The West

"I gave my grandfather a 100 BTC Casascius bar for Christmas back when BTC was around $10. It's worth a bit more now. Needless to say, my grandfather checks the ticker several times a day, and keeps up to date on Bitcoin news. He thinks it's really "nifty." He was concerned about the crazy volatility over the past 48 hours. My father sent him the following response, which I wanted to share... Here's an analogy. Bitcoin is often compared to the wild west, and it's a good comparison. Think about the wild west. You had all kinds of craziness going on. Millions of people heading westward. Indian tribes massacring each other and the settlers. Cavalry sweeping in and rounding up the Indians. Bad guys shooting it out in bank robberies. Cattleman at war with sheepherders. The transcontinental railway changing the paradigm constantly. And it goes crazy all over again when gold is discovered. And every few days there's a buffalo stampede that wipes out everything. The only thing you could count on was that civilization kept expanding, in fits and starts, but inexorably. Same thing here. The beauty and magic of bitcoin is precisely that it is so un-regulated and so free-market. That's why the market loves bitcoin. It's the wild west! It's freedom! And, yes, it's crazy. But in a good way. Don't like the West? Don't like the craziness? Stay in Boston." -- Erik Vorhees