VR Legend John Carmack Persuaded the Libertarian Party of Texas to Accept Bitcoin Donations
Legendary Virtual Reality (VR) developer John Carmack, CTO of Oculus VR, tweeted : “I am rather pleased that the Libertarian Party of Texas started taking Bitcoin donations on my recommendation [link]” to his more than 160 thousand followers.
John Carmack is considered a little less than a saint in the VR and video gaming world. After co-founding id Software and leading the development of cult videogames Doom and Quake, Carmack became the chief technologist of Oculus VR, the makers of the Oculus Rift headset that is well on its way to revolutionize VR and immersive gaming. Earlier this year Oculus VR was acquired by Facebook for US$2 billion in cash and Facebook stock, leading to speculations that Facebook may soon launch VR applications and virtual worlds. Carmack is also a space enthusiast and the founder and lead engineer of (late lamented) Armadillo Aerospace.
Yes You Can Do Better Than the Government
Carmack is a staunch Libertarian who supported the 2012 presidential campaign of Republican Ron Paul. In 2010 he wrote:
“My core thesis is that the federal government delivers very poor value for the resources it consumes and that society as a whole would be better off with a government that was less ambitious. This is not to say that it doesn’t provide many valuable and even critical services, but that the cost of having the government provide them is much higher than you would tolerate from a company or individual you chose to do business with. For almost every task, it is a poor tool.”
“It isn’t hard to look around the world and find something that you feel needs fixing. The world gets to be a better place by people taking action to improve things.”
It’s not surprising that Carmack is interested in Bitcoin, which is all about people taking direct actions to improve things in a decentralized way, first the obsolete value transfer system, and then the rest of society. A few months ago, when asked his thoughts on Bitcoin on Reddit, he replied that he was “guardedly excited.” Earlier in December 2013, he tweeted that he was reading Satoshi Nakamoto’s original Bitcoin whitepaper and wished he had time to study the Bitcoin source code.
It seems that Carmack’s investigations made him a full supporter of Bitcoin, as his last tweet shows. That can have an important positive impact in view of Carmack status among Libertarians and VR gaming enthusiasts, all already “naturally” predisposed to support the emerging blockchain-based crypto-economy.
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Images from Barone Firenze, Stefano Tinti and Shutterstock.
