so they are originally bought and after that they have a life of their own... but you can also work for them in lieu of regular currency right?It appears that initially you have to buy them for some other currency, but then you can exchange bitcoins with anyone who accepts them. If you sell a sofa on eBay, I suppose you can be paid in bitcoins.
Money is an abstraction, like imaginary numbers (or integers for that matter) but one so deeply ingrained in us we impute real value to virtually indistinguishable pieces of paper, that represent some kind of claim on the goods and services of society.
Most of the money exchanged these days never takes any material form, it merely exists as information in computers. My employers bank electronically transfers dollars from its payroll account to my checking account and my bank’s computer transfer the same information to MasterCard or Visa at my request. When I but a fishing rod or car, I do it by promising to transfer some of the money in my account to some other account.
I suppose bitcoins have the virtue of not being intermediated by any government, and the process does have the virtue of transparency. Still, unless bitcoins are readily convertible to a hard currency they will probably enjoy the same wide acceptance as the Zimbabwe dollar.
so they are originally bought and after that they have a life of their own... but you can also work for them in lieu of regular currency right?