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we... the article is a bit overblown in my view ... except maybe the last paragraphs: "The collision between universe's is a variation on this theme. "The "colliding universe" scenario can be realized as a simple extension of our earlier experiments simulating the spacetime geometry in the vicinity of big bang," he says. He simulates an expanding universe using concetric rings of gold separated by a dielectric. "When the two concentric ring ("universe") patterns touch each other ("collide"), a Minkowski domain wall is created, in which the metallic stripes touch each other at a small angle," he says. Being able to recreate these exotic events in the lab is certainly interesting but it is beginning to lose its novelty. The problem is that this work is not telling us anything we didn't know--the universe behaves the same way inside a metamaterial as it does outside. What Smolyaninov needs is a way of using his exotic materials to do something interesting. In other words, he needs a killer app. Any ideas? "

wow it's frigthening! it's the dream of every anarchist, every drug, arm, human dealer! the world made as a global fiscal paradise... the idea is clever however it will not replace real money because 1 - no one will build a fortune on bitcoin if a technological breakthrough can ruin them 2 - government never allowed parallel money to flourish on their territory, so it will be almost impossible to change bitcoin against euros or dollars

interesting stuff anyone read cryptonomicon by neal stephenson? similar theme.

:) yes. One of the comments on reddit was precisely drawing the parallels with Neal Stephenson's Snowcrash / Diamond Age / Cryptonomicon. Interesting stuff indeed. It has a lot of potential for misuse, but also opens up new possibilities. We've discussed recently how emerging technologies will drive social change. Whether it's the likes of NSA / CIA who will benefit the most from the Twitters, Facebooks and so on, by gaining greater power for control, or whether individuals are being empowered to at least an identical degree. We saw last year VISA / PayPal censoring WikiLeaks... Well, here's a way for any individual to support such an organization, in a fully anonymous and uncontrollable way...

One of my colleagues has made a nice, short write-up about BitCoin: http://www.pds.ewi.tudelft.nl/~victor/bitcoin.html

very nice analysis indeed - thanks Tamas for sharing it!

mmm I'm not an expert but it seemed to me that, even if these criticisms are true, there is one fundamental difference between the money you exchange on internet via your bank, and bitcoins. The first one is virtual money and the second one aims at being real, physical, money, even if digital, in the same way as banknotes, coins, or gold.

An algorithm wanna-be central bank issuing untraceable tax free money between internet users? not more likely than the end of the world supposed to take place tomorrow, in my opinion. Algorithms don't usually assault women though !:P

well, most money is anyway just virtual and only based on expectations and trust ... (see e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_supply) and thus if people trust that this "money" has some value in the sense that they can get something of value to them in exchange, then not much more is needed it seems to me ...

@Leopold: ok let's use the rigth words then. Bitcoin aim at being a currency ("physical objects generally accepted as a medium of exchange" from wikipedia), different than the "demand deposit". In the article proposed by Tamas he compares what cannot be compared (currencies, demand deposits and their mean of exchange). The interesting question is wether one can create a digital currency which is too difficult to counterfeit. As far as I know, there is no existing digital currency except this bitcoins (and maybe the currencies from games as second life and others, but which are of limited use in real world).