Get Your Bitcoins Here!

Not here in Britain yet, but an American-currency 'hole in the wall' machine for taking various Dollar notes (a.k.a. bills) and instantly crediting someone's Bitcoins account is coming.

Bitcoins, I explain for those who haven't heard of this concept, are an Internet-only currency that has been gaining popularity since its introduction nearly four years ago.

It was inevitable that an alternative to physical, national currency would develop one day, because of the sheer volume of on-line purchasing and similar transactions and the high proportion of this that crosses national boundaries. The complexities, uncertainties (e.g. varying exchange rates) and delays with conventional currency when applied to the on-line transactional world show how poorly they fit this completely different way of working.

Thus the Bitcoin mini-revolution that will surely become the core of a major part of the world's monetary activity one day.

Politically, it takes control away from national governments (and institutions such as the EU) who are notorious for devaluing the currency they control so as to invisibly steal from their citizens – something we here in Britain really learned about with the large-scale devaluation of Sterling by then Prime Minister Harold Wilson, getting on for half a century ago. More subtly, it is done all the time, via inflation and other devices.

That won't stop it, as Bitcoins cannot suddenly be (internationally, too) outlawed after having been allowed to become so significant that even some major businesses already accept payment this way.

Therefore the idea will expand; and having this reverse-cash-dispenser idea will help the transition from new idea to mainstream in the world, during the next several years. By the end of this decade, I'd expect the more forward-looking big economy countries to have made the cultural and operational shift, and the rest of us/them around the world will end up catching up because they'll have to do so in order to survive and thrive.

There is one British element to the story of the Dollars-to-Bitcoins machines, though: they have a Raspberry-Pi computer at their heart.