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Bitcoin Token Maker Suspends Operation After Hearing From Federal Gov't
First time accepted submitter Austrian Anarchy writes with this story via Reason (and based on a
report at Wired) about a maker of physical Bitcoin tokens. Quoting from Reason's take: "Mike Caldwell ran a business called Casascius that printed physical tokens with a bitcoin digital key on it, key hidden behind a tamper proof strip. He'd charge $50 worth of bitcoin to print a bitcoin key you sent him via computer on this token. Cool stuff--a good friend of mine found one sitting unnoticed in her tip jar from an event at which she sold her artisan lamps from 2011 and was naturally delighted given the nearly 1000x increase in value of a bitcoin since then. So, you're making something fun, useful, interesting, harmless--naturally the federal government is very concerned and wants to hobble you. 'Just before Thanksgiving, [Caldwell] received a letter from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FINCEN, the arm of the Treasury Department that dictates how the nation’s anti-money-laundering and financial crime regulations are interpreted. According to FINCEN,
Caldwell needs to rethink his business. "They considered my activity to be money transmitting," Caldwell says. And if you want to transmit money, you must first jump through a lot of state and federal regulatory hoops Caldwell hasn't jumped through.'"
Congress shall make no law.. abridging the freedom speech or of the press...
-- First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States
This aside from the fact that according to the Supreme Court of the United States, money is speech.
So if they rule Bitcoin is money, it's legal under the First Amendment's right to free speech, and if they rule it isn't money, it's legal under the First Amendment's right to a free press.
Case dismissed.
Karma be damned. Artisan Lamps? What the fuck good is that without an Artisan light bulb, an artisan table, or an artisan fluffy hipster cat to sit next to it? Artisan lettuce with my heirloom artisan tomatoes and my artisan bacon with some artisan cheese on my artisan bread. Shove that artisan BLT down my artisan throat and wash it down with my artisan spring water.
How is what he was doing different from printing a stock certificate?
Nobody prints stock anymore. It's all done with a confirmation that you hold X shares.
On a different tangent, the value and desirability of a token you can no longer order means they will skyrocket in value. Well played, federable gummint.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
So if it is named "Financial Crimes Enforcement Network", then obviously its aim is to enforce financial crimes. So, not only does it not fight crime, nor does it simply ignore crime, it isn't even just promoting crime, no, it enforces crime! :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
bcuz government is evil and takn' away ma freedums!!!!!
END THE FED RAWWWW
BITCOINS R DA FUTURE
Yes, my cashier usually spot checks forex to see how many bags of cheetos I can afford because the dollar value fluctuates wildly due to its nature as a purely speculative vehicle.
[ SUPER: "When you do only one thing, you do it better" ]
Customer #1: I needed to take the bus, but all I had was a five-dollar bill. I stopped by First Citiwide, and they were able to give me four singles and four quarters.
[ SUPER: "At First Citiwide Change Bank, We just make change" ]
Paul McElroy: We will work with the customer to give that customer the change that he or she needs. If you come to us with a twenty-dollar bill, we can give you two tens, we can give you four fives - we can give you a ten and two fives. We will work with you.
Customer #2: I went to my First Citiwide branch to change a fifty. I guess I was in kind of a hurry, and I asked for a twenty, a ten, and two fives. Their computers picked up my mistake right away, and I got the correct change.
[ SUPER: "Correct Change" ]
Paul McElroy: We have been in this business a long time. With our experience, we're gonna have ideas for change combinations that probably haven't occurred to you. If you have a fifty-dollar bill, we can give you fifty singles. [ SUPER: "We can give you fifty singles" ] We can give you forty-nine singles and ten dimes. We can give you twenty-five twos. Come talk to us. [ SUPER: "We can give you twenty-five twos" ] We are not going to give you change that you don't want. If you come to us with a hundred-dollar bill, we're not going to give you two-thousand nickels.. [ SUPER: "We're not going to give you two thousand nickels" ] - unless that meets your particular change needs. We will give you.. the change.. equal to.. the amount of money.. that you want change for!
[ SUPER: "At First Citiwide Change Bank, Our business is making change" ]
Bank Representative: That's what we do.
It's clearly as simple as this:
(a) We want to control everything important
(b) Bitcoin is becoming important
(c) We will do whatever necessary to control Bitcoin
Signed the guys collectively possessing the the most powerful expression of the 'throw a fence around it if it's valuable' gene.
Requiem for the American Dream