Unlike Bitcoin or email, our financial institutions and payment systems today are proprietary. This limits the ability for consumers to easily switch between payment providers and creates less competition for services.

Within the coming years, disrupting the Bitcoin network will become increasingly more difficult as Bitcoin wallet software and the protocol become more mature and resilient.

At Coinbase, our mission is to create an open financial system for the world. We believe that open protocols for money will create more innovation, economic freedom, and equality of opportunity in the world, just like the Internet did for publishing information.

It's really hard to argue that bitcoin doesn't have many legitimate benefits to companies that are legal businesses when you have Dell and Expedia and all these companies now accepting it.

I've always had an uneasy relationship with technology and how it insinuates itself into our lives: for example. I always prefer talking face-to-face with friends than texting or calling, and if I want to get updates on their lives, I don't go to Facebook but meet them in person.

I get really scared about how the Internet is shifting and changing everyone's minds, and the way we see ourselves and interact online. Everything is so diluted now.

One thing is very clear from the chatter I see on Chinese blogs, and also from just what people in China tell me, is that Google is much more popular among China's Internet users than the United States.

Politicon should be applauded for recognizing the increasing impact of technology, not only on American social and economic systems but on the very structure of our system of politics.