The Occupy Wall Street protest has support from the hacker collective Anonymous and major goodwill over on Reddit. But there’s another online community that’s getting excited about the populist movement: the libertarian-leaning users of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, which has dropped out of mainstream attention after an explosive few weeks in the spotlight.
The sympathies roll both ways–Occupy Wall Street has accepted donations denominated in Bitcoin since early on. One blogger donated half his stash to the movement. Only about eight bitcoins, but still. The Bitcoin Show’s Bruce Wagner is head over heels for the movement, and has hardly tweeted about anything else in the past week.
Over at the blog New World Notes, pseudonymous blogger Wagner James Au reports the protest has received about 56 BTC as of Monday, or about $350.
Bitcoin news has been slow of late, with the currency dipping lower and lower, now at about $4.6 USD from a high of about $33 USD–but it retains interest from hardcore users and even merited a story in the upcoming issue of the New Yorker. “Are genuine bitcoin users staying while speculators go away?” posed a user in a recent thread on the Bitcoin forum. Perhaps the Occupy Wall Street movement will give the e-currency another gust.
