Bitcoin Forum

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/12/12/0647203/WikiLeaks-Money-and-Ron-Paul

So the war has started.
We should prepare defenses, it may get "interesting" soon. Unfortunately it may be too soon.

Reading the comments Ron Paul is getting a lot more mileage out of this than is bitcoin.

Seems the 'news for nerds' means political nerds.

Because almost every nerd is also a fan of Ron Paul.

I think that we won't get noticed by the angry old men in DC until Wikileaks actually puts up a donation address on their site. NSA, DHS and all those guys should know about bitcoin by now but probably won't do anything about it until the angry old men start yelling at them, I mean it's not like they get bonuses for working extra time.

Yeah, that's if people won't push WL to accept bitcoin, because that might also happen.

Its the banks that are the real problem. They have lobbyists at their beck and call. However we have the hive mind on our side.  :)

Distributed knowledge at our call! Also don't forget we also have no bureaucracy.

Having arrived yet from the second wave of slashdot coverage -- I say bring it on! Great idea, although I'm still getting my head around it. Further applications, and also the security aspects.

To which idea are you referring to ? The war ?

I guess whether or not Wikileaks will adopt Bitcoin as a way to collect donations is out of our hands, it might be a huge popularity boost, but it may also bring the system to it's knees (speaking as a major critic of the current network topology, and as one that fears the wrath of little old men from Capitol hill).

I think we should make it clear that just because Bitcoin may be used by some shadowy figures we do not want to be solely attributed to them, we work for the great positive aspects that are coming out of Bitcoins. That's the beauty of an open system, it may be adopted by whoever wants to and no one will be disallowed from using it.

If Wikileaks want's to set up a Bitcoin node, we can't do anything about that.  However, once the reporters start snooping around, Mybitcoin.com could just come out with a press release that says something to the effect that they are freezing Wikileak's Mybitcoin.com account.  This is the equivalent of PayPal saying that they are freezing Wikileak's dollar denominated account.

Of course, we don't need to mention that what Mybitcoin.com does really doesn't do anything substantial, but likewise paypal doesn't really stop Wikileaks from US$ transactions either; and nobody seems to mention that.

Well if there's one thing I fear more than little old men, it's hundreds of skript kiddies going at it with LOIC (such unsofiticated tool isn't it?). I guess if MyBitcoin does not want to be associated with Wikileaks that's fine by me, but we do not want Bitcoin being associated with censorship and closed mindedness.

And how in the world could this happen ? We're literally like the opposite of censorship and closed mindedness.

A really easy way would be to release a statement distancing ourselfs from WikiLeaks, we don't want to do that either.

Let's just see if Wikileaks jumps aboard, if so, let's make the best of it (press notbaility, influx of new users) and if not, we'll still be at the same place we were before.

"We" can't release any kind of statement.

You could release a statement. Satoshi could. Joe Plumber could. But "we" can't release a collective statement, because we aren't a collective.