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Could Bitcoin Go Legit?
Velcroman1 writes "On May 15, the Department of Homeland Security seized a digital bank account used by 'MtGox,' the world's largest exchange, where people buy and sell bitcoins. DHS alleged, and a judge agreed, that there is 'probable cause' that MtGox is an 'unlicensed money service business.' If proven, the penalty for operating such a business is a fine and up to 5 years in jail. FoxNews.com caught up with several bitcoin exchanges, including CampBX, MtGox, CoinLab and more, to ask them how they've navigated the regulatory waters — and how to go legit." In other shady bitcoin news, it appears the demise of Liberty Reserve has caused hackers to find a new alternative. twoheadedboy writes "Despite suggestions Bitcoin might be the ideal currency for dealers on the dark web, it appears Perfect Money, a Panama-based operation, is proving the most popular alternative to the now-defunct Liberty Reserve. A source working the underground forums told TechWeekEurope that, for now, fraudsters are rapidly migrating to Perfect Money. Many vendors have started accepting it, having previously primarily used Liberty Reserve, which was shut down following the arrest of its founder and four other members this past week. Internet fraudsters might be interested in Perfect Money as it has distanced itself from the U.S., cutting off all new American registrations. However, one forum user said he was turned down by Perfect Money as their 'type of activity is not welcome.' Other currencies may yet win out."
While Bitcoin tends to grab headlines, there's other crypto-currency projects that are focused on merchant adoption:
http://www.feathercoin.com/about/
Oh, look, it's the weekly Bitcoin post.
Pretty sure it already was legit, as legit as any other form of currency not backed by anything except a corporations good will. Because you know all banks are like incorporated and shit. And all they promise is good will.
P.S. secure they are not
No, it couldn't. Thanks for asking.
Bitcoin, whether you are a believer in government funny money or not, is a legitimate currency, like any other currency that is used as a substitution or a value representation for goods and services.
Also, the economic impact of Bitcoin is huge. People are spending millions developing ASICs to mine what bitcoins remain, even though more than half of them have already been awarded and it endeavors to be a scarce new resource. And, it's still barely profitable to mine with GPUs, so that is also a thriving industry.
I, for one, am waiting for the Bitcoin GPU bust when the ASICs come out in volume and used GPUs flood the market for cheap as people scramble to buy ASICs.
Like it or not, there are people who accept BTC as payment for goods and services, and there is a somewhat thriving market for them. That is legitimacy.
From TFA: "Despite the regulations, technology experts say that they will not prevent people from anonymously using bitcoins for illicit things like buying drugs online. The real-world analogy is cash; the government can tell when it is dispensed by banks, and to whom, but it loses track once it is dispensed."
If someone came up with the idea of "cash" today they would be a criminal mastermind.
Make thousands of wallets and make a script to make random tiny payments to your other wallets. This will increase the transaction history length. Then start spending little bits and pieces to help pollute all the bitcoins in circulation.
Any currency accepted by more than one person is 'legit'.
Now the proper question is... Will this currency last? Will it be accepted anywhere? Will it be worth hopping from exchange to exchange?
Those are good questions. And so far... No, No, Maybe...
But it was always legit from the second two people decided a bitcoin had 'value'.
Does dice have a stipulation saying that there must be X bitcoin related posts a day?
Seriously, like most business ventures, bitcoin is just a scheme where sharks take advantage of the suckers.
Hint: You're a sucker. If you think you're a shark, you're an even bigger sucker. The sharks are never known, but their patsies sometimes end up in jail.
Huh? You on the weed?
America bans Liberty Reserve, just an another step in the "least free country in the world" direction.
Liberty Reserve was laundering money for criminals. It's not the same as BitCoin.
"Legit" is a meaningless qualifier. If a currency is legitimate when it can be exchanged for goods and services, then Bitcoin is already legit. If a currency is legitimate when it's approved of by your government of choice, then no, Bitcoin will never be "legitimate". If that's your definition, though, the real question is "why is legitimacy necessary?"
What will happen is probably what has already happened to other areas that have been persecuted by the US government at the behest of incumbent industries: they'll just move off-shore.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
In-app purchases are the exact same thing as bitcoin.
Why have the DHS not seized Apple's, Google's or anyone else's servers????
Will Google-Play be shut down????
There is also an interesting report from Krebs on Security, about how underground web actors talk about moving to new digital currencies.
Right, and e-gold before it. Only criminals and terrorists have any need for an alternative, secure, somewhat anonymous, non-government-controlled (really non-Corporatocracy Bankster-controlling-government-controlled) currency. Think of the children. Think of the Homeland! Do the right thing, Citizen!
The main reason is that laws will keep moving to outlaw all companies behind it at all cost. The ones that control the law don't want anything looking like a currency outside their control.
The key thing to understand about government-backed currency is this: You have to pay your taxes in them. If you don't, said government can and will force you to do so. The government may also force a creditor to accept your currency to pay whatever debt you may have. In other words, it's backed up by the long arm of the law, and has value because if you choose to ignore its value guys with guns will show up to help explain the situation to you.
By contrast, Bitcoin is backed by absolutely nothing. It has no inherent value, and unlike government-backed currencies there's no use of force to back it up. In Hyper-inflation World that many Bitcoin enthusiasts think is America's future, you still have the guys with guns to demand that you use dollars to pay for certain things. By contrast, if Bitcoin goes belly-up, you have nothing except a bunch of bits that are of no use to anyone.
I am officially gone from
it's not like the u.s. has never invaded panama to apprehend a drug trafficker and money launderer before.
good luck with that.
I'm curious about something, maybe the community here can point out an answer.
There's a sizeable audience of slashdot readers that are interested in the technical aspects of digital currency, the economic aspects of using such currency, the legal aspects of such currency, the social effects of using such currency, and it's importance in combating tyrrany (the political aspects of such currency).
It would appear that some techies realized that currency control is a tool to unjustly oppress people, and decided to do something about it. The engineering (ie math) seem to be solid, the economic rationale is logically sound (more so than standard economic mantras such as "a little inflation is good"), and the potential to protect human rights is enormous.
What we have here is a rare example of people recognizing a problem and doing something about it.
Despite this, all early posts are negative. Paraphrasing, "Oh, look, it's the weekly Bitcoin post", "Bitcoins will never rise to the status of a real currency", "it'll never work because you will never be able to pay US taxes in bitcoins", "it's a joke", "it's a scam", and so on.
So far (relatively early) there are about a dozen dismissive articles, all by anonymous coward.
What's with BitCoin? Why all the negative press? I've seen no named commenter put forth a rational argument as to why it won't work - that can stand up to logical scrutiny. All arguments so far have been handily shot down by subsequent responses. (You're welcome to try, though.)
Does the government hire astroturfers to guide discussions on this site for selected topics or something? (I'm not saying that there is - I'm asking if this is a well-known fact and I missed it.)
Why all the unfounded dismissive posts about BitCoin?
You're forgetting the tin foil hat crowd.
Bitcoin was designed to be a giant pyramid. The ones at the top had shitloads of worthless mined coins, and they had to convince enough people to get into bitcoins to get rich out of it.
It could turn out to be useful, and that is some of the hope, but I have no doubt in my mind that it was partway founded based on pyramid logic/advertising.
It is inevitable that this world will go towards a real global economy with a common currency for all. BitCoin is a step towards that. More than likely at some point there will be a real line drawn in the sand as to "legal" currency and "black market" currency. Maybe another 20 yrs down the road.
Uhm so the USA state department announces has jurisdiction over the internetz......all your base belongs to us - http://on.fb.me/14ahI2G Considering MtGox is a Japanese company the state department can go and suck it......hopefully there is one company somewhere that says....yeh thanks but you're no the boss of us.
"Cash is sufficiently secure"
Every bill has a serial number. Bill readers could be required by law for all cash transactions over, say, $50. High production volumes would make them very cheap. This could make it very, very hard to spend your cash without encountering a "read SN & report it to the Feds" device. I just can't see the Feds or any other government failing to do this within the next ten years. For that matter, do we know that the serial numbers on the bills you pick up at your ATM aren't (maybe covertly) tied to you at withdrawal now? They've got the SNs, your card account data, and your photo at the ATM.
Nobody said that other people didn't have a use for it.
What was said was that they were laundering money.
Don't blame the currency, USD are used widely in the illegal trade. We are not blaming the dollar. Regulation might be needed.
Meanwhile check out feathercoin.com
Join in!!!!!
I think a key difference here is that there are plenty of legit ways to spend USD. There are probably more legitimate ways to spend USD than illegitimate. I'm sure there must be some legitimate way to spend a bitcoin, but I haven't seen any.
Why wont Slashdot let me subscribe to the site in Bitcoin? Coinbase makes it easy.
If Bitcoin actually contains a chain of all prior transactions, I'm surprised someone hasn't done this already:
Suppose you start with one coin with chain size x. Split the coin in two. Now you have two fractional coins, each with chain size x+y.
Next join the coins together again. Now the chain size is 2*(x+y)+y = 2x+3y, and you only had to spend 2 transactions (13 cents) to do it.
Now repeat the process.
F(0) = x
F(1) = 2x+3y
F(2) = 4x+9y
F(3) = 8x+21y
F(4) = 16x+45y
F(n) = (2^n)x + 3*(2^n-1)y
It doesn't matter how small x was, because that 2^n term gets large in a hurry, and you then poison the wallet of anyone you trade with.
Creating a multi-GB poison coin: less than 2 * 30 * $0.065 = $3.90. /. will stop covering this garbage: Priceless.
Crashing the Bitcoin racket so
Liberty Reserve was laundering money for criminals. It's not the same as BitCoin.
Yeah! BitCoin launders money for criminals and also nerds!
Huge difference.
All these Slashdot articles about Bitcoin but no subscribe with Bitcoin button?
I think there's a confusion between two contrasting senses of the word "legitimate": (1) legitimate as a synonym for "legal" and (2) legitimate as a synonym for "valid". If sense #1 is intended, then no, BTC isn't legal (yet). But for many scenarios, sense #2 is already true, people accept BTC as a medium of exchange.
I aint trollin YO! And yes I just legitimately compared bitcoin to dollars, euros, yen, rubles, and just about any other form of fake fucking good will.
Feel free to use and love it. If the monkeys are trading bananas or paper that represents bananas, by all means stockpile some bananas. Or banana certificates. Or certificates for time on the banana grower. Whatever the fuck. Commerce translates back to.
But its a farce and the real motherfuckers trade control of markets. People, ideas, military, countries.
"Why would I want to pay in BTC? "
Because the thing you want to buy is sold in Bitcoins, and the equivalent sold in dollars are 3% or more more expensive (the Visa service charge ). Visa doesn't pay you money, it takes more and hands back a little. BTC transactions undercut that. I bought ASICs in Bitcoins and will be donating the next ones I find to EFF/Wikileaks and other things that benefit society.
"Those guys (still anonymous!) may have done good for the society, but the society cannot value the formula (that doesn't even save lives!) that high. BG's Windows does save lives, as part of many computers"
Welcome to a gold rush. Better the first/fastest miners get the gold, than some fat lazy banker. At least they did *some* of the work!
But basically I agree with your argument. You're talking about the values of one currency versus another, and the action against MtGox as an 'unlicensed money service business' shows the Feds confirming it as a currency. So you're confirming it as a valid currency, even if the Fed's are busing trying to find ways to attack it.
(first they ignore you, then they attack you, then you win)
You can buy Linden Dollars, and Farmvile dollars, and XBox credits, but you can't buy Bitcoins? So it's more than legitimate, it's got them scared.
Only criminals and terrorists have any need for an alternative, secure, somewhat anonymous, non-government-controlled
"Need" has nothing to do with it.
I count as neither a criminal[*] nor a terrorist, but recognize the ongoing dilution of US currency by (currently) 83 billion dollars a month (and that just from a single source!). I recognize that the government acts only in slightly better faith than the likes of Paypal, randomly seizing the assets of anyone it deems big enough to bother but weak enough not to fight back. I recognize that today's donations to a group of brave "freedom fighters" (c.1980, Taliban-vs-Soviets) becomes tomorrow's financial support for a "terrorist organization" (c.Now, half the planet including PETA).
People have a million and one reason to use an anonymous non-nationally-controlled currency. They have only corporatocratic protectionist laws against doing exactly that as a reason not to do so. And if that makes me a tinfoil-hat wearer, well, hand me my complimentary beanie, because GS' pet Geithner has the Aluminum-foil market cowering in Detroit begging for mercy.
* Insomuch as any of us can make that claim, given that we have a legal structure designed such that any of us, at any given time, have committed some crime TPTB can use to make us disappear for a very, very long time.
Dude, did you even look for a job today?
Doesn't actually work like that. Each "coin" or wallet does not maintain it's own separate chain. There is one block chain which contains all transactions. New transactions are added to the chain with each block mined. That's simplified a bit, but more or less accurate.
Specifically what happens is a miner (disregarding mining pools for now, as a pool can be treated as a single miner for the purposes of the mechanics of bitcoin) gets a list of transactions from other miners and clients in the peer-to-peer network, each with a transaction fee attached. The miner uses this transaction list in conjunction with the most recent block hash to generate a hash of a new block which meets certain requirements (based on the current difficulty of mining, which is self-regulated by the network). This new block is sent off to the network, and once that block is used to generate another, the transactions in the created block are "verified", including the 25BTC (currently) transaction to the address of the miner, from nowhere. The miner also gets all transaction fees for transactions in the block. Not counting attempts to manipulate the block chain (i.e. forking, making a series of fake blocks and attempting to pass them off as legitimate), there is only ever the one block chain, just many copies of it.
I think you missed a couple of random kneejerk sayings... how about "Go Amerika" and "sheeple"?
, but recognize the ongoing dilution of US currency by (currently) 83 billion dollars a month
And yet you do not recognize this as the feature that it is.
http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current-inflation-rates/
Despite the (virtual) printing of ~83 billion dollars a month the dollar is not magically dropping. Liquidity trap and all that. The ability to print more money as needed is a *feature* of the system. Any currency where you cannot do this is seriously lacking in long term sustainability and is essentially only a pyramid scheme for early 'investors' and currency manipulators.
People have a million and one reason to use an anonymous non-nationally-controlled currency
Sure, move the ability to manipulate to an unregulated self interest rather than a fiscal and monetary based system balanced by elected officials and shareholders. Brilliant.
But yes, there are millions of reasons to use a currency other than your own governments, and mostly that boils down to various iterations on 1: business in that country. 2: to avoid tax. 3: to evade tax or 4: illegal sale of goods.
I recognize that today's donations to a group of brave "freedom fighters" (c.1980, Taliban-vs-Soviets) becomes tomorrow's financial support for a "terrorist organization" (c.Now, half the planet including PETA).
This doesn't really change anything. Paying taxes to the US government while it was invading Iraq and torturing people was supporting terrorism too. Whether you had to pay in bars of gold, gold certificates, a fiat currency or something else you still had to pay it. Whether you have a bitcoin being donated or a slab of US dollars you anonymity is not impacted particularly. You only know who controls the value of one of those though.
I view BTC as less flawed than Zimbabwe dollars or US dollars because it's not a fiat currency and thus not open to hyperinflation.
(Fed reserve is printing $85 billion in funny money a month to 'buy' the government debt, so I chose to sell all dollar assets / I don't live in the USA, am not American and am free to buy Bitcoins).
I've seen this before, my father was from East Germany around the time of the collapsing USSR. Apparently they got all the USSR banks to print money to cover the debts, and it spiralled out of control. I don't remember this as a child, but my dad talks about how they blocked money transactions except with rubles and this Bitcoin attack seems similar.
But bitcoin isn't American and most of the interesting legal stuff you can buy with it, isn't American and it will outlive the collapse of the USSA.
I applied at a local sonic drive in. The Illuminati are all fresh out of top level positions at the moment unfortunately =/ I also don't quite make the qualifications. You know how it is. Not enough lizards fucking each other in my ancestry and all. Or something like that. (I am not a big fan of lizard people as an excuse).
It's been widely known that Mtgox has been cooperating with the FBI for quite a while now. Hopefully this opens their eyes to the fact they got left wearing lipstick after playing snitch for so long.
When I first learnt about Bitcoin, I considered starting an online shop to provide the sort of goods that people said weren't available through Bitcoin payments. (e.g. You can only buy drugs/WOW gold/play poker etc etc).
Considering the idea, one of the challenges I faced was how to handle the volatility. I thought I had solved that issue, except a few weeks later the first of the bubbles popped, and I realised my solution wouldn't work.
At the time, I thought it was the outcome of manipulation - a classic Pump and Dump. Even if it wasn't, I wondered if there was anything preventing anyone from manipulating the markets in this way. In the "Fiat Money" world, there are institutions like the SEC and ASIC, and, as ineffective as they are, seem to be better than nothing.
Bitcoin, by design, lacks such a central authority. How do we ensure fairness of the Bitcoin markets? I asked this question then, and a satisfactory answer has not appeared yet.
As I was previewing this post, it occurred to me that the above institutions could step in and regulate the Bitcoin exchanges. Except they haven't yet, and I don't see why they would volunteer for the responsibility.
Plan My Week for iPhone
It's just a matter of time. My company doesn't yet accept them either although we are going to with a new site we are rolling out. My company is #1 as far as GNU/Linux computers, parts, and accessories go.
You make a cogent and logical argument that BitCoin is deflationary. On first reading, I also thought that deflation would be a problem.
It turns out that BitCoin is not deflationary, as explained in this link.
This is exactly the sort of post I'm wondering about. You argue that BitCoin won't work - based on an untruth.
No one who has looked deeply into the concept has come up with a viable reason that it won't work. No one here - of all the people named or anonymous - has put forth an argument that has stood the test of logic and fact checking. It's all surmise, hastily-jumped-to conclusions, and argument by "story-telling".
I pay you two chickens for a goat, what's the difference? I think the legitimacy question here isn't so much for the medium but for the cash exchanges from government currencies to barter currency without the law required accountability.
The key problem with fiat currencies, is that governments can simply print them to pay their debts. The key definition (the one you didn't quote) is "any money declared by a government to be legal tender" because to be able to go crazy with the printing presses a government needs to exclusively control those presses. BTC doesn't give USA control.
"BTC is not just "open", it is doomed to hyper-deflation. "
BTC is *finite*, a *finite* currency is only deflationary if the value it represents increases. Thus by this statement you are accepting that Bitcoin will win! BTC is also divisible. Coins can be split. There is no 1000 loaves of bread problem with it.
"You are imagining a very fancy collapse of USSA, where everyone comfortably sits at their homes, run their computers on reliable and free electric energy, and calculates hashes of transactions that keep coming over fast and cheap Internet connection. I want that "collapse" right now, pretty please! "
Ignorance is bliss isn't it? You can't pay your bills without borrowing, and nobody will lend you money, so you have the Federal Reserve buying the debt by printing money. Ahh, but the party can go on forever, just like it did with the USSR, because USA is special... your economy will never collapse, r-i-g-h-t.
Hubris.
"Despite the (virtual) printing of ~83 billion dollars a month the dollar is not magically dropping. Liquidity trap and all that. The ability to print more money as needed is a *feature* of the system."
All that means is there's 83 billion dollars of lost economy somewhere else. Shifting money from productive successful businesses to fake spending isn't a long term viable strategy.
"pyramid scheme" Gold is finite too, your pyramid scheme argument has no substance to it.
"But yes, there are millions of reasons to use a currency other than your own governments,"
5. Risk of massive collapse due to a corrupt congress failing to even slow the rate of increase of debt.
If the button were there, I'd use it.. Are you listening slashdot?
"Magically", so everybody please pay attention. The poster I am replying to believes in magic, because that's the only way he thinks the dollar would be 'dropping' in case of printing - just by magic.
Tell me, oh the wizzardly one, why does the government even bother with counterfeiting laws at this point?
I'll tell you: they don't like the competition.
Printing 85 Billion a month is inflation by definition, what you don't see is WHERE it's going, where the inflation is causing the bubbles to appear, but just because YOU don't see, it doesn't mean there is no inflation.
There is inflation, MASSIVE inflation in the gov't bond market, in the stock market, some inflation is spilling into the housing market again, plenty of it is going into the 'education' market. Plenty of it is going into the various commodities markets and the foreign markets that are providing USA with its consumer goods are absorbing that inflation by responding with money printing of their own and buying up all the extra supply of the dollars.
But it's already collapsing, even before you realise that there is inflation, it's already collapsing. The interest rates in the bond market are going up, the Chinese are buying up USA properties and companies, dumping the collected dollars back INTO USA, and of-course just like with the last bubble that burst and then all these people on TV and in government said: nobody could see this coming, same thing is going to play out this time.
It's going to be a much more spectacular collapse this time, you are going to notice it when it really implodes, but until that, just like Ben Bernanke, the Federator, you think that dumping dollars from the helicopters actually achieves anything BUT inflation.
are millions of reasons to use a currency other than your own governments
- yes, being a free individual, free person that's the main reason.
Of-course people trade currencies for gain all the time, and it has nothing even to do with 'evading taxes', not that taxes shouldn't be avoided and evaded in the first place, anybody paying taxes is destroying the economy, not helping it.
The government wants to fund something? Let it cut the spending it already has.
You can't handle the truth.
You haven't looked very hard (or at all) then.. I would think the average slashdot user would be able to find something they'd like to buy on www.bitcoinstore.com. I know it's hard because the name is so misleading, but they sell things that you can purchase with bitcoin. Oh, and the nice part is, they're actually often times cheaper than their USD equivalents because they save so much money by using bitcoin (no charge backs, and *tiny* fees compared to comparable USD systems (visa/paypal/mastercard)).
The ability to print more money as needed is a *feature* of the system. Any currency where you cannot do this is seriously lacking in long term sustainability and is essentially only a pyramid scheme for early 'investors' and currency manipulators.
So, what you're saying is that any currency that cannot be manipulated is a scheme by currency manipulators? *boggle*
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Creating currency because fiat currency requires the money supply to increase as the total of tangible wealth in the economy increases is one thing.
Deliberately diluting the value of money in order to confiscate the others is something very different. It ends with bubbles that transfer wealth from those who earned money (wealth) to those who made money (currency).
Disguising the fraudulent nature of financial activity is money laundering by definition.
I'll mod you up and post anonymously to second and third that.
Which still undoes moderation? God damn it that is fucking stupid.
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
No, just another step in shutting down a massive criminal money laundering operation.
They'd be better off just buying gold. Legally and securely. Even the gold price tumble of late was a ripple in comparison to the roller coaster ride of bitcoin.
Most recently mined blocks in the bitcoin block chain: http://blockchain.info/
BTC is not a currency. It is a cheap and relatively fast way to transfer (wire) electronically "value" from one point to another. Period. It's like a CC system expect it will not take 20+ days and 2.5% + minimum charge etc to get the actual transfer done.
Calling BTC a currency is absurd.
Let me ask this: Is Paypal a currency?
Of-course people trade currencies for gain all the time, and it has nothing even to do with 'evading taxes', not that taxes shouldn't be avoided and evaded in the first place, anybody paying taxes is destroying the economy, not helping it.
In context or out of context, this is the single most retarded line I've ever seen in Slashdot.
No the point of deliberately diluting value is to promote lending. All the "real businesses" you talk about generally require a liquid short and medium term loan market in order to survive since they can't hold enough capital to cover shortfalls in sales or conversely to expand to meet demand they can see but not service quickly.
And you know, meanwhile against all of this more people are lost more money to BitCoin then they have holding actual US dollars invested in real business enterprises.
You are funny.
Tell me, do you also believe that somebody consuming a product is adding to the economy and somebody producing a product is not? Do you believe that consumption is more important in the economy than the production rather than being a trivial consequence of production?
You can't handle the truth.
And a number of the websites people like to point out when they claim how useful Bitcoin is are nothing but sites that will let you buy gift cards for major sites. Not only is that not shopping in Bitcoin (they convert your BTC to USD then buy an Amazon gift card, Amazon doesn't take BTC) but they charge upwards of 5% to do it, whereas Amazon is happy to sell you gift cards direct for no additional fee.
So far, I haven't seen ANY site that actually uses BTC as a currency, only a payment system. Big surprise, with the volatility, who would want to accept it as money? The only way it is usable is to immediately convert it to a stable currency.
Could you tell me where you got your crystal ball, I'd like one, too!
Money isn't something magic, it is just a theoretical construct for facilitating trade. So money is working properly when it does that well, and is not working properly when it doesn't. Deflation works against a currency, it makes it not work well as money. When things continually deflate, it makes people hoard money which is bad. Remember when people aren't spending money what is really happening is that trade isn't going on. Money is only useful if it gets spent. If everyone has a big pile of anything that they just sit on, it isn't actually money.
You need to get past the idea that money is something special or magical, it is just our way of facilitating trade.
Also deflation is something that rather fucks over the poor in favour of the rich. Deflation means that wealth gains over time, so if you have money, you get more simply by doing nothing. It makes loans of any sort of term rather impossible. I mean can you imagine taking out a 30 year mortgage, knowing that every year that payment would get harder and harder to afford? For that matter people can become very unwilling to lend money at all, since they can get a guaranteed return just by holding it.
If you think deflation is good because it makes the amount in your piggy bank worth more, well you need to go and take ECON 200. You need to learn a bit more about how money actually works in the world. Most important, you need to understand that money itself isn't anything, it is ephemeral, it can be represented using metal, salt, rocks, teeth, paper, bits (and has been all those things), it is just a theory we use to allow for an infinite level of indirection in time and space with a trade. The real economy is people doing things, making things, fixing things, inventing things. Money is just our way of working out who gets what.
> Perfect Money, a Panama-based operation ... has distanced itself from the U.S., cutting off all new American registrations.
Last time such distancing went so well for Mr. Noriega, that Uncle Sam eventually came to visit him in Panama...
The message is: don't mess with the 400 stealth fighter jet gorilla or you will be trumpled.
So were tulip bulbs, for a brief time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_bubble
And be sure to write your name down, Citizen, when you buy gold. Some people will be by, later, to pick it back up, and give you new bonds / dollars in the Glorious Prosperous Union the next time the main bank is suffering a bout of insolvency (which has nothing to do with its policies, these are simply business cycles in the market, comrade!). Like the people of Cypress and their Spring-Time Double Happiness Reverse Bank Bailout, you are the one who is actually receiving the better deal! Those securities will one day be worth at least 100% more than their current worth! A doubling in value at least!
I am John Hurt.
Way to avoid the point. He attacked your comment "paying taxes is destroying the economy." Instead of defending that, you distract with questions.
Are you insane or something?
Those are questions that he should answer before I bring back the main point, those are leading questions.
It is impossible to argue (unless you are a mainstream Nobel prise economist, of-course) that consumption is the driving engine of the economy rather than production. Production is the primary mover, production requires savings to be used as investments.
Paying taxes reduces the pool of savings available for investments and it grows the government, which means growing the number of the bureaucrats, who in turn do more to undermine the real economy by working towards more regulations and higher taxes and bigger government, it's a self perpetuating death spiral.
Yes, paying taxes rather than avoiding and evading them allows government to grow and function and by that very fact paying taxes is destructive to the economy.
You can't handle the truth.
People buy and sell drugs with dollars and euros, not with bitcoins. Maybe money should be illegal ?
If you have taxes you do not need to print more money ... money has to circulate and divide to work, nothing else.
You are aware that taxes are also used for economic activity, aren't you? Such as building roads and schools?
(same person, backup account)
Roads and schools are spending that should be only done by private forces, but especially during difficult times (if they should be done at all), and I say that during tough economic times such activities should CEASE and allow REAL economic activities to take place.
MY OTHER COMMENTS
I think I can safely assert that the printing of money is definitely not in my hands. Not that I think it should be. But hey... someone else obviously is in control and knows how much money we all exactly need =)
*super sarcasm alert.
By the way it seems like the monetary systems everyone is using are inherently flawed. We aught to think about a better system.
Not all currencies convertible to dollars are usable everywhere, e.g. you cannot use airline bonus points here either...
The reason the economy is in the tank isn't because the producers don't have enough money to invest after taxes. It's because the consumers don't have extra money to spend after the "producers" (I use scare quotes because predatory lenders etc. don't really produce anything) have grabbed so much away through usury and low wages meant to pad shareholders' bottom line.
Gold is more expensive to extract than bitcoins, but is essentially the same thing.
That's why we don't use it. Or would you like to hand control of the value of currencies in the world to australia, south africa and peru (and arguably canada)? Yes, China, the US and Russia produce a lot of gold too, but they're big countries that need a lot of money in any absolute sense by virtue of being big.
5. Risk of massive collapse due to a corrupt congress failing to even slow the rate of increase of debt.
A country in it's own currency without massive external debt cannot just 'collapse' without a willful effort by the government to do so and if the government wants to tank the economy they can, with or without a currency they directly control, the weimar example oft cited neglects to consider their massive war reparations owed in french francs.
Lol.
That was cute.
That's a bit assbackwards.
Printing money in a liquidity trap, to make sure there's a steady hum of inflation and to keep up with various forms of economic growth and in the meatspace world of adjusting to the supply and demand of physical currency is definitely manipulation, no way around it. The question is who is in control of the manipulation. With central banks private banks you at least have shareholders and the government behind them. With bitcoin (or gold), not so much. Gold is definitely under the thumb of governments and corporations. Just not yours. And it doesn't really matter which country you're in, that's true.
Bitcoin is great for people making a pyramid scheme and currency manipulators, and for people who bought in early. But it's only really suitable as an effort to evade tax and engage in illegal activity (including simply farming bitcoins with power you don't have to pay for).
Deliberately diluting the value of money in order to confiscate
lets stop right there.
There's no such thing as a currency with a flat value, immutable in time. A currency can inflate or deflate, and it can do that at rates very close to 0, but landing on 0 exactly is virtually impossible.
Inflation is preferable to deflation, it minimizes the value of hording money and it reduces the value of debt. Those are both good things.
It ends with bubbles
As though there aren't bubbles with other kinds of currency too? You can certainly try and manipulate bubbles by playing with currencies.
I am quite certain that an old adage is applicable here, so here it goes: he who lols last lols best.
MY OTHER COMMENTS
Hmm, I take it you are neither a fan of satire, nor history.
Well, I hear they are working on an app for that.
I am John Hurt.