© Nigel Marple / ReutersKim Dotcom
Dotcom gave fans the broad strokes of his plan in a Twitter post, saying that high-speed transactions and low fees of a universal cryptocurrency would help transfer control from banks and corporations back to the individual. The tweet was punctuated with the hashtag "#Goals," suggesting this is a vision the self-described "tech freedom fighter" is working towards.
Beyond the benefits of developing a financial system outside corporate control, the entrepreneur may have a personal interest in seeing his vision come to fruition. In September, Dotcom unveiled his new file-sharing service, K.im, which allows uploaders to be paid for their content using BitCache, a bitcoin-based payment service.
He previously hailed BitCache as a service that will take "Bitcoin to the mass market" and "ultimately replace credit card payments on the internet." Amidst its steady rise in recent years, Bitcoin has also seen its value fluctuate wildly following media reports of corruption and regulatory crackdowns in countries across the world, according to Investopedia.
The German-born entrepreneur is fighting extradition from New Zealand to the US where he faces charges of copyright infringement related to a previous project, Megaupload, an online storage service used by many people for illegally sharing copyrighted material. It was taken down by the the FBI in 2012.
Earlier this month, Dotcom revealed he has been working on creating an "alternative internet" that would be controlled by its users and, free from the influence by internet giants Google and Facebook, would secure and defend their online privacy.
"When it goes live our dream of true Internet Freedom shall become reality," he wrote on Twitter, adding that the BitCache project would mark the beginning of the new internet age.
Meanwhile, the value of Bitcoin continues to rise. Over the weekend, former Fortress hedge fund manager Michael Novogratz told CNBC that he believed the price of Bitcoin could be as much as $40,000 by the end of 2018. His comments come after the cryptocurrency broke the $10,000 mark on South Korea's cryptocurrency exchange, Bithumb.
I remember many years ago, a medical intern asked a medical specialist, who was well known to dabble in the stock market, if he should invest, his answer was, if you have money to lose, go ahead.
Y'know, most people want cold hard cash in there hands whether it be gold, sliver, precious gems, something tangible, they can see, feel, and barter with, a digital currency that can be destroyed in the blink of an eye well that takes a great deal of faith IMO, considering the state of cyber security in the world today, seems like it's free for all, everyone and everything can be hacked for the right price.
Gold and silver has always been considered a method of exchange for millennia, but simple bartering for services, would IMO also work very well, but that takes a like minded community. They did it in the Neolithic times and they survived.