Bitcoin Forum

I find the whole thing craptastic.

It's not that someone is finally forcing Romney to release his tax returns (it's something he should have done a year ago) ... but demanding payment in bitcoins makes everyone look like a bunch of shady shisters....     look it's how you guys look at it... 

Romney is a borderline criminal, just like the clowns asking him for the BTC.

oh I agree 10000000%  ...  but I don't believe extortion is the right way to go about it...  the tard should have released them on his own without having someone hack in there to get them.

again I agree with you...  I just don't think that extortion is the right way to do it.

meanwhile Romney calls his buddies trying to find out which central bank issues these damn bitcoins.

I first figured it's impossible for him to pay because it'd probably be politically very harmful. However: he can deny it was him who payed up, right?

I doubt he'll do it and I'm guessing it's not fake.

*whips out popcorn*

It would just look silly if he payed and denied it.
Think about this.
What if they said. a million dollars to be paid in diamonds.
Would people think diamonds are bad?

Yeah, I wish they had demanded dollars, then everyone would be like "oh, I'm so butthurt that he demanded dollars because now everyone is going to hate dollars oh oh oh no".

lol

what's annoying me is the news isn't talking about bitcoin when they cover this story.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJIhNLdbBww
http://youtu.be/3_yQ_Um5ZH8?t=1m25s

Jon Matonis wrote an article about why blackmail is victimless and therefore not morally wrong (http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2012/09/06/blackmail-and-a-briefcase-of-bitcoin/) and could be socially useful.

But I think you should look at this little PR stunt in a different light. bitcoins are the blood, like USD, EUR, YEN, etc., Bitcoin is the veins, like Visa, Paypal, Mastercard, Cirrus, etc. and the Bitcoin economy is the muscular system. This little PR stunt has started discussions among all kinds of people about Bitcoin or, in other words, the now open Pandora's box.

Plus, any publicity is, for the most part, good publicity. People will Google "bitcoin" watch the What Is Bitcoin? (http://www.weusecoins.com) video and be on their way to joining the Bitcoin economy.

How much would this publicity cost for Visa or Mastercard? How much did this publicity cost? 2 USB drives, postage, two sheets of paper and some ink from a magic marker. How many resources are being spent 'investigating', tracking down the leak, etc.?

So for $25 there are hundreds of thousands of people learning about Bitcoin (it was on Yahoo's homepage, etc.) and probably millions of dollars being spent by Romney, SS, PWC, etc.

Talk about a force multiplier!

If he get elected now, the first thing he will do will be to try and shut down that Bitcoin thing.

That'd be entertaining.

Sounds like Bitcoin is the ultimate tool for asymmetric warfare. For every $1 in resources you spend, your enemy must spend hundreds, thousands or millions.

we should pray that the hacker really has something and this is a serious threat. I don't wanna the bitcoin looks like a joke.

Personally I think it's brilliant.  And it ties in with Bitcoin perfectly.

Mitt Romney believes that, were he to become President, he should have access to my financial information, and should be able to extort money from me.

Why should I be concerned if someone forces him to publish his financial information, or extorts money from him?  Fuck him.

This is a common-law country.  Those who live by the sword, die by the arrow.

What about all the blackmail/ransom demands in cash? Make people who use cash look like shysters?

Pastebin is the new wikileaks.

Imagine if someone got info about where banks were accepting money from and blackmailed them into buying bitcoins not to release it.


This has all sorts of possibilities.

Isn't the whole Romney extortion thing a joke? I mean, it's not real, correct?

how would we know? Because PriceWaterhouseCoopers cannot find evidence of a break-in? I'm not saying it's real, I'm just saying: I don't know.