Bitcoin Forum

When will him(assume he is still alive) or other dictators discover Bitcoin?

So by this I assume you support terrorism, tyranny and dictatorships?

Did I say I support these activities anywhere? Bitcoin itself offers an impartial protection of its owners' privacies, if the dictators decide to invest on Bitcoins there is nothing we can do to prevent them from doing so as long as the design iteself remains flawless, then it would be interesting to speculate whether and how will they get in, and what its impact would be.

No, he did not. An opinion was never made.

So by this I assume you support Al Qaeda, terrorists, violence and religious wars?

It's called an "assumption". Gaddafi Vowed to continue a Guerilla war after he was deposed (which in this day and age essentially amounts to domestic terrorism) and he himself funded a cruel and tyrannical regime. If you believe he is entitled to his wealth after vowing to use it for such disgusting tactics I could only assume you must agree with what he has done.

I am not saying he is entitled to own anything. But seeing that he is still lurking around with armored limousines, bodyguards, family members, etc, and is fully able to feed all these people, one can only assume that he is carrying substantial amount of material wealth, and is still well-connected to purchase living necessities. and I don't think he was silly enough to convert all his wealth into fiat currencies, especially considering he was trying to build a gold-backed economic system. So you probably had made a presumption of evil intention.

This is besides the point. The man has vowed to fund terrorism with his money, and yet you have objected to what money he has in international banks being seized from him. If you are disputing that this should not be the case you are essentially agreeing that he should be allowed to fund guerrilla warfare against innocents after his long and brutal regime.

Excuse me, but where did I make such objections, disputes as you have put into text? All I was saying is, due to Bitcoin's inherent protection against government probes, it maybe possible that the dictators will get interested in it., if just by talking about dictators' willingness to use Bitcoin will make me a terrorism supporter, then the same standard should be applied to your post in which you mentioned terrorism, tyranny, etc. And if you're calling my last post"besides the point", I would doubt if you even understand what a "point" is.

Its posts like these that make this forum suck. When you must defend yourself from someone who thinks you meant to say something you did not...

And the Libyan rebels have links to Al Qaeda, a known terrorist organization.  So by using your own logic: by not supporting Gaddafi you support a known terrorist organization taking control of Libya.  You're a dirty terrorist-lover.  See how that works?

Disclaimer: I hate disclaimers.

...but in my opinion OP, it's only a matter of time before dictators discover Bitcoin. If Gaddaffi or other could have his billions in a backed-up, encrypted file (or several), that's going to make their lives a whole lot easier after a regime change.

So how would he pull out the money when needed? I assume it would be in huge chunks of money...not the 5-100 btc withdrawls that we might be used to seeing... ???

If a dictator stored billions in bitcoin, we would no longer be used to seeing 5 btc *anywhere* :)

Honestly, Bitcoin is likely dead unless Africa actually adopts it, which could happen.

It's already happening, but those $80 smartphones will surely help.

Having his regime toppled, he should not still be expecting the same kind of  luxurious life-style as he once had, several million dollars worth of usable money to last him and his family memebers in a well-off way would be a God's gift, this amount of money could be drawn out of the market without causing much notice, given that Bitcoin had several hundred million dollars worth of market value at its price peak.

But he'll still need some place to spend them and I don't know of any BTC stores that sell dictator level luxury goods, guns n' ammo, torture racks and other authoritarian accessories. Cashing out seems out of the question since it's to the same banking system that has already blacklisted him.

If he is able to travel out of Libya to a country with reasonably well commodity distribution network, it would be possible for him to stay in hiding while buying all the necessary goods for many years like what Whitey Bulger has done.

We need to email these governments ourselves alerting them to bitcoin.

Or refrain from even talking about such a possibility, pretending that they will never find out by themseleves.

Sounds like a plan. How do you word it such that you get their interest but it doesn't sound like a 419 scam?

Tell college students to tell their local drug dealer to tell their supplier.

So by this I assume you support propaganda, manipulation, false flag attacks, invading other people's countries and forcing them at gunpoint to do business with you under your terms?

How do you know they haven't?

It'd be foolish for them to store a significant percentage of their wealth in BTC right now (and the market cap clearly shows they're not), but I wouldn't be at all surprised if there are a few dictators, kings, or other prominent characters who keep a hundred-k USD equivalent in BTC as an unfreezable slush fund in case they need to GTFO in a hurry.

Realistically, though, keeping a roll of USD or EUR in their briefcase is probably easier and safer for these guys.  It'd be inconvenient to find someone local to trade BTC to cash to buy airfare in the middle of a coup.

Supposedly Libya has declared several billions of USD in gold reserves. And, guess what? It's not held in Switzerland, but in Libya. Moving it around and cashing it out as needed in this situation surely makes one wonder if Bitcoin would have made life easier.

As for all the dictatorship- and terrorism-related comments here, I wonder if anyone has actually visited Libya under Gaddafi, or these are just opinions based on CNN, Fox, BBC, Wikipedia, etc. I've never been there myself, but I happen to know several people who have - and I can tell you that things were more complex and more interesting than simply a "terrorist dictatorship". Since lots of negative facts and lies have already been thrown around, I will try to balance the view a bit. It was a secular system that provided free or heavily subsidized healthcare, education, and housing to its citizens. It was a country that invested in and successfully built vast infrastructure of water wells and pipelines, enabling farming in what would otherwise been a desert. It was among the most developed and prosperous countries in Africa, and as a consequence lots of people were leaving their homeland to work in Libya. Curiously, it was a country with almost no foreign debt and with significant reserves.
At least part of the trouble and radicalization was caused by the outside intervention of western countries who were displeased with this working example of socialism and with Gaddafi's support for Pan-Africanism that threatened to interfere with the continuing extraction of resources by foreigners.
It will be interesting to see how all these things change under the new government over the next few years. I predict strengthening of religious extremism, elimination of welfare, rapid rise in foreign debt, and privatization of water and oil resources and infrastructure.

Arabic governments are usually quite xenophobic(towards presence of non-Islamic powers on Islamic territories), there is something about Gaddafi which distinguishes him from even other Arabic dictators that made them willing to support a Western military intervention.

I agree. Besides secularism, this alleged statement from 1998 may explain some of it:


Source: http://www.oocities.org/~dagmawi/News/News_Sep17_Gadhafi.html (http://www.oocities.org/~dagmawi/News/News_Sep17_Gadhafi.html)

One way or another, OP poses an important question that gets lost in moral arguments based mostly in PR campaigns of corporate media.  The Western leaders may also often be held responsible for terrible civilian atrocities all over the world - napalm, depleted uranium, cluster bombs - and they are more often then not extremely wealthy too. There is no real distinction there between them and Gaddafi, except maybe in numbers which may surprise you. The distinction is that currently they are in control of their plans and wealth, and he is not. Ergo, he is the one having problems managing his assets - and Bitcoin certainly seems like something worth considering.

So, can we try and take a disinterested look: how does Bitcoin compare to gold or cash as store of value for wealthy people who, due to the nature of their enterprise, are at risk of becoming wealthy fugitives?
Someone already pointed out that it's hard to beat a good old suitcase full of dollars - but in the long term there is the problem with inflation. Gold may correct for inflation, but then there is the issue of "value density" for those on the road - you currently get about $60 per gram of gold (as a fugitive much less than that), but $100 per gram of 100-dollar bills.
It's not fair to compare Bitcoin at this stage, but let's assume it is still the three years from now in its present form - not much regulation apart from the opinions of internal revenue agencies classifying it one way or another for tax purposes, serving some niche online and POS markets, mostly used as a store of value, and looking like it's there to stay. One undeniable advantage of Bitcoin would be the ease of transfer, physical or via network. One undeniable disadvantage would be traceability via block chain if your initial accumulation of coins was not carefully carried out.
Any other thoughts?

Well, I didn't agree with your first point actually, it was not what Gaddafi did before the rebel compels the West to intervene, it's what he did during the supression of it, the resolution of intervention got about 10 yes and 5 abstentions, and most importantly, no veto in the UNSC, the closest thing we have to a world consensus on such a issue in a long time.

Around 2005-2006, plenty of posts on various infamous websites (http://duckduckgo.com/?q=nations+without+rothschild+controlled+central+bank) listed the then last 5 remaining countries without a Rothschild controlled central bank on this planet:

• Cuba
• Iran
• Libya
• North Korea
• Sudan

Before 9/11, Iraq and Afghanistan were still on that list also.

Now i the light of recent events, make of it what you will, and look out for what the future will hold.

David Icke was right!  The invasion was all about Illuminati bankers making a new world order!

And by next year, the last remaining land will be

• Bitcoinland

 ;D

But it will outlive them ofc.  ;)

Gas was 17 cents a gallon in libya, they got free healthcare, free education, housing was a right and each new married couple got a house, their banking system was state owned, all loans were interest free, not to mention he was about to trade his oil for gold.  Libya has a higher standard of living than all of Africa, and higher than places such as Russia and Brazil.  Libya was also debt free.

all this will probably not exist anymore. :)

We live in a dictatorship in america, we're just given the illusion of choice.  At least those dictators put their country first.

So, is Bitcoin a viable option for wealthy fugitives or not?  I'd say at this point the risk is too high due to fluctuating value and small capitalization, but in a year or two, if still around, Bitcoin would definitely be an option. However, this would be the right time for them to start mining instead of having to painstakingly try to acquire coins below the radar when block rewards diminish.

I know you didn't, but I did agree with your observation, and offered a different way of understanding it.