I'm fascinated by the ongoing saga of Bitcoin as one of the first decentralized digital currencies to get much traction (as well as the ensuing seizure, subpoena, and general regulatory intrusion that U.S. regulatory authorities are just beginning to mount) but I'd like to know: where else can I look to explore this brave new economic world?<p>Ripple is another decentralized, "open" system, that even purports to play nice with Bitcoin exchanges. I'd love to hear the opinion of HN on its viability and the viability of all such systems.
Litecoin is one I've heard a lot about, and Namecoin is supposed to be a sort of Bitcoin-based DNS, taking the advantages to a different arena.<p>According to Wikipedia [1] all of the big cryptocurrencies are inspired by / based on Bitcoin.<p>[1] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cryptocurrencies" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cryptocurrencies</a>