This is like staring at a lava-lamp..........stoned. My question is, why should I or anyone cares?
Am I missing something important here?
The idea behind firstbits is that it allows you to identify an address without having to use a really long impossible to remember bitcoin address.
Assuming the following:
- My bitcoin address is 1Danny49wgfnwlkhiw4sf9wfp9wfeasps9fgu
- A transaction has been received and stored in the blockchain to this address
- No earlier transaction has ever been received to any address that starts with the characters "1Danny"
Then I can tell people that they can send bitcoins to my firstbits address "1Danny".
It's easy to remember and convenient for brand recognition (imagine McDonald's receiving bitcoin payments and advertising their bitcoin firstbits address as "1McD").
So, someone has gone and generated LOTS of addresses that use common words in the beginning of the address. This means that they are sitting on these addresses and nobody else can use those words as a firstbits address, since the person sitting on them is the first person in the blockchain using an address that starts with that sequence.
Now the person doing this might believe that they can re-sell control of these addresses to people who desire them, but anyone with any knowledge about bitcoin at all will realize that the addresses are not secure since the seller would know the private key and could steal any bitcoins received there.