it.

> As a technical person, I'd trust an open source system more than closed source system any day of the week.

You just said it: you trust. You trust Bitcoin because you can (and perhaps already have) review the code, the theory, the blockchain. But it's still trust, and you probably value Bitcoin only because of that trust.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com