Well, if money were defined by thousands of lines of poorly written C++ code and you had to run the same (bug-for-bug compatible) C++ code to use your money, then sure, programmable.
Also, when the monetary policy needs to change, you need to take all the money offline for a stop-the-world updated coordinated over IRC or even Reddit.
And it's "money" only in the sense it's an artificially scarce resource/reward created for wasting electricity to find magic numbers. Not entirely stable in the long term (as we've seen with 2-5 recent proposals to "fix it" in the past few months).
Man, you wouldn't have believed what maintaining sendmail was like. You're new to the Internet. :) Though I agree that Bitcoin isn't money. If it were money, Michel Espinoza would have to go to jail. It's more like beaver pelts - a commodity
He must not have been around the internet in the 90s, kids nowadays have it easy, powerful+cheap hardware, great+highly diverse ecosystem of languages and tools, years and years of progressive improvement to everything from email to web to networks.
Many of the arguments made against bitcoin remind me of shit I heard in 90s against the web
But yeh the parent post is correct, the vitrol against bitcoin on HN is misplaced and downright strange, bitcoin is not perfect (neither was HTTP once upon a time) but as per article its evolving and improving and it sure as hell is interesting and innovative.
Anyways I probably will be downvoted, any time i get involved in Bitcoin threads its a if there is an army of paid downvoters whose boat and job bitcoin threatens, digital Luddites if you wish.
Also, when the monetary policy needs to change, you need to take all the money offline for a stop-the-world updated coordinated over IRC or even Reddit.
And it's "money" only in the sense it's an artificially scarce resource/reward created for wasting electricity to find magic numbers. Not entirely stable in the long term (as we've seen with 2-5 recent proposals to "fix it" in the past few months).