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California Sends a Cease and Desist Order To the Bitcoin Foundation
An anonymous reader writes in with bad news for the Bitcoin Foundation. "California's Department of Financial Institutions has issued a cease and desist letter to the Bitcoin Foundation for "allegedly engaging in the business of money transmission without a license or proper authorization," according to Forbes. The news comes after Bitcoin held its "Future of Payments" conference in San Jose last month. If found in violation, penalties range from $1,000 to $2,500 per violation per day plus criminal prosecution (which could lead to more fines and possibly imprisonment). Under federal law, it's also a felony "to engage in the business of money transmission without the appropriate state license or failure to register with the US Treasury Department," according to Forbes. Penalties under that law could be up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine."
When did the foundation become a money transmitter? Oh yeah, it didn't.
Can they pay those with bitcoin?
Chaos maximizes locally around me.
So, the purveyor of mathematical computations that can be traded and/or sold via a network of cryptography meets a foundation that sells the idea of value via paper receipts.
This could get rather interesting...
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
As Bitcoin grows more successful, there will be increasing interest in subjecting it to regulation, just like any other financial instrument.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
..
Like the US attacked the Irak when it began to accept payument for Petroleum in Euro instead of dollars, it's attacking Bitcoin as it becomes a viable alternative to dollar...
Boy, those Californians sure are up to date with all this technological stuff.
(This is like sending a C&D to the Heart Foundation for performing unlicenced heart surgery.)
Last I heard, Canada was still OK with it as long as you pay taxes on any applicable transactions. I don't know how long it will last.
These bitcoin things are a commodity similar to a mineral so it should really be known as a virtual mineral rather than a currency as you mine the stuff and label it same as other commodities.
Cool! That's a great endorsement if ever there was one.
Bitcoin is money, it's official! And sending bitcoins is sending money! And bitcoins in a reserve are covered by baking deposit insurance just like any other money!
" it's also a felony "to engage in the business of money transmission without the appropriate state license or failure to register with the US Treasury Department,"
Which they don't do, nice try, but if you shut them down, you don't make squat difference to bitcoin.
I'd like to see what a fine-toothed comb turns up after running through the legalities of PayPal's business practices.
MouseClass extends ScrollClass, which extends TabClass, which extends SidebarClass, which extends PowerClass, w
Confirmation from an American authority that Bitcoin is a legitimate form of money.
A form of money they have absolutely no control over.
[Nelson Muntz] Ha-ha! [/Nelson Muntz]
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
The way I translate this is that the US Gvt waited patiently for this to fold under its own weight and collapse. Now it looks like it's catching on so they've decided to try to kill it. Good Luck. I guess the creator remained anonymous for a reason.
Peace, K1
An operator of a payment system to the extent that it provides processing, clearing, or settlement services, between or among persons excluded by this section, in connection with wire transfers, credit card transactions, debit card transactions, stored value transactions, automated clearing house transfers, or similar funds transfers, to the extent of its operation as such a provider.
If they're going to claim that the Bitcoin Foundation is engaged in the business of money transmission, wouldn't it be because they consider them to be the "operator of a payment system" as described in the law? Which would appear to exempt them from the licensing requirement.
Guessing they go the general guidelines shown by DRM-industry, first they troll on developers making it possible and then on users doing it. I wonder if laws need to be rewritten as has been done globally with anti-piracy stuff, or if the current ones can be interpreted in disfavor of bitcoin community? In the end they make their own legitimate digital currency, which they cant print as they please.
Any time someone invents a way of moving value/wealth around, its going to be subject to regulation by governments looking to prevent its use by criminals and bad guys to move their ill-gotten gains and hide where their money came from.
Doesn't matter if its Bitcoin, US dollars, Second Life currency or cute cat pictures, if it can be used to buy stuff in the real world and has a real-world value, the governments of this world are going to want to regulate it.
It's the secret laws they're breaking. We aren't allowed to know what those laws are, but rest assured, these entities are guilty. Trust your government. or else.
Server farms in Ecuador are looking really attractive
Am I a chicken farmer or minting government coins?
It's very VERY simple. They didn't TRANSMIT the currency because they never HAD the currency or even exchanged it for any other currency under the foundation moniker! Bob Fucking Saget at least have the decency to look up the theory of operation of the thing you're trying to destroy.
[Anonymous to prevent frivolous litigation, these are my opinions-- do your own googling for more facts]
Aaron Greenspan is a multiple time loser college buddy of the Zuckerberg and aspiring troll. After failing to make it big with facebook he's run a series of failed startups that all had names that begin with "face" for some reason his latest was "facecash", some kind of paypal alternative. But he was unable to meet California's onerous requirements for orgs transferring USD in that state (Paypal's moat, I guess). His response has been to troll just about anyone will let him get away with it-- including suing dozens of silicon valley startups with this weird pro se litigation that accuses them of having an easier time with the regulators than he did.
In his latest volley of accusations that CA is behaving inequitably he specifically singled out Bitcoin-- god knows what digital coins have to do with his paypal wannabe "facecash", but that someone else was getting along happily was apparently enough to bring his ire.
In any case, what you're seeing now is CA playing CYA and sending out some nastygrams to everyone Aaron has accused them of failing to enforce against. This makes the complete ineptitude of CA make a little more sense: their C&D seems clueless because they simply don't care.
True there are technical possibilities to exploit the network and use for illegal activites(e.g. money laundering), but hell isn't Uncle Sam responsible for poverty in the third world? It is, because of greedy corporations and unlawful actions. Bitcoin's approach renders USD useless and this appears to be a problem that one of the richest states saw.
Remember, not people but organizations are responsible for controlling money. But organizations are made by people, ruled by people and work is done by people, so no big secret they are full of human defects. Same happens with automotive industry - when they got control, they will start slow acceptance of Bitcoin like currency. Null novum sub solem.
Col. Jessep: You want answers?
Kaffee: I think I'm entitled to.
Col. Jessep: *You want answers?*
Kaffee: *I want the truth!*
Col. Jessep: *You can't handle the truth!*
Oh give me a break. This is an attacking-the-messenger fallacy. If you want to accuse him of appeal-to-authority, that's fine, but your quotes in no way invalidate his.
Further, everyone says something crazy at some time in their lives. If you try hard enough, you can find a crazy quote for anyone famous. Unless everyone, ever, have all been insane, you've got to give some lee-way.
(Besides, your James Madison quote actually makes sense. Sometime the only progress we've achieved have been from visionary merchants, and not prudent ones. It has also been said that you can only count the number of businesses that have been created, but can never count the ones that could have been, but were dissuaded by inept or corrupt governance.)
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
Next up they'll send a Cease and Desist order to the makers of the Bittorrent protocol. That will stop piracy dead in its tracks!
Are XBox Live Points money?
http://www.xbox.com/en-US/Live/MicrosoftPoints
"Microsoft Points are the coin of the Xbox LIVE Marketplace realm. Microsoft Points is a universal system that works across international borders, and is even available if you don't have a credit card. "
This is precisely the reason why we will never know who Satoshi Nakamoto is.
Bitcoin isn't a fiat currency, the banks don't magic it from thin air. So deposit insurance makes no sense, any 'bitcoin bank' could not leverage bitcoins into more bitcoins, overextend and collapse.
If a bitcoin bank, lent a bitcoin, then they'd have to take one of their bitcoins and give you it.
If a dollar bank lent a dollar, they borrow one of the magically created dollars from the Fed bank, which costs them a tiny amount to borrow, and give it to you, earning money on the difference in interest rates. When they make bad loans, and have to repay actual dollars to the Fed from the tiny difference in margins they make, they collapse quickly. Hence the deposit insurance protecting a portion of the deposit is essential.
I thought Cease and Desist is for copyright violation only?
Piss on anything different that actually might undermine power afforded to banking institutions that have ultimate control to manipulate society to engage in war, population control and any number of pretty screwed up shit. Can you really blame them for trying?
The Bitcoin Foundation doesn't have anything to do with the operation of the Bitcoin network. At least when they went after MtGox et al, they had some chance of making an impact by limiting the transfer of funds into and out of the currency. This here is a bit like prosecuting Bram Cohen for writing the protocol specification for BitTorrent.
maybe they'll go after Parker Brothers/Hasbro next
---
1. It's not money (it's a commodity)
2. They're not transmitting it (the users are)
"Hemp is of first necessity to the wealth & protection of the country." – Thomas Jefferson
Jefferson was right, and that statement far from painting him as a cokehead actually shows that he was a shrewd businessman.
These are the facts :-
1) Botanically, marijuana equals hemp. These are basically two names for the same plant.
2) Hemp was historically useful for rope, paper, and clothing, and was long promoted in Virginia as an alternative cash crop.
3) Jefferson farmed grew hemp on his Virginia farm commercially.
4) No great social stigma was attached to smoking pot in the late 1700s and early 1800s — pot use wasn't considered a problem until the early 1900s.
So, what was the problem with Jefferson's comment again?
So, this enforcement happens just when the newly set up Department of Business Oversight comes into operation. Coincidence?
I thought I was clever to buy the straw and the wood, and have them offered for free at the corner. And I was--I got two pigs out of it.
But... oh, wait a minute, you held back the cement from the mortar, didn't you? But that would have squashed the other half when you blew.
--arnold wolfe
From the wording of the letter, it sounds like bitcoin miner's could be breaking the law of California as they are engaged in money transfers by including other people's bicoin transactions in the block the add? Will bitcoin mining be illegal in the state of Califormia? (Without a licence) Or could you mine without including any transactions just to get the 25Coins?
Why would california be able to make the bitcoin foundation stop doing anything?
If people start paying in gold doubloons are they going to send a cease and desist to spain?
The best I can see them doing is making the bitcoin foundation stop offering downloads in california somehow.
Maybe even the entire US.
Meanwhile, in the rest of the world people will be free to keep doing whatever the fuck they want. (until their own government has had enough)
The law, obviously, by its nature has trouble with this type of highly decentralized system.
While a stretch, it is not legally inconceivable for the Bitcoin Network to be considered the money changer, and the member of this network affiliated with the foundation (who seeded, and occasionally guides in a leadership-resembling way, the network). And, therefore, the foundation to bare some responsibility for the actions of the network; when those actions are actions which the Foundation specifically sought to seed and guide (i.e. the operation of the Bitcoin network).
Is global warming _really_ your best argument against bitcoin? Bitcoin doesn't create C02, terrible ways of producing energy do. With ASICs on the market hitting 4.5gHash/s on 30 watts, that's less than an incandescent lightbulb uses to stay lit. It would be _trivial_ to run on solar.
"Actually since you can sign messages from bitcoin wallets, a bank could sign a message saying you have a certain amount of bitcoin credit available to you. "
But that wouldn't be a bitcoin transaction that would be a 'promisary note on a bitcoin' transaction, i.e. a Fiat currency created on promise to send Bitcoins.
I don't think such currencies would have legs, because Bitcoins can be transferred too easily. So it has no advantages, and the Fiat nature of it, means the bank would be giving you a promise it can never keep because its made the same promise over and over again to many people, knowing it didn't have enough bitcoins to cover those promises.
i.e. the fraud underlying Fiat currencies.
" in the same way as gold as a currency didn't stop bank notes"
But that's what created bank notes in the first place, gold was heavy to exchange, the notes were promise to pay notes representing gold on deposit. The man in control of the gold vault issued notes, and was caught issuing more notes than gold, but by then it was too late, he was rich, everyone had more notes than gold and the fraud couldn't be unwound.
The whole reason the notes existed was because gold was heavy and difficult to exchange. They initially believed the notes represented a gold backing.
This is also bullshit, as all calculations makes every transactions more secure. It's not "wasting" anything just to make it slower.
c++;
Compared to mining gold/diamonds, mining bitcoins has a fairly small impact on the environment, and nobody gets hurt in the process.
BC aren't transmitting money, if anything's being transmitted it's the users doing it. That is a demonstrable fact.
There is no physicality in the packets being transmitted, therefore no "money" changes hands. It's just zeros and ones in a large and decentralised computer system.
BC are doing nothing new, SETI@Home, Folding@Home et. al., have been running a community loose cluster situation for years. If SETI@Home "units completed" points were called "BitCoins" instead, would the Treasury be going after them?
I think it's purely down to the fact that more and more people are using BitCoin and shucking the Dollar whenever they can, cutting out the Federal Reserve middleman and depriving them of tax revenue is what's got them upset. I got an answer to that: I'll keep my Dollar in cash. I'll still use the Dollar, but your banks aren't getting a sniff. I'll spend it in the community and encourage my community to keep that cash circulating in the community instead of taking up space in bank vaults. Because once cash circulates, it's not under the control of the Treasury or anybody else except the buyer and the seller. Treasury are happy because they're seeing Benjamins floating about but they're none the wiser as to whether or not it's hitting bank accounts, in fact they don't give a shit - as long as no other cash currency or pretender replacement (like the United States Dollar or the Bradbury Pound) is seen, they'll be complacent.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Sure, and cutting trees is good for ecology!(for paper money)
The "problem" of recreational marijuana use was entirely manufactured by government. Your post comes dangerously close to implying that it was some kind of grassroots "social change", rather than merely government, which led to marijuana prohibition.
Well of course does creating a currency stirr a lot of tention in a "Department of Financial Institutions" .. espescially unregulated currency ... this is the weapon they have .. they have absolutely no other way unless they want to be laughed at ...
but hey .. what you DONT know ... they tried to shut down the internet but obama choose not to respond to the request ...
Cheers
The thing is it's not positioned as a financial instrument, but a currency.
Currency or money is a form of financial instrument. All currencies are financial instruments though not all financial instruments are currencies.
OK, so why the fsck hasn't Paypal been shut down?
Feds: PayPal not a bank: http://news.cnet.com/2100-1017-858264.html
Link is old. It may be one now, but for many years it walked like a bank, flied like a bank, and quacked like a bank.
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
Confirmation from an American authority that Bitcoin is a legitimate form of money.
I don't think anyone has argued that it was anything other than a form of money. It meets all the criteria of one. Of course that doesn't necessarily mean using bitcoin is a good idea (it is VERY risky) but it certainly is a form of money.
A form of money they have absolutely no control over.
Keep on believing that. There are *plenty* of regulations that cover any activity you care to use bitcoin for. Bitcoin is hardly the only other currency in existence. It is an asset and a financial instrument and as such any use of it within US borders or in countries with appropriate treaties with the US is covered under the regulations dealing with assets and financial instruments. Furthermore new laws governing financial transactions involving bitcoin can be passed at any time further regulating its use. The US also has a LOT of influence internationally and is pretty good at getting other countries to pass similar regulations even when doing so might not be a good idea. Claiming that the US government would not have any influence here is quite naive.
Does PayPal have "the appropriate state license" or is it "register[ed] with the US Treasury Department"?
This is expanding the definition of money. "A current medium of exchange in the form of coins and banknotes; coins and banknotes collectively." money has a physical form. Bit coins do not. they are trading commodities, and non-physical commodities have no restrictions. All laws are in the books for trading physical objects.
In tomorrow's news, Bitcoin moves to China.
The real villains are the local authorities who allowed buildings that had been safe for centuries to be occupied.
FTFY?
That is like saying the author of "The Anarchist Handbook" is liable for somebody building a bomb after being "inspired by" the book.,
They could (theoretically) be held liable in several ways. For example one could pretty easily make an argument that it could be regarded as a public nuisance or incitement to commit a crime or even some form of negligence. It wouldn't be hard for a competent lawyer to come up with some grounds to hold the author liable.
Please note that I am in no way saying that the author should be (or should not be) held liable Merely pointing out that they could be.
"No state shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation; grant letters of marque and reprisal; coin money; emit bills of credit; make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts; pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts, or grant any title of nobility."
In order for California to consider it as money, it would have to declare Bitcoin to be "money", but the Constitutional explicitly prohibits it from doing that.
We are uncomfortable that your fiat currency is a) starting to make our fiat currency look a little silly, and b) circumventing our ability to control the public. Please stop or we will have to get rough.
Signed,
California and the Fed
-Styopa
Bitcoin mining uses electricity, the bulk of which is generated by coal fired and nuclear plants. Coal smog causes asthma and nuclear plants causes cancer - think of the children!
There there, of course it is. The jews, yes. We all believe you.
Changing the subject, you are doing really well for yourself, considering your mental disability. Well done.
Let me get this straight, the very institutions that destroy working people's pensions, use sub-prime mortgages, charge userous interest rates, rake in massive "profit" despite recessions, launder drug money for cartels, are calling bitcoin criminal? I was looking forward to alternatives to the paypal oligopoly. Before even touching bitcoin, it is first time to throw bankers into these prisons every US state is so eager to build.
"SO we bide our time, waiting for a purer kick to bloom and the future is still bleak, uncertain and beautiful" -GSYBE
The exchanges will/should be regulated as banks and other financial institutions.
} else {
The exchanges are retailers of a valuable commodity and pay sales tax on transactions.
}
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Does that mean a pig is now a unit of currency as I used it to buy goods and services (off the same person).
Probably not since the pig is not used as a medium of exchange and it is not used as a as a unit of account so it does not meet the definition of being money. (It is arguably a store of value however) While it would be possible to use pigs as currency in theory, in common practice it would simply be used in barter transactions. You can barter for goods or services. While you could channel your inner Guy Fieri and say that bacon is "money", it wouldn't be in the financial sense of the word.
Bitcoin on the other hand fits the definition of money (medium of exchange, store of value and unit of account) to the letter. Doesn't mean using it is a good idea as it is very risky and relatively illiquid. But it certainly would be accurate to describe bitcoin as a currency.
When is California going after World of Warcraft? Bitcoin may be the only "serious" virtual currency, but just as much "fake' money is flowing through online games.
Oh that's funny. Do they know that the bitcoin network runs itself, independent of any controlling entity? The foundation is a volunteer organization to help promote and develop the use of bitcoins. They don't actually "transmit" or touch anything. It's almost like those idiots in California heard that and then said "umm...well...I dunno umm....threaten...THEM!" and just about picked someone at random.
Electricity primarily comes from coal power plants.
The accusations against bitcoin could be applied to many of the citizens of the united states. Stop and think about how you have handled money over the last money - buying things for folks, getting paid back, trading small amounts of cash for services etc.
KK4SFV
Never forget that. It's the JEWS who are destroying your country - who runs your media, your Congress, who tells you what the 'truth' is every day on their T.V. stations, and through their (crappy) films? The JEW.
So Rupert Murdoch is a Jew eh?
The next thing you'll be telling us all is that Osama Bin-Laden was a Jew too.
Andy Warhol got it right / Everybody gets the limelight
Andy Warhol got it wrong / Fifteen minutes is too long.
For a while, gold was not legal for people to have in large qualtities (The Gold Reserve Act 1934). It wasn't until 1974 that people could own gold again. How long before gold will once again become illegal?
The reasons gold was illegal are the same reasons they want to prevent BitCoin from becoming a public currency -- they don't want competition. By they, I mean the Federal Reserve Bank.
Our country had hundreds of currencies for almost a hundred years. The constitution declares gold and silver as money. It is "regulations" against alternative money that has given US Dollar fiat currency an illegal and unhealthy monopoly. The attacks against electronic money are simply a means to leave fiat funny-money which is printed by the government at will to debase it. The government wants to simultaneously spend, tax and borrow and the only way to achieve that is to print trillions more in "currency" than transactions exist to support.
Need evidence? Got it. The result is a massive reduction in money velocity. Money is currently "untrustworthy".
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?id=M2V,MZMV,
Bitcoin with all its faults is more "trustworthy" as a "store of value". So the government needs to regulate it out of existence.
No government has solid authority over the Internet.
Sorry about their luck, but California and other governments have no say in the matter.
i think government is just getting annoyed that bitcoins have more value than dollars. that being said, it isnt money, it is the exact same thing as a virtual game currency... ppl trade it for what they want, and they set the value themselves.
Most "paper money" isn't made from trees dipshit.
They too have a virtual currency that can be used to buy virtual items or converted to real money. Probably more people playing WoW than using bitcoins. Where do you draw the line?
OK I admit I don't really get what work is being done on the blocks, but it struck me as a great way to crowd source breaking encryption and cracking passwords.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
What would happen if the Bitcoin Foundation just shut down, ceased to exist? What effect would that have on the use of Bitcoins as currency? And would that satisfy the "cease and desist" order?
except the international bankers, the FED and the illuminati. No sir they don't like it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDGlN6mluGA
From its website, the Bitcooin Foundation "standardizes, protects and promotes the use of Bitcoin cryptographic money for the benefit of users worldwide". I don't see where it engages in money transmission.
Mt Gox is an example of an exchange. Except they are a Japanese company, over which the state of California has no authority. And perhaps not even the US Treasurey department. The transmission of Bitcoin is being handled by AT&T, other ISPs and Internet backbone operators. It is these companies that are enabling the movement (transmission) of Bitcoin and who should be penalized.
Have gnu, will travel.
California is applying the rules of the federal regulations on money services businesses, which require state licensure of money transmitters. Those regulations -- 31 CFR Sec. 1010.100(ff)(5)(i)(A) -- define a "money transmitter" as one who provides "the acceptance of currency, funds, or other value that substitutes for currency from one person and the transmission of currency, funds, or other value that substitutes for currency to another
location or person by any means."
Bitcoin doesn't need to be a "legitimate currency" for an exchange which accepts dollars, keeps accounts in dollars and bitcoins, exchanges one for the other, and transmits dollars and bitcoins back to people to qualify as a money transmitter under the rules.
The problem with this logic is that as long as the cost to produce bitcoin is below the reward received, the amount of mining will go up. So the more efficient mining equipment there is, the more of it will be bought and put into production, thereby nullifying any lessening of the environmental impact.
No; for one thing, I doubt very much that, insofar as it could be considered "an operator of a payment system", it would not be one that operates "between or among people excluded by this section". You seem to have skipped right over that limitation.
industrial scale circuit production pollution and byproducts, oil & coal carbon electricity. I hear coal puts uranium in the air...super small impact, indeed. That shoulda been modded Ironic, not interesting.
"other value that substitutes for currency to another location or person by any means."
Vague and meaningless phrase that invalidates everything preceding it. Technically this part of the phrase is about "intent" and not about anything else. Because, everything can be a substitute for currency. Gold, Silver, pigs, chicken eggs. Hell, I'd classify all investment grade artwork as qualifying, meaning any art dealership would qualify.
All it takes is for a good lawyer to make the case for arbitrary prosecution to invalidate the law.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Money is IOUs
No, money is not an IOU though it is possible to make IOUs into a form of currency. A one off IOU is not a medium of exchange nor is it a unit of measure. It's not even clear that an IOU is a store of value since it is not fungible and possibly not predictably useful. Furthermore an IOU for what specifically? What is owed and to whom? It's possible to have IOUs become money but just writing one for a single transaction does not make it money.
Let's thank the greentard for once again showing us that global warming is a religion.
People trade real dollars for virtual currency for years and nobody bats an eye.
Somebody removes all the MMO game wrappers and everyone loses their minds.
It's from cotton and hemp plants, mostly. Not quite trees, but certainly plants.
Very Very Scared of Bitcoin..
So, just come out and say it. Are you pro-weed or anti-weed? If anti-weed, why?
Dude, you say alot of stuff and deserve every mod point you get but your user name is Tean Cum. I cringe everytime I see it and just have to stop reading....
oh and your last name according to your email is Horning. What a trifecta you got going on there.
Mine comes from an outlet in the wall. City wouldn't let me build the coal power plant.
DESTROY THE FED
This is exactly why I'm not emailing forma yacht from parts unknown.
Paypal started like this and got a "buy" soon before it "got bought" by AMEX.
Apparently bitcoin was not for sale, so the "big money" is slapping them down.
We had a thing "VERY MUCH like Paypal" before Paypal, that we think got compromised by unscruptulous legal helper that our partner consulted with.
When building our system, I was concerned about laws like this and big banks trying to shut us down as we'd have "sort of" been a bank.
Paypal got a judgement that said they weren't a bank and sold for 2 Billion? (can't remember) to AMEX then Amazon I think...doesnt' matter. It is in the hands of big money now.
OIn any case, I'm glad they didn't sell out, but saddened by the corruption of the system.
Hey, their blood is 50% money and 50% interest, remove both and they think they'll die.
Go figure. Worship false gods (money) and lose your humanity.
Jim
It's becoming kinda clear no one really has a problem with BTC except the space marines (once more) so when applied to something global ? ... no one actually needs the bitcoin foundation except for promotion since it's all out there and not directed by someone : consequence : american business gets hurt, rest of the world is not touched unless someone is gonna send in the marines or have people extradited for bitcoin mining. I'm a bit slow with words since summer is starting and the heat is melting whatever is left from my brain so i'll try and summarize : i see nothing but americans traditionals trying to criminalize something that hast a vast untapped potential (it could in fact come to equal the amount of money in the world right now if the last 'satoshi digit' became worth about $2 or $3k (unrealistic but it shows what's possible) and i can see them achieve nothing but hold their own geopolitical territory back from participating in it in a world that's no longer ruled by that alone. ...
one exchange has been toppled by law so far that i know of : american
so in fact in the long run they are hurting themselves. This is small scale but a fine example of how the old world is trying to grip with iron fist onto a world it no longer understands so hard that it's actually choking the future. From an evolutionary point of view i might (since we're into semantics and funky demagogein if its political lobbying) that a dying breed can prevent a new breed from making it, but that does not mean it will survive since by the time the new breed is necessary the old one is in fact already dead to the future so all it does is help itself into extinction by not making room for what's to come. Nostradamus signing off. Let he who has understanding etc
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?