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So just to understand, you are doing an eulogy to Silk Road and to all the illegal ways of using bitcoin with your posts, or I’m missing something?

beagle3 8y ago
Certainly not. You are missing something. I am not lamenting the downfall of Silk Road - I think it should have been shut down. I was pointing out that "an oppressive government can do everything" is a weak argument, because we have experience showing the limit and effort needed. All I am saying that bitcoin has some of the same uses that gold has, albeit in an easier-to-carry-across-border and harder-to-confiscate way -- which was a response to G-G-..-G-P saying "bitcoin has found no use". Now, "illegal" is a problematic word, because it is a technical definition that changes with time and location. It is now legal to own gold in the US, and it was legal in the 1920's but it was illegal to do so in the 1930s. Gold was confiscated, and (since USD was still denominated in gold at the time), it's value in USD was doubled overnight, or rather, the value of USD in gold was halved overnight. It is still illegal for an unmarried couple to kiss, perhaps even hold hands in public, in the Saudi Arabia. The technical legality of owning gold in this case is an interesting discussion, but I am interested in the properties and implications of an un-confiscatable store of value, which in some (limited) ways cryptocurrencies are. It keeps governments in check in a way that fiat currency cannot. Unless you believe every single government anywhere in the world is, at all times, always "just" and "right" and "good" (for whatever definitions of those adjectives), then it is a good that some "illegal" acts in some places and some times have mitigations. And at this point in time, bitcoin provides these mitigations for the people of venezuela and iran, and has provided them earlier for the people of china.

beagle3 8y ago

Certainly not. You are missing something. I am not lamenting the downfall of Silk Road - I think it should have been shut down. I was pointing out that "an oppressive government can do everything" is a weak argument, because we have experience showing the limit and effort needed. All I am saying that bitcoin has some of the same uses that gold has, albeit in an easier-to-carry-across-border and harder-to-confiscate way -- which was a response to G-G-..-G-P saying "bitcoin has found no use". Now, "illegal" is a problematic word, because it is a technical definition that changes with time and location. It is now legal to own gold in the US, and it was legal in the 1920's but it was illegal to do so in the 1930s. Gold was confiscated, and (since USD was still denominated in gold at the time), it's value in USD was doubled overnight, or rather, the value of USD in gold was halved overnight. It is still illegal for an unmarried couple to kiss, perhaps even hold hands in public, in the Saudi Arabia. The technical legality of owning gold in this case is an interesting discussion, but I am interested in the properties and implications of an un-confiscatable store of value, which in some (limited) ways cryptocurrencies are. It keeps governments in check in a way that fiat currency cannot. Unless you believe every single government anywhere in the world is, at all times, always "just" and "right" and "good" (for whatever definitions of those adjectives), then it is a good that some "illegal" acts in some places and some times have mitigations. And at this point in time, bitcoin provides these mitigations for the people of venezuela and iran, and has provided them earlier for the people of china.