Julian Assage Taunts US Government For Forcing Wikileaks To Invest In Bitcoin (facebook.com)

Saturday's tweet from Julian Assange says it all: "My deepest thanks to the US government, Senator McCain and Senator Lieberman for pushing Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, AmEx, Moneybookers, et al, into erecting an illegal banking blockade against @WikiLeaks starting in 2010. It caused us to invest in Bitcoin -- with > 50000% return."
Assange's tweet was accompanied by a graph showing the massive spike in the price of bitcoin -- though most of that growth occurred in the last year.

Comments

ASSSANGGGE!!!!

[elrous0]

Screamed yet another agitated U.S. President at the sky.

Re:ASSSANGGGE!!!!

[elrous0]

And, BTW, I wonder how much the UK still spends each year pretending that they just want to deport him to answer some questions about a sexual assault that even the victims admit never happened. "ASSAAAAGE!" screams yet another Prime Minister too.

Re:ASSSANGGGE!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is a source:
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/julian-assange-affidavit-states-rape-victim-sent-texts-denying-attack-1434895

There are many more, I suggest you bother trying, although of course your rather obvious smear game shows you are almost certainly an 'involved party' shall we say?

Interesting isnt it, to try and smear someone with first rape of two women (which appears to mostly be a spat because they were angry he slept with both at similar times - women dont like that, but thats hardly rape), and now we are supposed to believe he is a hardcore Gay Pedophile (this time without even an attept to make up evidence - I assume because that worked out so badly last time).

Hint: one makes the other look somewhat unlikely, dont you think?

So sorry, back to the training manual for you, try harder next time, the ministry of disinformation expects better!

Re:ASSSANGGGE!!!!

[thegarbz]

Nothing. No one has an active extradition request for him anymore. They do however want to arrest him for breaching UK law. Like for being a fugitive, ignoring the courts, etc. There's a UK warrant for his arrest regardless of what the rest of the world thinks.

Re:ASSSANGGGE!!!!

[The Cynical Critic]

Did you pay any attention at all when he locked himself into the embassy? He never went there because he had an active extradition request on himself, but because of the real risk that if he's arrested, the U.S is going to put in an extradition request, apply pressure to bypass the normal procedures to deny him any kind of due process (which the U.S has the ability to do) and finally stage a similar sham of a trial that Manning got. Try to remember that before and after locking himself into the embassy U.S intelligence did their best to try to wiretap him using, amongst other things, a stingray-type device (which they forgot to re-configure for him so it initially showed up as a south american carrier's base station in the middle of London) meaning that they clearly were looking for cause to extradite him.

With another autocrat in the white house you can't exactly blame him for not daring to come out yet...

Re: ASSSANGGGE!!!!

[Opportunist]

Let's see, internet access, food, freedom to sleep whenever you please, no need to work or do anything sensible...

Not so different to your mom's basement, to be honest.

Re:ASSSANGGGE!!!!

[Dan East]

You have to admit the genius in this. Why should the US waste money on pursuing him, when he's incarcerated himself through his own paranoia?

Re:ASSSANGGGE!!!!

[DrXym]

He locked himself up because he was too chickenshit to face rape charges in Sweden. In so doing he broke his UK court bail conditions and he'll be arrested on the spot when he steps out of the embassy or is shoved out.

It's sucks to be him but frankly he'll get everything he deserves by way of the judicial system.

I may not have any Bitcoin

[Anonymous Coward]

but I can leave my house

Re:Mooning the giant

[Gussington]

Word is that the President of Ecuador is getting pretty tired of this guy and is thinking about ejecting him from the London embassy.

We've been hearing that since 2 minutes after he entered the Ecuadorian embassy. Unless you are the President of Ecuador, or one of his aides, I suggest you stop believing the headlines...

It's probably not a good idea to point this out

[rsilvergun]

right now it's largely illegal activities (drugs, money laundering, gambling, randomware) that are driving up the value of bitcoin. That value goes poof the moment the government clamps down on it. It's not like bitcoin is even anonymous. What I'm saying is taunting genuinely powerful people and bringing the main way you're funding your organization to their attention when they have a history of blocking your funding methods is just plain arrogance.

Then again, he did pretty much side with the current administration during the election and, well his man won. So he might be in a position to taunt McCain. Especially since McCain doesn't get along well with said administration.

Re:It's probably not a good idea to point this out

[borcharc]

All of the things you claim that are driving the price are really binary transactions. If person A buys btc to do a thing on your list, person B who receives them needs to convert to cash. The drug dealer needs to buy more inventory. The money launderer needs to continue the process of layering his money. The casino needs to pay out winners and take profits. The ransomware guys, who really don't make much in the grand scheme of things, also have bills to pay.

You really think all of this accounts for 42 billion in USD volume over the last 30 days????

Re:It's probably not a good idea to point this out

[houghi]

1) Just because something is used for something illegal does not mean it should be made illegal to use. (bittorrent)
2) I am sure they very well know how it is funded
3) Almost nobody voted for Trump, they voted against Clinton. And even so, just because he wanted Trump to win does not mean he can't be critical of what he does.

End of Visa Mastercard Duopoly

[ghoul]

Visa, Master and Swift have been abused so badly in pursuit of political goals in US Primaries that people all over the world have lost faith. Case in point - Sanctions against Iran a country which does not promote Wahabbism whil allowing full trae with Saudi. People have realized that depending on American and Western money networks opens you up to financial blackmail whenever American politicians want to do some dog whistling.
Russia has created its own payment network and making it difficult for Visa and Master to operate there in order to drive adoption. China most transactions are moving to Baidu's network. India is now using PayTM. As more and more major economies start moving away from western payment systems the West's power to use sanctions as a policy tool will go away. Since money still needs to move between the competing monetary systems cryptocurrencies will become the interface currency

Re:End of Visa Mastercard Duopoly

[jeti]

They also tried to force shops in Germany to stop selling Cuban cigars.

Re:End of Visa Mastercard Duopoly

[dj245]

Visa, Master and Swift have been abused so badly in pursuit of political goals in US Primaries that people all over the world have lost faith. Case in point - Sanctions against Iran a country which does not promote Wahabbism whil allowing full trae with Saudi. People have realized that depending on American and Western money networks opens you up to financial blackmail whenever American politicians want to do some dog whistling. Russia has created its own payment network and making it difficult for Visa and Master to operate there in order to drive adoption. China most transactions are moving to Baidu's network. India is now using PayTM. As more and more major economies start moving away from western payment systems the West's power to use sanctions as a policy tool will go away. Since money still needs to move between the competing monetary systems cryptocurrencies will become the interface currency

Dodging government to government pressure is probably only a small reason for countries to move away from Visa and Mastercard. A much bigger reason taking 1-2.5% of every consumer transaction. That's a huge incentive for any bank or financial company to build a competing system.

Government sanctions as a policy tool are deeply flawed, but one of the few options to pressure countries without dropping bombs. The reason sanctions are somewhat effective is not because of the power of one country, but only when lots of countries adopt them. It's basically a government-level boycott.

Government sanctions are a flawed method of applying pressure, but cryptocurrencies are not a great workaround. Suppose North Korea gets their hands on a huge pile of bitcoin. Then what? They can't exactly make bitcoin an official currency, that would wreck their internal monetary policy of having artificially inflated exchange rates. It is difficult to cash out in other countries and use legitimate banks to transfer money, because they are sanctioned. The only reliable option left is to cash out in Russia (closed) or China (closed) and launder the money the old fashioned way (for overseas use), or carry it across the border (for internal use). Cryptocurrencies are just one of many difficult and not-foolproof options to try to get around sanctions. They are not a magic sanction-killing bullet.

Ah yes Sweden.

[Anonymous Coward]

The country where a person can retroactively decide they shouldn't have had sex, and it gets called "rape". A country that is trying to outlaw men urinating while standing up.

Re:Ah yes Sweden.

[david_thornley]

You do realize that the extradition request was found to be valid, including the fact that what Assange is alleged to have done is rape under UK law, right? If you commit some odd sort of crime in country A and go to country B, and what you did isn't criminal in country B, you aren't going to be extradited. Any oddities in Sweden's sex crime laws are irrelevant here.

Re:Mooning the giant

[Anonymous Coward]

+100 for novel use of the Greengrocer's apostrophe!