One of the dangers of the global financial system is that it gives far too much power to a few giants corporations which can choke off access to entities they do not like or which they think threaten oligarchic interests. For example, a few credit card companies now dominate and they can and will use their power to serve the coercive needs of governments. Recall how Visa and MasterCard banned transfer of contributions to WikiLeaks to serve US government interests, even though WikiLeaks has not been accused of any crime.

Enter bitcoins, a new peer-to-peer decentralized digital currency that seeks to bypass this system. Here’s a brief video that explains how it works.

This Wikipedia page explains more about how it works. I can’t say that I fully understand it yet. But it looks promising as a way of undermining financial monopoly power.