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EFF Resumes Accepting Bitcoin Donations After Two Year Hiatus
hypnosec writes "The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has started accepting donations in the form of Bitcoins again after a two year hiatus, stating that the legal uncertainty hovering over the digital currency has all but disappeared. On their blog the EFF noted that a report from U.S. Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), in addition to their own findings, 'have confirmed that, as a user of Bitcoin or any virtual currency, EFF itself is likely not subject to regulation.'"
Five of the last nine stories.... just sayin
Pity they hadn't been collecting them for the past two years, and just saving them. They'd have made a mint!
You could sell your grapes on the Silkroad?
I donated some just because. I don't use my wallet that much anyway and there is never a bad reason to toss a little money EFF's way.
posting ac because <spookyvoice\>ooooo... bitcoin anonymity...</spookyvoice\>
You, sir, sound like someone who has only dealt with credit card companies as a consumer. Their per-transaction rates and additional fees are ridiculous and they reserve the right to reverse any transaction at any time on their own discretion. A move away from centralized payment systems, with their single points of control and the accompanying rent-seeking is a benefit to everyone except the major processors.
Do you really think that giving a few financial service companies a stranglehold on most economic activity is a good thing? If a handful of companies including Visa, Inc. work together, they can effectively stop payments to any organization they like. Bitcoin isn't perfect, but it's a step in the right direction.
Use of the words "good", "bad" or "evil" is almost invariably the result of oversimplification.
Question is, which one is more "real"?
When you consider that USD and most other currencies are backed by nothing more than the governments that print/mint the stuff, suddenly Bitcoin doesn't seem so fake after all.
(Though personally anyone who doesn't have some sort of tangible assets in their pile is asking for a total loss...)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Tangible assets have value only so long as someone else values them. What you think they are worth is beside the point. Tulips, anyone?
You : "Mobsters, drug dealers, gunmen, fraudsters, Wallstreets biggest financial frauds, all done in US dollars. The real question is WHY DEAL WITH IT."
Me: "Just because the dollar is used for crime, doesn't mean you are a criminal for using it. Don't be afraid of stuff so that you're guilty by association because that's how fascism works."
You : "Identity thieves, scammers, fraudsters use Paypal. The real question is WHY DEAL WITH IT."
Me: "Just because Paypal is used for crime, doesn't mean you are a criminal for using it. You are not a criminal, you have nothing to fear in a free world."
You : "Drug dealers use Cash. The real question is WHY DEAL WITH IT."
Me: "Oh get over it, you wimp, its a currency, its more solid than any fiat currency, you can buy real legal things with it. Get over it."
Good point re. tulips. OTOH, tangible assets like precious metals, water rights, mineral rights, real estate? As long as you don't get stupid about investing in them, and do so with your eyes open, you generally do better in the long run, and have a very good hedge against monetary crashes (and don't invest in perishable items - hence you avoid commodities).
I'm not saying that one should entirely abandon cash, stocks, etc. What I am saying is that relying on fiat currency (or anything purely based on it, like stocks) as your sole source of security is pretty damned risky. You may get lucky, or you may lose your shirt if inflation ever gets out of its cage.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Terry Pratchett's Small Gods should apply to the letter, You need to have a lot of believers to be "real". And if enough critical mass believes in you, even miracles could happen.
You can't live in a tulip; you can live in a house. Some assets are more tangible than others.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
When you consider that USD and most other currencies are backed by nothing more than the governments that print/mint the stuff
Nothing less than those governments as well... the same governments that have control over stuff like the world's largest military, one of the world's largest economies, many of the world's largest banks, one of the world's largest nuclear weapons arsenals...
Point being, it's not chopped liver.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Actually things have value only so much as YOU value them. Doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. Water is nearly free to most people, but if you're alone trapped in the desert it may be the most valuable thing you own.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Real estate is no more tangible than fiat. You don't actually "own" land in the event of government instability. Nor mineral rights, nor water rights, nor any other form of "ownership" that exists only by support of the government agreeing you own it. A tulip bulb on the other hand. That is yours at least as long as you can keep someone from taking it away.
Precious metals, guns, bullets, alcohol, gasoline, non-perishable food. Those are tangible assets. Anything secured by a court filed document you might as well have just left as fiat.
Accepting them is a "no-brainer" as a donation, there is no loss. But for any other serious financial transaction, well, unless you are a mobster or a dope dealer or otherwise involved in something illegal, the real question is WHY DEAL WITH IT.
There is a (potential) loss. As soon as the Bitcoin collapses, some people will have lost money. And Bitcoin might, in retrospect, be regarded as a pyramid scheme. People will not be happy with any party that has profited from that.
Accepting them is a "no-brainer" as a donation, there is no loss. But for any other serious financial transaction, well, unless you are a mobster or a dope dealer or otherwise involved in something illegal, the real question is WHY DEAL WITH IT.
I guess one of the several good reasons should be enough for your trollish post: Because you want to be able to accept/send money from/to anyone in the world connected to the internet within reasonable time (one hour) and with small fees (cent per transaction)
The reason for that, is I will not support or have any business with any
organization that implicitly gives legitimacy to Bitcoin by accepting them for
payment for any services or as donations.
Care to share the reason why would you do that? What do you see on Bitcoin so horrible that it drives you to completely abandon doing business with entities using it?
... what is it that, once I've generated a BitCoin, motivates someone else to want it so much that they're willing to sell me something in exchange ...
That they can convert the bitcoin to a US Dollar, a Euro, etc **immediately** after receiving it. They don't hold bitcoins, they convert them to something else.
I am writing to notify you that from this moment I have decided to stop giving
financial support of EFF, via both my membership and donations, including via
campaigns like the Humble Indie Bundle.
I hope you are aware that humble indie bundle now also accepts bitcoins as payments for their games. You should probably stop buying them if you hate bitcoin so much:)
And money, real or imagined, is money !!
Question is, which one is more "real"?
The one people are willing to hold. If people who accept bitcoins for transactions immediately convert them to something else then that something else is more real.
Your communique might have slightly more than zero impact if you explained why.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Same as all money - it's convenient to many people to act as if they have value. You're at liberty to deny the value of the dollar, the pound, or a lump of gold, same as a bitcoin. You could also decide to use shiny pebbles as currency, as long as you find at least one other person who'll buy into the fiction. Of course "real" currencies have the weight of law propping them up (must be accepted as payment of debt, etc) but ultimately it's all made up.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Question is, which one is more "real"?
The one I can pay taxes with, exchange for RMB in china, and expect to retain its price over the span of 6 months.
And money, real or imagined, is money !!
You can bet they convert them to real money as soon as they receive them.
Why would they risk holding onto them? They might lose all their value at any time.
No sig today...
Rights are no tangible assets. What's tangible is the water. The water rights are not tangible, and will be worthless as soon as nobody is willing to defend your rights any more. As soon as you are the only one who cares about your rights, those rights effectively don't exist any more; it goes back to who has the power to actually control the tangible object itself, that is, the water or the mineral resource.
Why are BitCoins valuable
The value of everything is just matter of supply and demand.
So you should ask: why is there demand for bitcoins?
Because they have many desirable properties. To name just a few:
- they are digital
- they are scarse
- there is no central authority in charge of them
- they can be transfered anywhere in the world (where there is internet connection) in about a hour for very low fee
- they are easily divisible
- they are recognised as currency by growing number of users
When you consider that USD and most other currencies are backed by nothing more than the governments that print/mint the stuff, suddenly Bitcoin doesn't seem so fake after all.
Nothing.
I do not think it means what you think it means.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
$1.2 per transaction, actually. The default transaction fee is 0.01 BTC, and current exchange rate is $120 per BTC.
That's becoming somewhat of a problem, actually.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
World of Warcraft accounts.
Steam's new Trading Card beta (with RARE FOIL CARDS!)
Trading cards in general.
Achievements in games.
XP in game networks.
"Levelling up".
There's any amount of intangible things that people will pay real money for. That's the incentive. It's not that *I* would pay X amount of money for whatever it is, but that *SOMEONE ELSE* would pay it. That makes it valuable.
Why they buy it is up to them. To complete their collection? To get one over on their friends? To say they have one? Who cares? People buy junk all day long every day ("acre of land on the Moon", "name a star", etc.).
The difference is between those who see the item itself as valuable, and those who see possession of the item as a way to extract value from it (i.e. I think it's baloney as a currency, but someone will give me £20 for it, so I'll happily pay £15 and make a profit).
Does the share of Microsoft that you have actually GIVE you anything? Or is it a speculative holding that only has value because someone else has TOLD you it has value? Is it really any different until you get into owning literally millions of shares and get a say on the board?
Something is only worth a value when someone else is willing is pay that for it. And why they are willing to pay for it is not a huge part of selling it, or being some kind of middleman (except possibly as market research). I can't explain why people want to buy iPhones or iPads for commercial use, but there is an awful lot of money to be made in producing them and selling them to that industry.
I can't explain why people will pay for the next DLC in a game that was released with less content than all their competitors with DLC available on release day. But, for sure, if I could make money from it, I would.
I hold a fraction of a Bitcoin. Literally. A fraction. I bought it recently and will hold onto it to see if it holds value. I don't really care what people will do with a Bitcoin I sell them so long as, in a few years, it's worth more than I paid for it.
The people who got in early on it did exactly the same and the largest single wallet address (not the largest single Bitcoin wallet which is impossible to determine) holds something ridiculous like 400,000 BTC worth millions. So lots of other people also think it has value. And there are marketplaces that will GIVE you that value, in cash, products or services, for a Bitcoin. That's the point. Otherwise it would be just a number. People say your bank account is just a number - it is. But it's a number that people are willing to exchange for goods or services, that's what makes it valuable.
Sure, we're all gambling on the future of the market (not the currency, necessarily, and hell, I'd rather have had Bitcoin than Zimbabwean dollars a few years ago), but while it has value (i.e. someone willing to convert to "real" money or tangible goods), then it will still *be* valuable.
The primary motivation, I think, behind owning Bitcoin is to have anonymised currency based on number-crunching that you can generate yourself from nothing more than computer hardware and a connection to the Internet. That appeals to all kinds of people from geeks to overclockers to mathematicians to kids with no pocket money to datacentre and network owners (when the Bitcoin return on the cost of number crunching crosses a point that makes it profitable, you can be sure that Google will use all their idle time to do it! At the moment, that point is long gone and not likely to reappear until all the Bitcoins are mined) right up to criminals.
You can buy an ASIC-based bitcoiner miner, now, that will pay for itself at current market rates within a year. After that it's sheer profit, even including the electricity used to run it (the ASIC-based miners give the most return on the lowest power). Sure, it's a few grand to buy one and the price of Bitcoin could crash. But it could also go through the roof. So if you have a few grand
I've decided to stop paying my tax. Turns out most of that money goes to warmongers and making weapons. And I won't pay my phone bill. Turns out that that part-funds illegal phone competitions.
Guess who I'll be hurting more.
(P.S. Also the reason why I'm in fits of hysterics when a DVD tells me I'd be supporting terrorists if I pirate it - ironic given the criminals I'd supported by buying it in the first place)
You don't actually "own" land in the event of government instability. Nor mineral rights, nor water rights, nor any other form of "ownership" that exists only by support of the government agreeing you own it. A tulip bulb on the other hand. That is yours at least as long as you can keep someone from taking it away. Precious metals, guns, bullets, alcohol, gasoline, non-perishable food. Those are tangible assets.
Private property has collapsed much more rarely than fiat currencies, as a matter of degree. But if you find yourself in the middle of the Civil War II, chances are very good you'll be relieved of all your "tangible assets" by an army while your claim to the land might survive the war. And refugees are almost always robbed blind by bandits and armed gangs, if you're first driven from your land. I'd rely more on stealth, feigned poverty and forged surrender than mere accumulation of assets. Chances are you're not the biggest and baddest thing out there and any hoard will attract a lot of unwanted attention. On the other hand, I have to live somewhere too so I'd rather just try transferring my assets there ahead of me and escape by a long distance flight. I'd rather relocate across the globe than rely on a prepper bunker.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
You don't actually "own" land in the event of government instability.
You do if you've taken enough advantage of your second amendment rights.
Ummm... bullshit?
The default transaction fee is 0.0001 BTC. 1.2 cents.
I like this though:
"That's becoming somewhat of a problem, actually."
Makes it appear that you're part of things, and know what you're talking about.
How is non preishable food any more tangible than owning a house?
In either case if there is significant enough government instability someone will come and try to take it away from you.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
tangible assets like precious metals, water rights, mineral rights, real estate
So, most of the tangible assets you mention have a worth that is greatly dependent on the current market whims and/or the government that backs them... just like banknotes. It might be a good insurance against inflation, but not really against anything else...
When you consider that USD and most other currencies are backed by nothing more than the governments that print/mint the stuff, suddenly Bitcoin doesn't seem so fake after all.
Don't be silly. Without the US government, we'd be living in a Mad Max world, and money would be a moot point. The government keeps people from raping and murdering you. The government keeps people from taking anything you own. The government maintains the utilities that allow you to live comfortably. The government also maintains a money system that is relatively stable.
I don't respond to AC's.
You are confusing owning a house with occupying a house.
Occupying a house is just as tangible but that has nothing to do with buying and owning.
An armed renter becomes the owner the minute there is no longer an armed government claiming that right belongs to someone else. So does random armed guy/group walking into an empty house.
Nonsense. The value of official currencies is substantially backed by financial and other laws. Bitcoin is just intagible goods. The status of official currencies is higher, way higher.
Don't be silly. Without the US government, we'd be living in a Mad Max world, and money would be a moot point.
Actually, any working, viable government (be it local, regional, national, whatever) can prevent a "Mad Max world". The US government can theoretically be replaced by another government, making USD worthless. Now on a practical level, doing so would be messy and bloody, but the possibility is always there.
There is also instability within said government. Say inflation went apeshit and spiraled out of control. The US government in response decides to 're-calibrate' its money... suddenly $100,000 in USD equals 10 'Liberty Dollars', or whatever the new money happens to be. Joe Sixpack's life savings suddenly isn't worth so much. OTOH, if Mr. Sixpack happens to own his house and have a bunch of precious metals locked up securely? He's cushioned; the tangible assets carry the same intrinsic value as they had before.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
An armed renter becomes the owner the minute there is no longer an armed government claiming that right belongs to someone else. So does random armed guy/group walking into an empty house.
So? An armed robber becomes the armed owner of your food the minute there is no longer an armed government claiming that right belongs to someone else.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
The "Main" tab in "Options" menu of the qt client says: "Optional transaction fee per kB that helps make sure your transactions are processed quickly. Most transactions are 1kB. Fee 0.01 recommended."
Also, setting this to 0 in results in both "Debit" and "Net amount" in "Transaction details" be the same thing, and "Transaction fee" to not show up. So I conclude that 0.01 BTC is indeed the default fee.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
An armed robber can ATTEMPT to take your food. His success isn't a given. There is no kind of asset that ultimately is more secure than your ability to secure it. I certainly am not depending on an armed government to protect my property now.
Legal rights of ownership and other things protected by a legal document aren't the physical thing they are related to. Investing in them is not investing in a tangible asset. They are no more secure than tangible than government bonds.
Define "serious financial transaction". How does it differ from a regular financial transaction?
But in any case, the reasons to use Bitcoin is: you don't need the approval or cooperation of any third parties. You don't need a credit card, PayPal account nor even a bank account. You don't need to pay fees associated with these nor care if a government or a lobby group disapproves of your business. You don't need to worry about chargebacks nor people stealing your card number. You don't need to wait until the next day to have your transaction verified. Your have privacy - no, even if I don't do anything wrong or illegal I still don't want a stalker watching me. And you don't need to worry about things like the recent bank troubles in Cyprus.
Bitcoin is simply superior in over-the-Internet transactions, especially multinational ones.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Precious metals: mainly worth something because they are valued high, not much intrinsic value / use in industry.
Gold and silver see some very heavy usage in industry, especially high-tech and electronics; it also sees a lot of use in many lower-tech industries as well (and not just as decoration).
Huge fluctuations based mainly on economic expectations (http://insiderfortunes.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Gold1.jpg)
Yes and no - I daresay a lot of it is fluctuations of fiat currency relative to the metal in question. I will definitely agree that it isn't something you wouldn't want to base any short-term investments on, but over the long-haul, it does have a steady-yet-usable increase in value.
Water rights, mineral rights: these are worth nothing more than the government that issues them, just like banknotes.
Yes and no. Most folks on the east coast probably wouldn't see much use for the former, but in the Western US where you see a lot of desert and near-desert regions, water rights are more valuable than property rights. It is perfectly conceivable (and has happened) where someone buys property, only to discover that he/she cannot legally own or use the water that falls on it, flows through it, or sits underneath it.
If you flee the US, you can at least take a suitcase of dollars with you.
Question: If the US ever got to the point where you had to flee the place, what makes you think that a suitcase full of intaglio-printed paper (okay, linen) strips that may or may not be backed by a government that may or may not exist ...would do you any good?
So, most of the tangible assets you mention have a worth that is greatly dependent on the current market whims and/or the government that backs them... just like banknotes.
Again, yes and no. The examples you gave make perfect sense (e.g. Eminent Domain condemnation), but the odds of that happening with a random piece of property are far, far lower than the odds of inflation. The odds of having a government do a house-to-house search for, say, all precious metals is also way lower than loss of currency strength (Why? because the logistics of doing so are too fantastically hellish to even contemplate, let alone succeed at).
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Without government, and with enough means to hold it, the two terms become one and the same.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I'm not saying that one should entirely abandon cash, stocks, etc. What I am saying is that relying on fiat currency (or anything purely based on it, like stocks) as your sole source of security is pretty damned risky. You may get lucky, or you may lose your shirt if inflation ever gets out of its cage.
Bitcoin has over and over proved to be more trustworthy than my local currency (ARS).
I know bitcoin is unstable - but you should get to know our economy!