MintChip and Bitcoin - how do they compare? The Royal Canadian Mint announced some time ago a new solution called MintChip, which appears to share some similarities to Bitcoin. How do those two projects differ, and how are they similar?
Note: My information about MintChip is a bit limited and may be incorrect. Corrections are appreciated.

Authority: Bitcoin has no central authority. MintChip is run by a government agency.

Security: Bitcoin is secured by cryptography. MintChip is secured by tamper-resistant hardware. (The Mint says they'll support other models, but I'm quite puzzled how they'll make that work with their framework.)

Anonymity: Bitcoin is pseudonymous. You perform transactions through an account and transactions are public. You can have more than one account. MintChip transactions are only known to the participants and the system operator.

Currency: Bitcoin is a commodity that acts much like a currency. The supply of Bitcoins is fundamentally limited by the mathematics of the system. MintChip is a way to trade fiat currency that can be devalued by inflation and whose supply is limited only by politics.