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Anyone fancy weighing in on what he means here? "If you guys want to be a shill for the financial industry and support a chattel currency that people use to pu

Anyone fancy weighing in on what he means here? "If you guys want to be a shill for the financial industry and support a chattel currency that people use to purchase drugs and money with—have a party, man. My job is a regulator; I'm going to look after it." What is a chattel currency in this context? It seems to refer to a "commodity as currency" arrangement but there is clearly some extra implied meaning that I'm not getting. What does he mean about "shill for the financial industry?" Is he referring to sellers of bitcoin derivatives, or is he trying to claim that the "real" financial industry is involved? The colloquial nature of his tone almost suggests sarcasm. What's the deal?

jlgreco 13y ago
That part is so weird that my knee-jerk reaction is that it is meant to cause fear, uncertainty, and doubt.
drcode 13y ago
He uses the word "chattel" because it's a term that was used in the slave trade, but he can get away with it because technically it's just another word for "currency". It's a disgraceful smear. This is clearly going to get ugly. EDIT: Some stats from Google search, since this is a sensitive point and people are questioning what I'm saying (quotes included in the search): "chattel currency": 72 results "chattel property": 46,600 results "chattel slavery": 335,000 results
- w1ntermute 13y ago
  A fundamental advantage of BTC is that it's supposed to be free of government regulation or other forms of centralized control. The correct response to this is to (be absolutely sure that the government can't regulate it, and then) just ignore whatever the government says.
  - Nursie 13y ago
    This works fine until real-world businesses start being shut down for accepting it. Not saying this will happen, but a determined government could easily put a huge dent in bitcoin usage.
    - iaw 13y ago
      More realistically what would happen is that the government would start imposing huge fines and tracking down those that evade them (such as tax cheats, except easier because tax cheaters are smarter than the average BTC user at fooling government regulators).
- mikeyouse 13y ago
  The level of perceived persecution in the bitcoin community is pretty humorous. Chattel is just tangible personal property that is moveable and hard to value. [1][2] Bart Chilton is probably most well known for his outing of the manipulation in the precious metals markets.[3] This guy is not bitcoin's enemy. Edit: From a writeup in which the EFF describes Trespass to Chattels in the context of digital goods[4]: "A trespass to chattels occurs when one party itentionally uses or intermeddles with personal property in rightful possession of another without authorization," Does that not sound entirely relevant to bitcoin exchanges? [1] http://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/chattel.asp http://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/chattel.asp [2] http://www.trustees.org.uk/review-index/Chattels-CGT-and-Chattels.php http://www.trustees.org.uk/review-index/Chattels-CGT-and-Cha... [3] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-26/silver-market-faced-fraudulent-efforts-to-control-price-chilton-says.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-26/silver-market-faced... [4] https://ilt.eff.org/index.php/Trespass_to_Chattels https://ilt.eff.org/index.php/Trespass_to_Chattels
  - drcode 13y ago
    > Chattel is just tangible personal property Yes, this is what I wrote. Now type chattel into Google with autocomplete and tell me the first item that comes up for you as an autocomplete option...
    - Shivetya 13y ago
      Oddly I get the Merriam-Webster definition which shows n item of tangible movable or immovable property except real estate and things (as buildings) connected with real property. 2. : slave, bondman · See chattel ... I wonder if past search history affects results, my second result was from the free online dictionary and referenced cattle. I am not sure how I would take offense, perhaps certain groups are predisposed to do so?
      - JonnieCache 13y ago
        >I am not sure how I would take offense, perhaps certain groups are predisposed to do so? If that's a joke, you are a genius.
- wiredfool 13y ago
  It's a legal term, see Trespass to chattels[1] Google search, "chattel tresspass" 183,000 results. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trespass_to_chattels http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trespass_to_chattels
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > He uses the word "chattel" because it's a term that was used in the slave trade, but he can get away with it because technically it's just another word for "currency". No, its not another word for currency. "Chattel" is a widely used legal term for personal property; its used as an adjective with "slavery" to specify a particular kind of slavery (the one in which slaves are legally treated as chattel, which while its probably the most familiar kind to most people is not the only thing considered "slavery"), but the term "chattel" itself isn't particularly associated with the slave trade. More relevant, "chattel currency" is a term for things used as currency that are not legal tender (its not exactly commonly used because there isn't a lot of need to discuss that particular class of things.) However, there is one place its pretty commonly used, and that's among the kind of conspiracy theorists (often goldbugs) who think (for example) that Federal Reserve banknotes aren't legal tender and are a scam to get you to surrender your "real" money (which these conspiracy theorists seem to think is still real legal tender) for "chattel currency". Given that a not-insignificant number of those conspiracy theorists seem to have flipped from being goldbugs to "bitbugs", I wouldn't be surprised if it was the use of the term "chattel currency" was calculated, but it certainly wasn't a slave trade reference. > Some stats from Google search Counting search results isn't a substitute for knowing what you are talking about. I'm actually surprised that "chattel property" (which is a redundancy) has that many results, but that doesn't change that "chattel" means personal property, and that its use to refer to that is the most common use. It is also true that "slavery" is a common context in which "chattel" is used as a modifier, and that use -- because specific discussion of that form of slavery as a class is much more common than specific discussion of non-legal-tender currency as a class -- is vastly more common than reference to chattel slavery. But that doesn't mean that "chattel currency" is a reference to chattel slavery, any more than the fact that "green" is far more frequently used as an adjective to modify "eyes" ("green eyes" -> "about 500,000,000 hits") than "grocer" ("green grocer" -> "about 1,840,000 hits") means that the phrase "green grocer" is a reference to "green eyes".
  - drcode 13y ago
    Can you show me some example legal documents that use the phrase "chattel currency" with the meaning you ascribe to it?
- mikeyouse 13y ago
  I felt this deserved a separate response since it's attracted so much attention. It is immensely unhelpful to pretend to be offended by a phrase since you personally have only ever encountered it while reading Frederick Douglas. The concept of trespass to chattels is a very import question in digital law. It would serve the community to understand it better since the theory is largely where the CFAA gains legitimacy. Some starting points: * In relation to Aaron Swartz's case: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericgoldman/2013/03/28/the-computer-fraud-and-abuse-act-is-a-failed-experiment/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericgoldman/2013/03/28/the-compu... * Eric Goldman from the Forbes article has an entire series regarding TtC: http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/trespass_to_chattels/ http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/trespass_to_chattels/ * Cyberproperty Law from the Indiana Law Review: http://indylaw.indiana.edu/ilr/pdf/vol40p23.pdf http://indylaw.indiana.edu/ilr/pdf/vol40p23.pdf
  - drcode 13y ago
    You could certainly be right that the phrasing was intended in this manner. Clearly though Mr. Chilton was falling over himself to use the terms "money laundering" and "drugs" as much as possible. He was trying to use the nastiest, dismissive language he could to describe bitcoins, and given that the use of the term "chattel currency" is virtually unprecedented on the entirety of the internet it certainly seems worth raising an eyebrow at the use of this phrasing.
- tptacek 13y ago
  This is one of the dumber comments ever on HN.
dreamdu5t 13y ago
Regulators are the shills for the financial industry!
cinquemb 13y ago
Maybe he just got out of the bed with JPM and DB, or is looking for a job there after he done "doing his service"? But I think the dismissive tone is kind of moot because the fact that he's even talking about Bitcoin in the context of regulation (aka taking it seriously now) already speaks louder than anything. Then again people purchase drugs and swap currencies with USD and the financial industry is already a shill floating on the back of CB's that have to keep printing to keep this balloon inflated, so I had laugh at that quote .
absherwin 13y ago
A chattel is moveable property (i.e. not land). So a chattel currency is any currency that involves transferring property such as gold, flour, etc. Re: Slavery use. Slaves were called chattel because they were property; that was the disgrace.
waterlesscloud 13y ago
I'm about 90% certain he actually said "shadow currency" and it's been transcribed wrong. He uses the term "shadow currency" elsewhere. Of course, that's still intended to make it sound scary.
- chc 13y ago
  This is both the least interesting and most likely explanation.
- drcode 13y ago
  That's actually a very plausible hypothesis (I'm the guy who wrote the comment about the ugliness of the word "chattel") Can anyone find the audio for this quote? The version I heard of the CNBC interview didn't contain this sentence...
- jlgreco 13y ago
  Considering the context: "a chattel currency that people use to purchase drugs and money with" And the what turns up if you start looking around at what there is out there for "shadow currency": "Shadow currency: how Bitcoin can finance terrorism" (from two days ago) And from "The US Regulatory Vice Closes On Bitcoin" (from one day ago): "Chilton's remit to regulate this "shadow currency" is predicated on it becoming a basis for derivative contracts as opposed to purely transactional (akin to the monitoring of physical oil transactions that can influence crude futures.)" ...I would say you are correct with almost without any doubt.

jlgreco 13y ago

That part is so weird that my knee-jerk reaction is that it is meant to cause fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

drcode 13y ago

He uses the word "chattel" because it's a term that was used in the slave trade, but he can get away with it because technically it's just another word for "currency". It's a disgraceful smear. This is clearly going to get ugly. EDIT: Some stats from Google search, since this is a sensitive point and people are questioning what I'm saying (quotes included in the search): "chattel currency": 72 results "chattel property": 46,600 results "chattel slavery": 335,000 results

w1ntermute 13y ago
A fundamental advantage of BTC is that it's supposed to be free of government regulation or other forms of centralized control. The correct response to this is to (be absolutely sure that the government can't regulate it, and then) just ignore whatever the government says.
- Nursie 13y ago
  This works fine until real-world businesses start being shut down for accepting it. Not saying this will happen, but a determined government could easily put a huge dent in bitcoin usage.
  - iaw 13y ago
    More realistically what would happen is that the government would start imposing huge fines and tracking down those that evade them (such as tax cheats, except easier because tax cheaters are smarter than the average BTC user at fooling government regulators).
mikeyouse 13y ago
The level of perceived persecution in the bitcoin community is pretty humorous. Chattel is just tangible personal property that is moveable and hard to value. [1][2] Bart Chilton is probably most well known for his outing of the manipulation in the precious metals markets.[3] This guy is not bitcoin's enemy. Edit: From a writeup in which the EFF describes Trespass to Chattels in the context of digital goods[4]: "A trespass to chattels occurs when one party itentionally uses or intermeddles with personal property in rightful possession of another without authorization," Does that not sound entirely relevant to bitcoin exchanges? [1] http://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/chattel.asp http://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/chattel.asp [2] http://www.trustees.org.uk/review-index/Chattels-CGT-and-Chattels.php http://www.trustees.org.uk/review-index/Chattels-CGT-and-Cha... [3] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-26/silver-market-faced-fraudulent-efforts-to-control-price-chilton-says.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-26/silver-market-faced... [4] https://ilt.eff.org/index.php/Trespass_to_Chattels https://ilt.eff.org/index.php/Trespass_to_Chattels
- drcode 13y ago
  > Chattel is just tangible personal property Yes, this is what I wrote. Now type chattel into Google with autocomplete and tell me the first item that comes up for you as an autocomplete option...
  - Shivetya 13y ago
    Oddly I get the Merriam-Webster definition which shows n item of tangible movable or immovable property except real estate and things (as buildings) connected with real property. 2. : slave, bondman · See chattel ... I wonder if past search history affects results, my second result was from the free online dictionary and referenced cattle. I am not sure how I would take offense, perhaps certain groups are predisposed to do so?
    - JonnieCache 13y ago
      >I am not sure how I would take offense, perhaps certain groups are predisposed to do so? If that's a joke, you are a genius.
wiredfool 13y ago
It's a legal term, see Trespass to chattels[1] Google search, "chattel tresspass" 183,000 results. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trespass_to_chattels http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trespass_to_chattels
dragonwriter 13y ago
> He uses the word "chattel" because it's a term that was used in the slave trade, but he can get away with it because technically it's just another word for "currency". No, its not another word for currency. "Chattel" is a widely used legal term for personal property; its used as an adjective with "slavery" to specify a particular kind of slavery (the one in which slaves are legally treated as chattel, which while its probably the most familiar kind to most people is not the only thing considered "slavery"), but the term "chattel" itself isn't particularly associated with the slave trade. More relevant, "chattel currency" is a term for things used as currency that are not legal tender (its not exactly commonly used because there isn't a lot of need to discuss that particular class of things.) However, there is one place its pretty commonly used, and that's among the kind of conspiracy theorists (often goldbugs) who think (for example) that Federal Reserve banknotes aren't legal tender and are a scam to get you to surrender your "real" money (which these conspiracy theorists seem to think is still real legal tender) for "chattel currency". Given that a not-insignificant number of those conspiracy theorists seem to have flipped from being goldbugs to "bitbugs", I wouldn't be surprised if it was the use of the term "chattel currency" was calculated, but it certainly wasn't a slave trade reference. > Some stats from Google search Counting search results isn't a substitute for knowing what you are talking about. I'm actually surprised that "chattel property" (which is a redundancy) has that many results, but that doesn't change that "chattel" means personal property, and that its use to refer to that is the most common use. It is also true that "slavery" is a common context in which "chattel" is used as a modifier, and that use -- because specific discussion of that form of slavery as a class is much more common than specific discussion of non-legal-tender currency as a class -- is vastly more common than reference to chattel slavery. But that doesn't mean that "chattel currency" is a reference to chattel slavery, any more than the fact that "green" is far more frequently used as an adjective to modify "eyes" ("green eyes" -> "about 500,000,000 hits") than "grocer" ("green grocer" -> "about 1,840,000 hits") means that the phrase "green grocer" is a reference to "green eyes".
- drcode 13y ago
  Can you show me some example legal documents that use the phrase "chattel currency" with the meaning you ascribe to it?
mikeyouse 13y ago
I felt this deserved a separate response since it's attracted so much attention. It is immensely unhelpful to pretend to be offended by a phrase since you personally have only ever encountered it while reading Frederick Douglas. The concept of trespass to chattels is a very import question in digital law. It would serve the community to understand it better since the theory is largely where the CFAA gains legitimacy. Some starting points: * In relation to Aaron Swartz's case: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericgoldman/2013/03/28/the-computer-fraud-and-abuse-act-is-a-failed-experiment/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericgoldman/2013/03/28/the-compu... * Eric Goldman from the Forbes article has an entire series regarding TtC: http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/trespass_to_chattels/ http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/trespass_to_chattels/ * Cyberproperty Law from the Indiana Law Review: http://indylaw.indiana.edu/ilr/pdf/vol40p23.pdf http://indylaw.indiana.edu/ilr/pdf/vol40p23.pdf
- drcode 13y ago
  You could certainly be right that the phrasing was intended in this manner. Clearly though Mr. Chilton was falling over himself to use the terms "money laundering" and "drugs" as much as possible. He was trying to use the nastiest, dismissive language he could to describe bitcoins, and given that the use of the term "chattel currency" is virtually unprecedented on the entirety of the internet it certainly seems worth raising an eyebrow at the use of this phrasing.
tptacek 13y ago
This is one of the dumber comments ever on HN.

dreamdu5t 13y ago

Regulators are the shills for the financial industry!

cinquemb 13y ago

Maybe he just got out of the bed with JPM and DB, or is looking for a job there after he done "doing his service"? But I think the dismissive tone is kind of moot because the fact that he's even talking about Bitcoin in the context of regulation (aka taking it seriously now) already speaks louder than anything. Then again people purchase drugs and swap currencies with USD and the financial industry is already a shill floating on the back of CB's that have to keep printing to keep this balloon inflated, so I had laugh at that quote .

absherwin 13y ago

A chattel is moveable property (i.e. not land). So a chattel currency is any currency that involves transferring property such as gold, flour, etc. Re: Slavery use. Slaves were called chattel because they were property; that was the disgrace.

waterlesscloud 13y ago

I'm about 90% certain he actually said "shadow currency" and it's been transcribed wrong. He uses the term "shadow currency" elsewhere. Of course, that's still intended to make it sound scary.

chc 13y ago
This is both the least interesting and most likely explanation.
drcode 13y ago
That's actually a very plausible hypothesis (I'm the guy who wrote the comment about the ugliness of the word "chattel") Can anyone find the audio for this quote? The version I heard of the CNBC interview didn't contain this sentence...
jlgreco 13y ago
Considering the context: "a chattel currency that people use to purchase drugs and money with" And the what turns up if you start looking around at what there is out there for "shadow currency": "Shadow currency: how Bitcoin can finance terrorism" (from two days ago) And from "The US Regulatory Vice Closes On Bitcoin" (from one day ago): "Chilton's remit to regulate this "shadow currency" is predicated on it becoming a basis for derivative contracts as opposed to purely transactional (akin to the monitoring of physical oil transactions that can influence crude futures.)" ...I would say you are correct with almost without any doubt.