It is more than common for banks to invest and hype markets (ie. chase artificially pumping the Facebook IPO). They can because of their sheer size, so why not?
Their sheer size also represents two reasons against their investing significantly in bitcoin: one, any buying or selling on their part will significantly move the price of BTC because the markets are so thin, and two, there are regulations that force them to control risks, and I'm not sure what, if anything, such regulations have to say about buying cryptocurrencies.
"The trick is that that the frame is basically a optically-triggered slave-mode flash unit that’s placed right up to the subject (the license place). A sensor at the top of the frame detects when a flash is fired, which in turn instantly triggers two xenon flashes built into the sides. The powerful flash will turn your license plate into a rectangle of blown-out highlights."
> Did you use the same camera design as the speed & red-light cams do?
We didn't.
In Australia, at least, red light cameras are cameras, and they do have a flash (you can see it go off). The plate readers on the freeways for tolls are more like video cameras.
Many of the businesses getting involved in bitcoin are trying to get into the business of exchanging them for dollars. Their customers have a pesky insistence on being able to use their traditional financial accounts in the transactions.
>You actually can pay employees in BTC, if they prefer that.
Most don't.
>Thousands of people work for BTC already.
Hundreds of millions don't.
>Utility companies will start accepting bitcoins soon enough, as it becomes more popular.
They don't accept it now.
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Just because you could do this stuff with bitcoin doesn't mean you can.
It's only doable in theory and in very very small amount of companies in practice, that's why "bitcoin businesses need banks”.
A large number of bitcoin businesses are exchanges of some sort - ones where people are looking to exchange dollars to/from BTC. Going BTC all the way down is going to take a long time.
yup, we only do around 200 to 250GB a month. We use them to serve very small files. We switching from AWS as they charge per request, whereas MaxCDN do not.
Why give the credit to capitalism? Suppose the government were to provide quality broadband service -- would that not also force the ISPs to act (e.g. how UPS competes with USPS)?
This is a win for competition, not capitalism. Not all competition is capitalism, and capitalism does not always imply meaningful competition (it does, however, generally fail to serve people best in the absence of competition).
Capitalism my ass, this is another flavor of fine-tuned government and industry collusion.
No government on earth would tolerate any kind of capitalism other than the competitive bidding for multi-year exclusivity agreements (ie: guaranteed ways of sticking it to consumers).
