ELECTION 2014 | OAKLAND | MAYOR | A growing number of businesses and even some countries are beginning to recognize the power of the digital currency Bitcoin. Now, add Oakland mayoral candidate Bryan Parker to the list of early adopters.
In a press release subtitled, “Someone in government who actually wants your Bitcoin,” Parker announced a fundraiser hosted in Los Angeles by the co-founder of Go Coin, a payment processing company that focuses on transactions involving Bitcoin. Parker says he believes Bitcoin can help foster social change in Oakland.
“Bitcoin is a tool we can use to dissolve inequality, be it social or economic, and facilitate change for whole communities,” said Parker, also a Port of Oakland commissioner. “I see the role of technology as solving real world problems, like job creation, in lasting ways, such as providing merchants cost-effective gateways into e-commerce and online markets.”
This is not Parker’s first foray into cutting edge forms of campaign fundraising. Last June, he used crowdsourcing to raise over $23,000 in less than 24 hours. Parker’s pitch on the Web site, Crowdtilt, ultimately raised $59,727 by July 1, surpassing the campaign’s goal of $50,000.
Bitcoin’s growing acceptance made news last week, when the NBA’s Sacramento Kings announced they would accept the virtual currency as payment. In addition, the German government has recognized Bitcoin as “private money” and the United Kingdom may study a similar option.
Parker is in a field of challengers hoping to unseat Mayor Jean Quan that include, Councilmember Libby Schaaf, university professor Joe Tuman, civil right attorney Dan Siegel and businessman Patrick McCullogh.
ebcitizen.com 
Parker will come in 5th
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By MW:
In a few years the bitcoin will probably be seen as having been no more than the latest form of fool's gold and nonsense. To give a quick review of some of the financial fads and idiocies of the last fifty years or so, first we had the glamor stocks that had P/E's of one hundred or more, and which the “experts” definitely “knew” were not subject to the normal laws of economics. However when the economy went into a recession, the prices on those glamor stocks totally collapsed, since in reality they were worth no more and had no more real substance and value than a cheap and flimsy paper plate that an ordinary teenager had quickly scrawled a slightly pretty picture on, but told potential buyers that the picture was great and extremely valuable artwork, and therefore made that cheap paper plate extremely valuable.
Then the “experts” came up with the concept of “international drawing rights,” and which the “experts” definitely “knew” would make the gold standard totally unnecessary and completely irrelevant. However when the world economy went into a recession, the resulting panic caused very few to continue to have any confidence in the fantasy that the bookkeeping entries of “international drawing rights” were actually worth anything.
Then for a while real estate in certain cities was being pushed to higher and higher and more and more outrageous prices, and with resulting more and more huge negative cash flows, since the rents those properties could pull in could not even begin to support the mortgage payments. So when they finally ran out of fools to pay those ridiculously higher and higher prices and a little bit of sanity came back to the real estate market, a lot of houses lost fifty percent or more of their “value.”
Then the “experts” suddenly “discovered” that it was no longer necessary for a corporation to make a profit for its stock to be a good investment, and that in fact a stock could be a “good ” investment even if that corporation had never made a profit, and furthermore did not even have any significant likelihood of ever becoming profitable.
So I think eventually the bitcoin will be seen as no more than having been the latest example of nonsense, garbage, and fantasy, and even though a lot of the financial “experts” right now believe in it and are pushing it.
But than the financial “experts” previously believed in and were totally fooled by such garbage and nonsense as Bernard Madoff's investment fund, Enron, Barry Minkow, and the Dutch Tulip craze.
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I wonder exactly how Bitcoin might help produce social and economic change in Oakland.
Oh well, damn the details.
I'll just bet that Mayor Quan will endorse Bitcoin too.
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