6 ms·

This should be a warning to anybody that ends up amassing X00K in a digital currency to be very very careful to keep your money secured and in your control.

• coldpie 13y ago
  Suddenly, thousands of Internet libertarians learn the value of regulation.
  • gonvaled 13y ago
    You got this backwards: just transfer the bitcoins to your private wallet, and you have no need whatsoever for regulation. People keeping their bitcoins in online wallets are trusting MtGox et al. A libertarian trusts nobody but himself - and specially not the state.
    • jusben1369 13y ago
      A libertarian trusts nobody but himself? In general or just with his/her money?
      • clavalle 13y ago
        Well, I think there would be a level of interpersonal trust. That wouldn't go away. But there is much in day-to-day life that we all trust to at least a Lowest Common Level that would no longer exist in a Libertarian world. For example, did you visit an office building today? How do you know it won't fall in on you? Today you know because it was built to certain specifications set forth in regulation. You know the builders were certified and that the inspectors made sure no corners were cut (at least in a well functioning system as we generally have in the U.S.) In a Libertarian world that might be taken over by some sort of for profit certification body...or it might not. The onus would be on you to find out before you walk through the door and put your life in the hands of people you've never met.
        • wpietri 13y ago
          That's a great example. The typical rejoinder to which is "enlightened self-interest!" That you can trust people to do the right thing because in the long term that works out for the best. But it turns out we tried that on a massive scale with the best and brightest, and it got us the Great Recession. Even St. Greenspan had to admit it didn't work. There's a great section on that here: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/jamie-dimons-raise-proves-u-s-regulatory-strategy-is-a-joke-20140130 http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/jamie-di...
    • clavalle 13y ago
      Merely thinking about the absolute lack of trust for everybody and everything in a Libertarian world, and what that would mean for day-to-day life, exhausts me.
      • gonvaled 13y ago
        Not trusting anybody / anything does not mean that you can not risk a relationship. It's a cost/benefit analysis. In the case of MtGox, a libertarian would trust it with a small percent of their holdings, no more. Because a libertarian recognizes that the world is inherently risky/hostile, as a basic strategy he is not willing to risk too many eggs on a single basket. Whatever the basket - specially if it is a basket guaranteed by the state with a business plan based on a pyramid-scam, like, "we are guaranteeing all bank accounts although we have absolutely no money to do that".
        • clavalle 13y ago
          It is not a cost/benefit analysis. It is an explosion of cost/benefit analysis. It is replacing a tree structure (government) with a directed graph with no further constraints (agreements between individuals and groups). Sure, it is more flexible but at a cost of a huge reduction in efficiency. That is why it seems exhausting to me. A base level of trust that we rely on every day, a system of trust that works so well most of the time that we don't even realize it is there unless we think about it, would not exist.
    • dublinben 13y ago
      >A libertarian trusts nobody but himself No wonder libertarians are so unpopular.
  • VMG 13y ago
    Yes, the fact that one has to do business with a Japanese company because it is impossible to open a Bitcoin exchange in the US is a very valuable lesson about regulation.
    • aroch 13y ago
      It's not impossible (See Coinbase). You just have to follow the law -- it's a pretty simple concept
      • joshstrange 13y ago
        > You just have to follow the law -- it's a pretty simple concept Is this sarcasm?
        • aroch 13y ago
          No, at the most it's snark, both Dwolla and MtGox were punished for not following Money Transmitter laws.
      • tzs 13y ago
        Is Coinbase following the law? They are registered as a money services business with FinCEN, but I checked a couple of states that their FinCEN registration says they operate in (California and Washington), and did not see them listed there. As a control, I checked both those states for PayPal to make sure I was looking at the right list, and it was there.
        • thinkcomp 13y ago
          No, they're not. http://www.plainsite.org/dockets/index.html?id=2434524 http://www.plainsite.org/dockets/index.html?id=2434524
  • growupkids 13y ago
    No, you're thinking of the value of a safe, or did you forget the economic collapse of all those regulated banks in 2008?
    • deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    • wpietri 13y ago
      No consumer lost money in a US bank in 2008. The FDIC and its related organizations protected depositors for $100,000 per person per bank. That was upped to $250,000 during the crisis. Anybody interested in what happened from that perspective should read Shelia Bair's "Bull by the Horns". It's a readable and engaging account of the financial crisis from her experience as the head of the FDIC. She's a Republican and along the way makes a great Republican case for the value of strong financial regulation as necessary to an effective market economy.
      • 300bps 13y ago
        No consumer lost money in a US bank in 2008. This is a different statement than: The FDIC ... protected depositors for $100,000 per person per bank There were several consumers that lost money in a US bank in 2008 because they had over the insured amount in their account. http://www.fdic.gov/consumers/consumer/news/cnspr00/pg8stry.html http://www.fdic.gov/consumers/consumer/news/cnspr00/pg8stry....
        • wpietri 13y ago
          I agree they aren't the same. I thought the former was true, but can't find a citation for it now. Your link, by the way, doesn't prove otherwise.
  • njharman 13y ago
    And also "Big Socialist Government" programs such as FDIC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Deposit_Insurance_Corporation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Deposit_Insurance_Corpo... Although, you credit them too highly believing they will "learn". AND, I take Internet Libertarians to refer to the new hoards of ignorant wankers who thing Libertarianism == "Don't tax me bro". Social Libertarians can keep on keeping on.
    • wpietri 13y ago
      We're getting a little off topic here, but where Libertarianism ended up has always made me a little sad. When I ran across some Libertarians manning a table on my college campus in the late 80s, they were such reasonable and sincere people. Now, most of what I see is either the political equivalent of a 14-year-old shouting, "You're not my DAD" or oligarch-fluffers who seem to be perfectly ok with stepping over the bodies of the elderly in the street as long as the Koch brothers get what they want. It's definitely not the Libertarian movement I dreamed of in college.
  • oleganza 13y ago
    It is ridiculous. Do you realize that "regulation" is not really a solution? If the problem is "I cannot trust these guys", then "trust instead those guys (who are even more opaque and more powerful)" is a joke. If we cannot trust some random competing companies with our money, then the last thing we want is to trust one gigantic monopoly with the thickest walls and all the guns in the world. Real solution: spreading the trust. Either store your coins on your devices, or spread them in multisignature scripts (M-of-N) between your own trusted friends. Even if some of your friends defect or lose their keys, you are still safe. That's the real security solution, regardless of your political outlook. Just saying "lets vote for some cops to enforce stuff" is only making initial problem of trust bigger, not smaller.
  • ctdonath 13y ago
    Libertarian != anarchist. Libertarians recognize that the proper place for government is regulation - where actually necessary and not infringing on natural rights.