I wanted, in my first post at Steemit to devote some time to explaining Bitcoin and the undercurrent of political/philosophical assumptions that make alternative currencies copacetic with libertarian inclinations. For the libertarian the less the government has a say the better, and Ron Paul, a leading libertarian voice, has for a long time decried both the federal reserve and the abandonment of the gold standard. It makes little sense to let the government control, print, or in other ways manipulate money for the benefit of the few. Better than gold, along came a money that was backed by YOU: bitcoin.
Bitcoin was the first digital coin to gain any notoriety, and it addresses a libertarian mindset that values community over government. Earlier efforts art peer to peer music sharing and such laid the groundwork for Bitcoin. If you want as little government involvement as possible, then one of the more important places to address that problem is in who controls the money. In other countries than the USA, a similar mistrust of the government control over money is even more rampant.
To address this problem most digital currencies like bitcoin (and other alternative coins), assure that the control of digital coins belongs to the community rather than the government. The bitcoin ledger, where we keep track of each transaction, belongs to the people; itn be accessed by anyone who own some of the coin, with the right knowledge and patience. If you own Bitcoin (especially if you mine it) you could have say in what happens to it. Good examples are the hard forks.
While Bitcoin is the best known digital currency, close on its heels is Ether and other alternative currencies like Steem. Many of these have improvements like greater functionality, but all of them have advantages over dollars, yen, euros and other centralized currencies.
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