Wikipedia. I am still very skeptical but I want to be a part, because I love the ideals and the implementation. Here are my two reservations about bitcoin:
1. the longterm viability of mining/transaction fees is really dubious to me. Even now, as evident in this thread, people are not mining because it is not profitable. It should always be profitable, whether it is by mining or by transaction fees. Thoughts, all disclaimed with a "maybe":When they cut the reward in half, sh*t is gonna happen, right? Even after the transaction fees stabilize, only the miners with access to the cheapest electricity and most efficient machines will come out on top. Nobody else will be able to compete. Is it heading towards a monopoly? Also, why not gradually reduce the reward instead of cutting it in half intermittently? It's pre-programmed market trauma, as it now stands.
2. Some more "maybes": The vision seems too small scale. People talk all day about how infinitely divisible coins is so amazing, but it's really not that great considering that a very small handful of people are sitting on 5%ish of the long term total and 12%ish of btc in circulation. I realize that they deserve a payoff, and that early adopters in any bubble are rewarded. But until all of the hoarders and speculators (early and newcoming) start spending, btc will remain a daytrading playground and retirement delusion. Hell, I wish Mt. Gox made their limit even smaller. I also think the 21 million get out way too fast.
Unless we have a few more Mt. Gox freakouts in a short time, I think btc will be around for awhile.
1. Why would mining become a monopoly? There's many people with good electric rates that have huge mining farms - not just one person. And to make the argument that in the future, mining will be viable to few enough people that Bitcoin is susceptible to a 51% attack, you'd have to do some detailed analysis to figure out what total hashing power makes staging a 51% attack practical/profitable. Mining doesn't need to be profitable to everyone, just so long as there are enough miners to secure the network from a single party taking over the network.
2. I agree with you there. Having 7% of the coins owned by a single person (Satoshi), and several others with smaller whole percents is absurd if this can ever hope to be a currency on the scale of the USD. The current richest man in the world only has enough wealth to equate about 0.5% of the USD in circulation.
Who knows though - maybe 50 years down the road, if none of those original coins are moving, people might assume that Satoshi got hit by a car and died, without leaving anyone else any information about his wallet. In other words, those coins would be assumed dead and never moving.