Bitcoin Forum

Yay or Nay?

nay

It doesnt have to, harsh msb fees will make it infeasable

Expand?

I believe its been proven, over and over, that people will do what they want if they really wanted to do it.  For example, there have been copyright laws long before the Internet came into place, and I'd wager most of us have, in the least, downloaded music illegally, or even simply viewed a YouTube video of a song which the uploader had infringed a copyright.  We just don't care what's legal or illegal.  Take a look at murders, for example.  Civilians killing civilians has been illegal for a long time now, yet it happens quite often.  I'd say murder is a much more serious crime than using Bitcoin, and if the law cannot even stop a murder from occurring...well, the rest speaks for itself.

If Bitcoin became illegal, nothing would change, aside from a lot of media exposure, and you know what they say: any publicity is good publicity.

I hope writing pink on black will soon be illegal. *fingers crossed*

And a lot more Tor using

Yes


A girl knowing Tor? That's too much for me, you're definitely a guy a his basement

 Better?

I just learned how to type in colors tonight! I am having fun  >:( (jk)

You could try white too

You download and open... Come say hi tonight on MFC

no way , bitcoin supply is CAPPED, and available at increasing difficulty. I'm going to buy the dips.

Good thread. This forum is becoming more interesting.  ;)

Why should bitcoin become illegal? There is no reason for it to become illegal to begin with? So, no it wont...

I lolled a little. Thanks for that.

Illegal we do immediately, unconstitutional takes longer ;)

If governments could make it illegal, they would have many years ago. It's only the above-ground businesses that they can target at the moment, and they are doing so as we type. The only way I can imagine governments outlawing Bitcoin would be to fundamentally seize control of the internet itself. This seizure has been in the works for over a decade now, so I guess it's not too far beyond the realm of possibility...

also,


lol.

I'm not sure what they can make illegal.
The word 'bitcoin' is just a made up word, so that won't work.
The rest is just mathematics - I don't know if there is a precedent on illegal mathematics.

Well guys this question shares the same answer as ravin tavins question :

Will ravin tavin get in bed with you ?

^What _country are you talking about?

Actually there is. The US has export laws on encryption past a certain strength.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_in_the_United_States

However, your first thoughts on the subject are more relevant. As has been mentioned before Bitcoin doesn't encrypt any transfer of information. Everything is public and broadcast in the clear. So "bitcoin" as you point out being an arbitrary word is really just information. Indeed, it's possible to use a brain wallet (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Brainwallet) to store your private key and carry an unlimited amount of bitcoins in your head.

So making "bitcoin" illegal is nearly synonymous with making information, or thoughts illegal.

Good luck with that.

Don't under-estimate USA

I'd bet bitcoin is already illegal in North Korea, because people cannot freely access the Internet there. In the free world, some government could say that bitcoin is used for terrorism and money laundering, but as long as there are regular businesses using it, this will guard any government from trying to make bitcoin illegal.

http://www.cinemaforpeace-foundation.com/change-through-film/north_korea_is_best_korea.jpg

(*) You forgot kiddy porn

A country could require its citizens to report their assets, and mandate that one's bitcoins be included at current market value even though still in bitcoin form and not yet converted to fiat or spent on goods or services. And make it a criminal offence to falsify one's asset report.

Later, if one's visible assets are not commensurate with one's reports, one might have a problem.

They could require a stamp to purchase bitcoins as part of AML laws and then not issue said stamp.

I'd point out that a cat does not normally make her move as the gazelle approaches the watering hole.  She waits until her prey has become comfortable enough to drop it's head for a drink.  That is, of course, when the prey is most vulnerable and the attack is most likely to result in a kill.

I mean the fact of the matter is there is very slim difference between a Neopoint to a Bitcoin, but I feel like a physical Bitcoin probably could get you in trouble in the future.

Just kidding, I trust you
I don't have any money for this kind of things anyway

My thinking as well....

Bitcoins specifically likely won't, but I can see all alternative "digital currencies" becoming illegal in the next 2 years.

I believe this was to be expected though. 

I think a better question is, what are we going to do to combat/counteract government regulation? We're clearly wading into those waters with each passing day.

That is, to me, what the struggle over the block size and 'off-chain transaction solutions' is all about.

I and other 'minimalists' have some theories about how the attacks might go down and how to attempt to thwart them.  Other people have other theories.  It's hard to know who is right or how much time we have to figure it out.

I'm quite confident that in a general sense, 'distributed crypto-currencies' are here to stay and as they evolve they will adapt to whatever environment they find themselves in.  I think that there is every likelihood of a pretty bumpy ride though.

Bitcoin itself won't become illegal. But governments will nickel and dime to death any business openly accepting Bitcoin as payment.

More people need to understand the issue of block size and off-chain transactions.

I'm still surprised by how many people don't understand why governments would want to prohibit cryptocurrencies in the first place. Within this thread there was someone who basically said there's no reason why they would want to, so they won't. This needs to change as fast as possible, or else people are going to blindly subscribe to whatever government sponsored bastardization that is proposed as a "legitimized" version of Bitcoin. As far as I can tell, we're quickly spiraling towards a full-on, internationally organized, government assault on the network itself. I think this will take the form of Internet regulation. Just as developers are hard at work designing p2p exchange protocols, they should also be working on truly p2p internets. I know of a few projects that are already in the works (Meshnet, among others). I haven't researched the nitty gritty of these Internet protocols, but knowing that there are skilled developers at work on this issue gives me hope. Maybe we can avoid Orwell's foreboding boot from crushing humanity's face for the rest of history...or maybe not

Will it be become illegal? Maybe.
Will they be able to enforce? No.

/thread

Haha! That was almost as funny as the last guy  ;D

I'm afraid I have to concur.  I sense that 'the powers that be' are holding back and getting their ducks in a row at this point, but that all large countries, at least, have more to fear from their own populations than they do from one another.  I imagine that what happened to Mubarak did not go past most of the world's leaders and they have no plans to allow such a thing to happen to themselves.

The media corporations are the main ones chomping at the bit and have jumped the gun slightly to give us a taste of what's in store.  It's not pretty, and I'll bet that 'we ain't seen nothin yet.'


I'm afraid that I don't have as much hope for Meshnet and the like as I wish I did.  It's a huge technical challenge in the best of circumstances, and to get it to work with anything resembling reliability and performance in the face of almost any resistance (like hunting down nodes (which are, after all, beacons)) will be a monumental challenge.

I think it likely that in order to enjoy free communications we'll have to go through a period of slipping through various narrow cracks, but eventually we'll win and things will open back up again.  It well could be the case that Meshnet and such things will be exceedingly valuable in that phase.

Ya.  I've always been prone to try to anticipate the worst and try to figure out a strategy for it.  Most of the time the worst never materializes, and that's fantastic!  Sometimes my choices to prepare for the worst end up costing me, but on balance they have not.

In this case, my fears for the future are in some sense a memory/study/observation of the past.  I remember back to the struggles around availability of 'military grade' cryptography from back when the Internet fist became available to me in the mid 90's.  It was not at all clear that 'we' were going to win and there was much talk around escrowed backdoors and such.  I think the main reason we won is that there was a recognition that seeing who communicated with who was actually more critical than knowing what they said.  And we also won because of people like Hal Finney...and possibly because of Hal Finney.

I also think that fucking with anyone's monetary system is on par with an act of war (whether the transgressors fully recognize their transgressions or not...)  If distributed crypto-currencies end up having a noticeable impact on mainstream monetary systems, and if they cannot be brought under control, I do expect a pretty significant response.

What response? lol
Those think tanks are probably working on a time machine to go back and take out Clinton
Freeze the bank accounts of exchanges?
This only serves to move exchanges out of government reach, while at the same time proving that dollars in banks aren't really yours.

I hope it will become illegal. That would only verify its legitimacy.

Unfortunately, history has more depressing information to convey than encouraging. I really hope this can be a divergence from this trend, but I don't want to be unrealistic about the state of affairs. This is not a trivial matter we're talking about.

true

Will it have any use or value then? Probably not.

Cocaine is illegal. It costs over 100$ per gram.

Girls do drugs too you know

Nay, there are always ways around it anyway ;)

Nope
They don't poop either

No, they poop when they do drugs. I can post a picture of proof here but it will get deleted in no time.

Everyone likes to talk about what Bitcoin is and are always trying to describe it. It seems to me that Bitcoin has become a concept more than anything else. It has become a platform for many people worldwide to vent their frustration over the status quo. It represents change and to most people, if your life is ok now, change is bad. If they don't feel the effects of the problem they don't care. Unfortunately for all the people burying their head in the sand, the world is going to change anyway. The last recession created homeless families that never before experienced suffering because of massive numbers of forclosures. Entire classes of people were shifted down in relative worth around the world because of the greedy system.

In all the forums discussing cryptocurrency that I've read there seems to be a common theme. On one side is a group of people angry with their government that want Bitcoin to change the things they hate about the system that controls them. On the other side are those that like the system so they bash Bitcoin and anything that might help change the system. The people who want change are now many (thanks to world wide financial mismanagement) and can't be stopped simply because one government or another decides to make some aspect of Bitcoin illegal. Even if Bitcoin ceases to exist these people will still hate their situation and spend their lives trying to change it. No, concepts can't become illegal so Bitcoin the concept will live until the struggle is over.

Is it a picture with two girls and one cup?
Anyway I'm sure such a pic would fit in off-topic sub-forum

They are already! #NEW WORLD ORDER!

Who's law? Bitcoin dwarfs the scale of mere countries. If say Botswana makes it illegal it will only hurt their economy in the future.   

I'm a bit unusual in that I am kind of in awe of the current system.  Though remarkably opaque and is increasingly abused, it is really something that a system so complex it works so amazingly well even for society as a whole (even while it works much better for the highest tier of course.)   So, although I consider the current monetary systems 'a scam' to a large degree, it is a scam that has wide ranging benefits to many.  In my humble opinion or course.

My interest in Bitcoin are several, but very high among these are my concerns about what lies around the corner.  Our Western monetary systems, and most of the rest of the world's systems which are influenced by them are, I feel, stretched like a huge spring in order to keep the music playing.  When the dam breaks it's going to be a awesome sight.  Distributed crypto-currencies are a very interesting study in alternative systems.  Probably the most important role they are playing (and by 'they' I mean 99% Bitcoin) is that they are proving that viable alternatives have some track record of function.  It will not be possible to claim that SDR's or whatever are the only way forward if/when currency crisis fires are popping up everywhere.

It still may be possible to attempt to damage the function that distributed crypto-currencies posses, and I'll be very surprised if we do not see this attempted with a vengeance, and on a lot of fronts, if/when crises of various types pop up.  Right now attacking Bitcoin would mostly give it an excuse to fail and produce a reasonable argument that absent attack, it could work OK.

The complexity that you see and admire I see as a web of deceit spun to lull the population into a position of complacency. I am fairly well off and really want for nothing. I could drive down the street stopping at traffic lights and roll up my window when a homeless person walks by with a sign but instead I give him a few bucks. I wonder how many homeless we could feed with just one less aircraft carrier. I drive from Oakland to San Leandro and see the horrible poverty and wonder why we can't change it. Then I turn on the TV and see reports of the masses of money that my government wastes. I watched WAMU, Wachovia, Merill Lynch, IndyMac and many more go bankrupt from greed and mismanagement. The government makes sweetheart deals with company's like Chase to take over the failed branches, wipes out the mortgage debt, bails out the auto makers all using my wallet. I read about organizations like the CIA that have secret budgets and new agencies like DHS that are set on controlling the masses. All these things add up to a far less than magical system that desperately needs to change. The Occupy Movement is made up of people that see the inequity and mismanagement but they are too few in number to really make a difference. These problems are happening worldwide too.

Bitcoin might not be the solution but it's a place to start. Bitcoin can't feed the homeless but it might be able to take funding away from greedy banks and corrupt governments. I'm sick of my government telling me what to do when they clearly don't know what they're doing. I intend to support Bitcoin as long as it remains a system powered by individuals free from government abuse and control. They're going to attack Bitcoin. What lies around the corner is a very rough road but a survivable one.

True

Please lead by example.

Actually, they only become nonexistent when the very last copy of the blockchain is non-recoverably erased from the very last hard drive of the very last bitcoin node. As long as a single copy exists somewhere in the world, the bitcoin network will reconfigure itself automatically as nodes are reconnected. It is as resilient as the internet itself.

Making bitcoins illegal in any given jurisdiction would be about as pointless as making TCP/IP or electrons illegal. Bitcoin just don't care.  

in essence they already are

The key to keeping bitcoins legal, is to work with governments and respect their regulations. As I have stated many times before just cause we have the power to not pay taxes, or not follow regulations, doesn't mean we should. We should only execute that power in critical situations. Currently working with the government to help them understand what and how bitcoin works, is the best thing we can do.

you couldnt pay taxes on bitcoins even if you wanted to. i have 495349 coins in my wallet, what address do I send my 30% to pay for taxes?

I was talking about when you convert to dollars or any fiat currency, you should be paying taxes on the gains. But if you own a business you should be doing your books as if you were getting dollars, and paying taxes on your income. Currently for me my only income is bitcoins yet I still pay my taxes on those coins.

Until you convert them into USD or some other tangible asset, they're not considered any more taxable than a pile of chuck-e-cheese tokens would be - unless of course you received them in exchange for some kind of goods or service, then they would be income at whatever the rate was when you accepted them.

That's why we love bitcoins!

and that's the beauty in them
legal money laundering

regardless all my coins are cashed out anonymously, as should anyones

You completely wrong, money laundering is illegal, and people that use bitcoin as such are just going to hurt what the other community members are working so hard for. So while I am not going to say not to do that, I am just going to say think about the community and not yourself.

"money" laundering is illegal yes, but bitcoin is not money.

considering 99% of the bitcoin community does not pay taxes on their coins, i think your point of view, while not laughable, is not going to go a long ways

there is really no reason to try and legitimize bitcoins with government. you can't create a secondary currency where tax and business laws are a gray area and make the government happy with their existence. it will piss them off no matter what you do, just go about your business and be grateful for this tax free heaven that exists in 2013

well now your looking at it as one section of the community. I agree the users that don't own a business or don't make an income in bitcoins. It is ok not to pay taxes on them, until you convert it to your fiat currency, which is called the capital gains  tax. When your a business owner and your income is only bitcoins, I could easily say I made $0 which would be true, but I don't. I hope people don't treat bitcoins as an offshore account or as you put as a tax free heaven. Stuff like this makes it harder to put money into bitcoins which is important right now. Bitinstant could easily say they don't want to pay for the licensing but they do cause in the overall benefits the community. That is all I am saying is lets think like a community and not an individual. Of course you do what you want, but it just hurts people like me running and starting up business. Believe me I look and see my taxes going out it doesn't make me happy. But in my mind I say this is what is needed for the community currently. Also where did you get the number 99% don't pay taxes, cause a lot of legitimate business owners do. I would almost bet every single user of bitpay conversation tool from BTC to USD pay taxes. That is a lot of people.

Likely depends on the jurisdiction. In the U.S., I doubt they will ever be outright illegal. Exchanging them for fiat, OTOH...

The government will never be happy with a currency they cannot directly control. Even if people attempt to placate them with tax payments, they can't directly control the money supply and it's pseudonymous, they will never like that.

when you run a gigantic exchange like mtgox or bitinstant then yes you should probably legitimize your business, but i somehow doubt you are grossing as much as they are. in the "fortune 500" companies of bitcoin you would ideally want those to be legal businesses that pay taxes, but your definition of a business is too formal. you can open an anonymously hosted website on tor (or not) and open anonymous bank accounts and funding sources to turn your btc into cash. it's the same thing as your "real business" you run now, but you make 20% more money because you don't pay taxes, plus you cannot be shut down regardless of how big you get. if you had the influence that a gigantic exchange does then yes you give BTC more of a bad name (but giving it a bad name is not necessarily a bad thing).

just look at silk road. their profits are estimated to be in the tens of millions annually, and the website has only done positive things for bitcoin. once you get past the initial shock that a massive drug trading website exists, like out of a fairy tale, you realize it has probably done more for bitcoin then bitinstant ever has.

you really dont need to cater to the legitimate side of things my man. the government can do whatever they want and their opinion on the matter is irrelevant. they cannot shut down bitcoin, they cannot shut down your business if configured properly, and there is hardly a reason to pay taxes on any of this.

there will never be a day in which you can go into a walmart and pay with bitcoin, this I guarantee you. 

this is the exact point i was trying to make. because they will never like it, it's useless to try and make them like it (aka paying taxes, following regulation).

Definitely. The Hidden Wiki clearly states this. http://3suaolltfj2xjksb.onion/hiddenwiki/index.php?title=Girls
 :P

I'll just leave this here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number