Bitcoin Forum

I'm sure you guys will have already spotted this but have you heard of the We the people government website? It's actually quite a good idea to make the government more transparent, I wish more would do stuff like this, but if you don't know what the site does it's like many of those other petition websites except that if you reach a certain amount of signatures ( Last I looked it was 100,000 ) you get an official response from the Whitehouse.

I thought maybe this would be a great idea for publicity, I can't do a thing because I'm not a U.S Citizen but maybe someone who is could make a petition on there to get the attention of the white house since we have so many people now wondering what they're going to do about it.

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/

It could only do more harm than good. The federal government has no incentive to endorse an alternative currency.

LOL I'd still like to see their response, especially if they ask "What's Bitcoin?" :P

What The Fool said:

We don't want the US Federal government to come meddling. Do you know what it means to have official status with the US government?

You won't like it if they say yes.

Oh, by the way, at some point the government will start taking bitcoin seriously, whether we ask them to or not. I'd like to delay that as long as possible. When the government does start taking an interest in bitcoin things will get crazy!

Well, I would expect such a petition to be signet by about ~12 People.

So it could have a positive outcome in the way that US Gov. recognizes Bitcoin as entirely unimportant.

No, once it has a declared status, hardcore regulations will follow.  Think about what you wish for.

Agorism is to Bitcoin as the Federal Government is to FRNs. Petitioning the government is a waste of time at best, and a terrible introduction of problems at worst.

Avoid government involvement as much as possible in all things.  I was drawn to the concept of Bitcoins because I see it as the antithesis of a government controlled currency.  I would hope to see the use of Bitcoins spread as much as possible while staying out of the government's gaze.

I personally love the petition page the whitehouse has created, I've signed many including the one to deport Piers Morgan!

We don't want him back, fuck off :P

I went to the site but you have to sign up. That immediately excludes a whole bunch of people.

At least this guy is saying Bitcoin will be shut down by the governments of the world in 2014 (http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2013/01/how-bitcoin-dies.html). He thinks that will crash BTC to 0.

Highly unlikely. If Bitcoin is made illegal, it will simply become the de facto currency of the black market.

The mistake is thinking the white house runs anything. The real government is the people who own J.P Morgan , Citibank , HSBC et al and sending them a petition gets you diddly squat. Welcome to fiefdom 101.

I'm just hoping that Bitcoin isn't as reliant on centralized exchanges like Mt. Gox by the time governments figure out Bitcoin's threat to their fiat currencies. The later we can delay that day of discovery the better.

Bitcoins aren't reliant on any central authority, that's what's so great about them, exchanges etc. are just convenient, they aren't really necessary.

It's possibly been discussed elsewhere but assuming bitcoin takes on, I wonder what the future of bitcoin exchange will look like. Little booths like you see in large European cities? Presumably banks would offer it as a service (at unreasonable cost most likely). Presumably there will be some online competition too.

You must be on so many FBI watchlists.

The US Dept. of Justice is well aware of Bitcoin. When they will choose to weigh in is anyone's guess. I suspect they take comfort in the fact that they could destroy the network anytime with a few million invested in custom ASIC hardware. When that is no longer the case I suspect the gov't will ask the IRS to determine if bitcoin income can be sufficiently monitored to be auditable. If it's not, we'll start seeing articles in the mainstream media about how bitcoin is used to fund terrorism.

Yes!

Dinosaur institutions doing things nobody cares about. Don't waste too much time with them.

All this government power stems from an illusion. People expect to be under some sort of large intelligent ruling structure that was never there in the first place. Legal is whatever people (and thus the police) perceive as normal.

Let's focus on expanding the Bitcoin economy. If it becomes a normal part of life, it's automatically legal, just because it would feel absurd to make it illegal. Until then, compare it with cash to counter money-laundering accusations and emphasize that it is the peoples' money to counter misguided politicians.

Better publicity is to get a petition to declare Bitcoin illegal.

How so? I can't really see why you believe a petition will do this, can you explain?

It would be counterproductive to declare it legal, because that destroys the low-transaction-fee aspect.
Every transaction could be a sale, because the government is usually unable to determine either way. Therefore, to be certain they haven't missed any sales tax, there would be 9.25% on EVERY TRANSACTION.
Then there's the IRS, which may or may not even be legal anyway.
Finally, there's the Fed. They could start running ASICs at any time.
It should not be declared either way, it should be just something that's there.

Stop asking for permission. It only encourages them.

This.

This++

Last time I checked, in a supposedly free country, what is not forbidden is authorized.

The latest FinSEC bulletin pretty much declared free trading with bitcoins illegal. I think this idea must be resurrected. It's the only way we could get publicity. They will not leave us alone

I started this thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=160213.0 to get it started

It is wrong thinking in today's world. Piracy, file sharing, hacking all are fundamental parts of digital life. But is made largely illegal. The same might happen to Bitcoin despite it's adoption numbers. And the same will happen to Bitcoin as with other illegal computer things. They will continue to be part of daily life and even expand.

I'm against nagging government and Bitcoin must root into daily lifes for as many users as possible before banhammer strikes.

Currency that cant be traced? That will never happen. Im still not sure how did any country ( USA for example ) let bitcoins be "active" for all this years. Only one thing comes to my mind, some strong government is behind it using some project.....

Governments arent necessarily againt Bitcoin, it's the feds that dont like it. A government owned by feds will despise Bitcoin, but the biggest law-passer in the world is still extremely slow to act. Bitcoin is no more legal or illegal than gold, and no law ever stopped piracy, so why bother passing one? They're more focused on controlling the Internet; if they accomplish this (and they're always trying) then you can expect a whole slew of prosecuting to begin. America would love to tax Bitcoin, and since every transaction is public, they could potentially force users to declare their identities so they can be properly taxed.  It would be impossible to avoid taxation at that point, unless you resort to trading cash in person again.

You do know that the client lets you make as many new addresses as you like, right?

Yes ;D Bitcoin as it is now can be private. However, if governments can listen in on what kind of traffic occurs on any person's connection, they could tell if youre attempting to butt them out. As of now, we have a right to privacy. If CISPA and all its cousins get their way, being anonamous on the web will be a thing of the past.

Well not true. You can hold gold in you hands, you can dig for it, its is not made of 0 and 1, it is a currecy used is so many ways. MMF uses it also, World Bank and so on... Bitcoin is worth less then 1 billion $ ( atm ) so thats not much "money" to start with. You cant tax something that is virtual, thats not like money on PP ( $, punds, yen, and so on ), and since you cant control it its not good for any country.

But you need to consider that bitcoin value differs and one day it can be worth 100$ and next day 70$. No country would invest into something like that, and how would you out a tax on it? I buy a car from you with bitcoins and i pay you 300bitcoins, tomorrow you might lose 5-10K $$$. Market is way 2 small, there isnt much $$$ in bitcoins....

It currently isn't taxable, but laws will be laws and if law is changed to allow virtual currencies to be taxed (specifically for Bitcoin, and likely only for Bitcoin and its derivatives), then there will be the power to tax.  I guarantee there will be supporters for taxes, and enough lobbying to push it through.  What I'm saying, if governments are allowed full access to what you do on the web and on your computer, they will find a way to monitor what you spend and to whom.  It'd be a long list to explain how they could go about doing this, but I wouldn't say it's completely out the window.  We're safe for now, but if and when Bitcoin eats up a lot more than where we're sitting at right now, America, and any other country for the matter, will likely want in on it, and will find a way to swallow a percentage of your cash.


I have high hopes for Bitcoin personally :P  Today of course, it's not going to happen.  But I do believe Bitcoin is firmly grafted into society, and crypto-currencies aren't going to fall off the planet anytime soon.  Countries would either wait for the value of Bitcoin to stabilize, or simply transform the Bitcoin into a bill for dollars.  They wouldn't be able to draw Bitcoin from you directly by any means; instead, I believe they would require you to declare all of your addresses so they can monitor your wallet's activity.  After so long, they send you the Bitcoin tax bill and demand payment in USD (or whatever the country's currency is) or face prison time.  If they decide you're using undeclared wallets to transfer cash, they would probably attempt imprisonment for tax evasion, or claim you're laundering.

I'm certain there's several ways it could happen, however...  But as long as the Internet stays private, it's nothing to ever worry about.

Hope is one thing, reality is something different. Bitcoin will be present ( i hope ) but only real value is behind the fact that atm it cn=ant be traced ( or we think that ). The moment some government controls it, value will drop. And even now value isn stable. Investing into something thats not stable is risky even more so that noone knows what and who is behind it. And if you thing some country ( like USA ) cant simply "close" bitcoin down and trace transaction, you are msitaken, they could do that decades ago, who knows what can they do now. That is why i think some government ( USA ) is behind it.

Bitcoin certainly is taxable. They just have to declare a tax on it. In fact, if you've made income on it, you should probably, by the laws of your jurisdiction, be declaring it.

What it is not easy to do is enforce taxes. So they will do what they always do. If they can find a point to tax, they will tax it. They will tax the online stores you use, they will tax the shipping, they will find ways wherever. And when you find ways around it, they will throw you in jail.

Bitcoin is great and very subversive but don't get the idea it will somehow prevent the government getting its claws into your legitimate transactions.

It is already happened. Bitcoin.Bitcoins are like Freenet or Tor. The extremely aggressive and invasive actions required to take any of them down will result in small gain together with large protests. Decentralized and open source networks cannot be taken down. Probably after all governments have leaned something.I don't think Bitcoins are this case.For this to happen, there must remain no single free country in the world. And goatsed internet is only fraction of problems if such events become true.Keeping two separate wallets and using one for normal trade and another for doing Silk Road purchases will solve this problem.Listening to Bitcoin traffic are not telling much. Except from initiated transactions. If getting paranoid, route Bitcoin trough Tor. And governments can listen to traffic right now, in many cases even without court permission. All that these CISA can do is fully legalizing mass surveillance that are happening in secrecy right now.

You can trace to some extent you cant trace origin of something made from 0 and 1. Something has te bo behind it,, u cant simply make money out of anything, right?
Protests? Do you really think that will stop government to do anything if they chose so? They have taken down megaupload, they can take down anything if they chose to do it

Kind of, not like this though.

It needs to happen in its own time, natural like.

Sorry, did not understand what this means. Can you please be more clear about this?Not it will not. But they are evil, not stupid. They will take into consideration the costs and gains vs. the expected backfire from the actions. Taking down Tor or Bitcoin or any decentralized service will be largely unsuccessful attempt.Closing Megaupload was as simple as pressing ALT+F4. It was centralized service, with known location and known persons responsible for the operation. Taking down tens of thousands of network nodes all over the world is not so simple. They can take down Freenet easily as well, I have written about Freenet vulnerabilities but nobody listens... Freenet is used for childporn and hurtcore more than anything else combined, but it is not under attack by authorities.