I have a hard time grasping the concept of mining which seems like a ponzi style scheme where the early in miners profit from selling to the naive newbies.


The early adopters are rolling in money because the value has been bid up. Not quite a ponzi scheme, perhaps closer to a multi-level marketing scheme. I'm not quite sure about the algorithm, but from what I understand, the newer bitcoin has a more complicated block chain because it has to account for all the other coin out there in some way. So each newly generated "coin" takes more computing power to generate. That is part of the security (and anonymity) of it, but otherwise it seems like those silly "collectible" things on the internet (they are basically just drawings...forget what they're called).

I agree about Menendez. A lot harder to track his bribes if they were given in bitcoin instead of gold bars. Gold bars are easy to track, especially if you keep them in your home. They're an actual "thing", as opposed to the digital will-o-wisp of bitcoin.