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Forget piracy, U.S. government is going after Bitcoin
- woodall 15y agoNo it's not. A few senators are pressing the issue. The founder of BC is scheduled to give talks at the CIA, if they were going to bust him, they would have been more upfront then about the issue. I don't doubt that BC will be pressured by the government, but venturebeat is jumping the gun with this one.
- kinghajj 15y agoHis talk is on the fourteenth, I think.
- woodall 15y agoI'm so sorry! After reading over IRC logs and his forum post, you are correct. It is the 14th. http://forum.bitcoin.org/?topic=6652.0 http://forum.bitcoin.org/?topic=6652.0 http://bitcoinstats.com/irc/bitcoin/logs/2011/05/15/16 http://bitcoinstats.com/irc/bitcoin/logs/2011/05/15/16
- barmstrong 15y agoAlso, I wouldn't say he is the "founder". He is the maintainer of an open source project. The difference will hopefully keep him out of court, unlike the e-gold founder.
- doublec 15y agoGavin isn't the founder. He's the current maintainer of the open source software. The founder was Satoshi Nakamoto who is apparently no longer involved with the project.
- gamble 15y agoAnd may not actually exist.
- richcollins 15y agoUnlike other currencies, Bitcoin uses a peer-to-peer technology to manage transactions and validate payments. Since no bank is involved, purchases don’t leave a paper trail for law enforcement agencies to track criminal activity. How is this different than us dollars in cash?
- jbri 15y agoBitcoin doesn't require you to transfer a piece of physical property to whoever you want to give it to.
- michael_dorfman 15y agoNor do dollars. Your statement is a non sequitur.
- Egregore 15y agoActually cash dollars require it and digital dollars have a lot of restrictions.
- shin_lao 15y agoDollars printing is controlled by the government. You can regulate the total amount of cash in circulation. Additionally, each tender can be traced thanks to its number, making it possible (but difficult) for the forces to track where tender comes from.
- Wickk 15y agoMisleading title is misleading
- nlz1 15y agoReplace "Bitcoin" with "money laundering" and "tax evasion" to understand why.
- jarin 15y agoThe only method of payment for these illegal purchases is money laundering. The only method of payment for these illegal purchases is tax evasion. Hmm...
- InclinedPlane 15y agoI know a little bit about all the rigmarole that banks and companies like paypal and amazon have to go through in order to comply with various money laundering and tax evasion laws. I'm not surprised that bitcoin hasn't done their due diligence on the subject and are now catching flack.
- Confusion 15y agoThat's hardly surprising, because there is no bank or company involved to hold accountable.
- _Lemon_ 15y agoWhile it depends on the country, you don't have to be a bank to be regulated in the UK. For example, the Financial Services Authority says you need to be registered for accepting deposits or issuing e-money: http://www.fsa.gov.uk/Pages/Doing/Do/index.shtml http://www.fsa.gov.uk/Pages/Doing/Do/index.shtml I have no idea whether this is simply or cheap though...
- InclinedPlane 15y agoWhatever you call the organization behind creating bitcoin fundamentally it's still accountable, even if it's a loose, self-selecting group of open source developers.
- wladimir 15y agoNow the real trial by fire for bitcoin begins... One thing is for sure, this is going to be interesting. /me gets popcorn
- Joakal 15y agoMight be a topic of interest of a company that rivalled Paypal: 'Bullion and Bandits: The Improbable Rise and Fall of E-Gold' [0]. A guy had an ambition to have currency backed by gold rather than the Federal reserve. In his execution, he had also allowed anonymous accounts but soon had trouble with the FBI due to the anonymity. [0] http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/06/e-gold/ http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/06/e-gold/
- ra 15y agoYeah, that is actually a very relevant precedence. Anti-money laundering laws once created to control the mafia took on a whole new meaning with the war on drugs and then again with the war on terror. Governments (rightly) understand that the flow of money is the best tracer bullet available to them. I'm certainly no expert, but I suspect that anonymous transaction brokers (eg Bitcoin exchanges) probably do fall foul of some anti-money laundering law.
- patrickgzill 15y agoThe amount of use the US govt gets from the ability to create money out of thin air and exchange it for physical assets and services, means that any competing currency in whatever form will be attacked.
- mw63214 15y agoA lot of the U.S. power comes from our currency and its stability(relative to the rest of the world). To challenge this would mean an increased risk, both financially and militarily. That being said, I think instead of attacking this rising trend, maybe an open(more likely not-so-open) discussion is needed from many branches of the government and a lot of simulation to assess systemic risk.
- danneu 15y agoInteresting, considering the #1 entity that's challenging the US Dollar is the government. You make it sound like Bitcoin is suddenly grounds to be concerned about the future of the dollar while the government has been pilfering its worth for decades.
- chippy 15y agoAnother example of the intentional hype around Bitcoin, made by the holders of Bitcoins, designed to increase interest, and therefore the value of their existing Bitcoins. We are being conned, and spammed.
- hcho 15y agoI wonder if this is going to be Barbara Streisand moment of bitcoin. Up until now, it was largely techies who had interest in the currency. This and the ensuing media interest might take it to mainstream.
- gst 15y agoA few days after this German lobby group argued against Bitcoin the Bitcoin value (in EUR) nearly doubled. In addition, even my non-techie friends now know about Bitcoin.
- bermanoid 15y agoThere are some indications that at the moment the real limiting factor to Bitcoin's ascent is the ability to funnel USD into it: this is purely anecdotal, but I've noticed that every time a batch of Dwolla transactions clears through MtGox, BTC spikes substantially, and in between these times it does relatively little. That's not necessarily a good thing for BTC, since it means that the theoretical unrestricted market is, in fact, heavily bottlenecked at the USD faucet. From what I've heard it's just as difficult, if not more, to get money out quickly, which means this market is effed up in all sorts of ways. IMO, the best thing Bitcoin could do would be to enable an identity-connected sub-system that directly tied Bitcoins to individuals, so that transactions could be better tracked and regulated - the fact is, most people don't need anonymity in their transactions, and the legal shadiness of the current approach means that it's never going to be simple to move money in and out. When BTC is as easy to get into and out of as euros or yen, that's when things will start to get seriously interesting...
- gst 15y agoI think the bitmarket.eu approach works quite fine: The seller stores his Bitcoins at the bitmarket.eu (free) escrow service. The buyer wires the money via bank transfer directly to the seller. The seller releases the Bitcoins on bitmarket. At least in Europe bank transfers are easily possible between foreign countries and even free (or at least very cheap) between European countries. Saying that I wouldn't buy any Bitcoins right now. While there is a huge demand, I do not see any indication that those coins are used for any significant amount of real trading (i.e., buying services). Seems that most of those people just buy the Bitcoins due to speculation. When the hype is gone there is a very good chance that the market crashes again - if the real market does not grow with the current bubble.
- nostromo 15y agoI really don't see how they can regulate Bitcoin -- that's kind of the whole point. Unlike e-gold there's no central authority to take down. The exchanges could simply move to a friendly host country, much like The Pirate Bay.
- Strom 15y agoThe government can declare the use of bitcoin illegal. This won't stop regular users, like it doesn't stop them from using the pirate bay. But no business will be able to accept bitcoins anymore and as such bitcoin's potential will be severely limited.
- bartl 15y agoMy guess is that the only people left to use Bitcoins is precisely for those illegals activities... Precisely the people they're trying to stop. It's not because something isn't legal that it stops working.
- Strom 15y agoWhen the government makes bitcoin illegal they will ofcourse claim it's to prevent child pornography, terrorism and drug selling. However the real reason will be tax evasion and the law would be successful in taking care of that real target.
- tobias3 15y agoGive the government a break. After all it is designed to benefit all! And without taxes -> no government. If you want anarchy, go to some country where they have civil war at the moment.
- Jach 15y agoThe silly thing is that if they do make it illegal because some businesses won't report bitcoin profits to the IRS, that will just guarantee that all businesses (licensed or unlicensed) using bitcoin won't report profits.
- thomasz 15y agoA little bit off topic: I was curious if you can really do something with bitcoins aside from speculation. It turns out that there are some places that accept bitcoins. But it seems that actually _using_ bitcoins as a currency instead of a speculative asset doesn't seem like a good idea right now: The sites seem to either try to adjust prices often, or don't. The sites that don't are hopelessly overpriced: Let's say I want the biggest vps for sale at http://lightfoot.dashjr.org/?page=vps http://lightfoot.dashjr.org/?page=vps . I can either go through the hassle of buying 49 bitcoins for ~1450$ at mtgox to pay for the vps, or I could pay 118$ directly. Even the sites that adjust the price have a huge problem: If I convert dollars to bitcoins, I would be tempted to wait a couple of days and sell on mtgox and then buy the service with dollars. So, buying stuff with bitcoins is not the best idea right now. If you want to do something with bitcoins, buy them and sell them at a higher exchange rate later. The only problem is that we all know that this can't go on forever. Therefore, the exchange rate is bound to go down sooner or later. If that happens, we would be in a mirror inverted situation: Selling stuff for bitcoins would suck. Prices would have to reflect the overhead of continuously adjusting prices and converting bitcoins, putting them at a disadvantage against "real" currency. Price instability is poisonous for a currency. Some aspects of bitcoins lead to excessive speculation, and therefore, prices will always be unstable, therefore, there is no incentive to use bitcoins as a way to buy or sell (legal) goods.
- _Lemon_ 15y ago> If I convert dollars to bitcoins, I would be tempted to wait a couple of days and sell on mtgox and then buy the service with dollars. Remove the "purchasing a service" element out of the equation and this still holds up -- the temptation to put money aside in bitcoins is still there. As the service is a month-to-month thing, there's a limit on the amount of time you can wait if you did purchase by bitcoins. Also, if the price of bitcoins is going up, it's encouraging customers to pay earlier and earlier which is a good thing as most customers seem to wait until the last day (but server bills come up before then...).
- thomasz 15y agoNo, it's encouraging the customer use an established, stable currency which doesn't force him to closely monitor the exchange rate. Usually, he doesn't want every transaction to be highly speculative.
- jarin 15y agoI believe the same Senators are trying to go after Tor as well, which is comical because Tor was originally sponsored by the US Naval Research Laboratory. Remember when Congress tried to get encryption banned (or hobbled) too, once they realized that people other than the government could use it? Anyway, I think they'll probably start focusing on issues the general public can understand as election season gets closer.
- gnosis 15y ago"I believe the same Senators are trying to go after Tor as well ... Remember when Congress tried to get encryption banned (or hobbled) too, once they realized that people other than the government could use it?" The difference is that encryption is critically important for much of the internet's infrastructure, while Tor isn't. So they couldn't eliminate the use of encryption without crippling the internet, while getting rid of Tor wouldn't have much of an effect on the internet at all.
- beedogs 15y agoJust imagine if it weren't a complete and utter pain in the ass to purchase and sell bitcoins. (And, please, don't tell me it isn't.)
- jarin 15y agoBank transfer through Dwolla is easy. Of course, it takes so goddamn long that by the time you actually buy some bitcoin it's gone up 80% from when you initiated the transfer.
- reemrevnivek 15y agoThey lost me at: > The only method of payment for these illegal purchases is ... Bitcoins.