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bitcoin is a 256-bit number. Today, governments would like to regulate the usage of approximately 33,437,921 of these magic numbers. I'm guessing most of commun
by jron 11y ago
bitcoin is a 256-bit number. Today, governments would like to regulate the usage of approximately 33,437,921 of these magic numbers. I'm guessing most of community can at least find humor in this.
- Dylan16807 11y agoThat's not really how they divide... And they don't care about the numbers in general, unlike certain other cases where people have tried to restrict numbers entirely. They just regulate transfers of control of value. You can communicate transfers of control of value with anything. Rocks, flags, numbers, dance. Doesn't mean governments want to regulate "magic rocks".
- jron 11y agoSure, you can represent private keys in many different formats and the keyspace is effectively 160-bit when brute forcing known addresses. I'm just making the point that unlike rocks and flags, bitcoin is intangible and more like speech. If I posted a number which happened to have a value of $14,001 USD in this post, I would be breaking the law. If I sold t-shirts with bitcoin private keys printed on them, I would be considered an unlicensed money transmitter by FinCEN.
- Dylan16807 11y agoSame thing could happen if you point out a safety deposit box you're giving away with a pin of 00000000. It's not really about the number, because I can say 0 all day.
- jron 11y agoUnlike bitcoin, nothing I say in this comment can change the ownership of a safety deposit box. A few more things: 1. Ownership of the deposit box is not define by pin holders 2. Deposit boxes are tangible 3. Deposit boxes and contents have intrinsic value 3. Forgetting a pin doesn't effectively destroy the box and contents 4. The security of a deposit box is not defined by only math I'm not trying to be pedantic, I'm just saying it is more complicated than that.
- DanBC 11y ago> You can communicate transfers of control of value with anything. Rocks Some people might not know about Rai stones. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rai_stones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rai_stones > While the monetary system of Yap appears to use these giant stones as tokens, in fact it relies on an oral history of ownership. Being too large to move, buying an item with these stones is as easy as saying it no longer belongs to you. As long as the transaction is recorded in the oral history, it will now be owned by the person you passed it on to—no physical movement of the stone is required.
- icebraining 11y agoJust like everyone else can find humor in a bunch of people trading 256-bit numbers between them. Except that's just a specious way of framing what's really happening.
- jron 11y agoWhat is really happening? I'm genuinely interested in your answer to this seemingly simple question.
- icebraining 11y agoPeople are trading assets (ie., resources with market value). That's all that matters here. The form of those assets is irrelevant to the government.
- jron 11y agoEven if that form is speech?
- icebraining 11y agoYes. People who try to get clever usually find that the courts don't have much patience for those games.
- jron 11y agoI'm not saying I would try it in court; I'm simply saying the argument could be made that bitcoin is actually the first form of money that is pure speech. Thanks for indulging me though.
- icebraining 11y agoWell, we were talking about the government and its regulations. On a philosophical take, I'd say that informal "favor currencies" that people in small places use are an earlier form of money as speech, though admittedly, it's a less precise form of money.