Hi everyone.
If you’ve been paying attention to my previous posts you probably already know that I’m into this new e-currency called Bitcoin, and that I made several posts about it (here, here , here and here). There is quite a lot of useful reading material about bitcoin out there, and I just came across some new reading material that I’d like to share with you. It is a paper written by a Yale Law School student. While this paper is still a preliminary draft I would still recommend it to new bitcoin users.
There is one thing that I’d like to mention. In the paper the author refers to bitcoin as a fiat digital currency. This is not true in the strictest sense of the word “fiat.” Bitcoin is not fiat because fiat money only has value due to government regulation or law. No government controls bitcoin so its value is not based on the fact that some government decreed that bitcoins are “legal tender.” Bitcoins are instead free-market money because PEOPLE choose to value them and to make use of them as a medium of exchange.
Anyways, technical details aside (I did say that the author’s paper is preliminary didn’t I?) here is the link where you can download a copy of this paper (PDF format):
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1817857
Enjoy!
Cheers,
Alan