I wonder how much pressure IA feels to convert its donated bitcoin holdings to cash, given the run-up in exchange rates that has happened recently. Does IA prefer to support Bitcoin as if it were, as its proponents suggest, a real currency with sticking power for the long-term future? Or is there more real and permanent good to be had from converting that money to dollars to support the Archive's excellent programs today?
Clearly the latter must trump the former at some price. I think that price may be well below the $/BTC exchange rate today.
The Internet Archive is holding on to the bitcoins to keep the currency experiment going. I bought $1,000 worth of coins so I could make the bitcoin converter box at the Internet Archive and be able to give my friends 0.10 BTC when they got an address so they would ahve something to play with. the sushi place might cash in their BTC's into our converter box (honor based ATM), but maybe not. For me, the key to make a currency is to have it trade around before getting redeemed. We are in this for real.
IA is using bitcoin to support its programs, by paying its staff (in part) in bitcoin. In other words, the institution is getting the services it needs in return for bitcoin.
The better ones could be added to an extension I was thinking of for the newsreader I still need to write. Basically it would take your karma on HN, and then pick a random (important) event that happened on the year that your karma currently corresponds to. (Years would be common era.)
I was thinking after the current year I could start using stuff like that one XKCD comic that predicts the future based on stupid stuff people google search for.[0]
Clearly the latter must trump the former at some price. I think that price may be well below the $/BTC exchange rate today.