Bitcoin ATM
I have lacked the energy to write a follow-up to my last post but will do so by the weekend. In the meantime, here are a couple of stories about a Bitcoin ATM.
Digital Money
Senate Committee Passes ECPA Reform
Today the US Senate Judiciary Committee marked up the Video Protection Privacy Act (VPPA) which included updates to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) passed in 1986 (before the proliferation of email and cloud computing, etc.). The ECPA language, if adopted into law, would require a warrant…
A cell phone solution to coin shortages
Lars Christensen observes that in Zimbabwe a company called EcoCash, which allows customers to bank through their cell phones, is helping to solve the country's shortage of coins. During Zimbabwe's hyperinflation of the previous decade, local-currency coins disappeared because they were worth more as metal than as…
Let’s not get rid of our wallets just yet
The idea of purely electronic money, without notes and coins as hand-to-hand currency, has received attention not just for its potential convenience, but also for its potential to extend the range of central bank control in monetary policy, which some people consider a good idea. I see…
French miscellany
Recently I talked to the French economist Philippe Nataf, who has written about France’s era of partly free banking in the early 19th century (in The Experience of Free Banking, edited by Kevin Dowd and published in 1992). He mentioned to me that Friedrich Hayek once told…