Bitcoin Forum

I'm just starting to enter into this BitCoin world and I have 2 main questions:

1) How long until goverments start persecuting bitcoin users?
2) What will happen when they do?

It's not a matter of if governments have the right to do so. Ofcourse they theoreticaly don't (or shouldn't have).
But US government also didn't have the right to press other countries to outlaw bittorrent, but look at what happened in Sweden, Canada, Spain in just the last 2 years.
If the corporations that own copyrights of movies and musics are being able to protect theyr profits by changing laws and bending governments, courts and police force, imagine what the banks can do!

Of course to reach that point the community should have grown incredibly larger, but to all of us who believe in the future of virtual currencies this is a point to be considered.

Would then bitcoin be banned to underground usage hence every single coin would become black money?

I think that illegalization is Bitcoin's most likely mode of failure.  Failure, of course, only in the sense that it would crash the price by eliminating the likelihood of "upstanding citizens" ever adopting it; it could continue to be used for black market stuff, and while this would get a few careless people in trouble, would be unstoppable on the whole.

Considering how quickly services like Silk Road have sprung up, and the fact that the demographic of people who seem most interested in Bitcoin at this point tends to overlap with the demographic of likely tax evaders, I am afraid that this illegalization might just be a matter of time.  Bittorrent was bad enough, after all, and that is only a "threat" to the private sector.

You'd better ask those questions in an astrology forum.

I think as long as it is relatively easy to convert from one currency to another they won't really care unless the world totally collapsed but that is unlikely.

My question is:

3) How long until some government starts accepting bitcoin as payment for taxes?

I mean, it's inevitable...  Governments always seem to grow and eventually collapse under their own weight after a long enough time, and by then, their currency would probably be worthless (couldn't even pay government employees with their own fiat currency), so states may reluctantly accept bitcoins while on their death beds.

What kind of enhancers are we talking about here?

I wouldn’t know. The kind SENS is trying to fabricate.

7) How long until bitcoin usage summons the evil lord Kthulu?

But seriously... Don't you guys wonder what would happen when or if bitcoin gets in the same path bittorrents did?

Becomes widely adopted and loved? I think it would be nice.

“Attempts to undermine the legitimate currency of this country are simply a unique form of domestic terrorism.  While these forms of anti-government activities do not involve violence, they are every bit as insidious and represent a clear and present danger to the economic stability of this country.  We are determined to meet these threats through infiltration, disruption, and dismantling of organizations which seek to challenge the legitimacy of our democratic form of government.” Anne Tompkins, US Attorney

There you go. Infiltration, disruption & dismantling.

We should be worrying about psychological attacks as well as technological ones. Check out this.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networks

I think we would be fools to ignore this threat.

That explains all the interventionist keynesians that seem to hang around here

so what they do is sell the tech to mi6 who can then spy on americans. Then its all hunky dory.

It makes sense.

The smart people in those governments will. They will let go of their power in the fiat currency to trade to bitcoin and for that they will prove that they are good governors. People in power are not very self confidant. They are extremely self conscious of their image and they just want to be liked. They don't know how to relate to people (probably due to an embarrassing incident regarding their feelings in their youth) so they use their gift (science) to engineer a way for people to like them. Bigger the science -> bigger the insecurity -> bigger the induced feeling of a need for power -> bigger the power grab. They just need more love than the rest of us do and they set themselves up to fail when they exercise the wrong science.

Bear in mind the US Govt invented both the internet (more anonymous/decentralized than AOL/Compuserve), and Tor. Governments are big and are full of people with differing priorities.

If most BitCoin usage is legal I think it'll be OK in the long run. This is why I wish we'd kick the people selling serial keys and the Silk Road guys out of the forum. Of course they can still do what they're doing, but there's no need to advertise them in the main forum.

Bear in mind that the government only does things for it's own benefit. The internet was created AFAIK to allow a more efficient, less centralised, and robust command and control system that could withstand a nuclear attack.

Tor was created specifically so that U.S. spies could safely communicate, and send messages while being in hostile territory without being compromised.

Am I making this up?

They will rewrite it because that's what they do with history and nobody calls them on it (until recently) and nobody cares until it affects them. They will write some sort of law where they claim that bitcoin actually is metal because it exists on the internet (which they can easily own) and the internet is content delivered by metal to the end user in a lot of cases. They don't own light however. The Bitcoin protocol and the block chain history are pieces of abstract information which everyone can own because everyone can own their own thoughts (or they will soon need to learn how). I mean if I'm going to make this sound crazy, I might as well mention that they will try to control peoples' minds with the Siren calling Ulysses, that musical instrument in seward's folly with plenty of texas tea to run it. So how do you implement the Bitcoin idea without using metal somewhere? LIGHT! Find some sort of organic material that reacts to light by expanding and dark by closing in order to turn that into an inverter. Once you have a light inverter, you just need to design circuits using the top half CMOS logic gates. So, we need something to join two streams of light into one, something to split into many, and a gate that allows light to flow from the source to the drain when light is shined on the body. The first two can be done using a prism in opposite orientations. The last one is waiting for an organic chemist to discover and contribute to the Bitcoin community.

But all joking aside, I don't know. Later this year?

Illegal where? Should we only do things that happen to be considered "legal" by all governments? How about we just mind our own business?

If someone's doing something that you personally consider to be wrong, get on your soap box and use logic reason and evidence to show why it's wrong. Don't try and alienate people who are trying to get on in the world, by referencing some written dos and donts you can't objectively explain.

They'll outlaw it, but it's got to be a problem for them to worry about first. 


First they ignore you
Then they fight you...

We're still in the part of the "ignore you" phase.   Let's get BTC more popular together. 

That's what I think too

I'm reluctantly in favor of this sentiment.  The last thing we need is a DNS-mediated shutdown of the Bitcoin site.  We also need mirrors.

This is like talking to a brick wall.

Look. If you convince the owner of the forum to ban all talk of free trade. The people who are on the same wavelength as me, will respect that we're unwelome guests on someone elses property. We will leave with no fuss.

What happens then? We start another forum and continue to advocate free trade and voluntary interaction in full view of the public. You're not going to stop people talking about all the wonderful possibilities the technology affords by encouraging a divide.

So .. Why can't we just reason things out ourselves? If you've got a problem with someones business practices, don't deal with them. If you've got good enough reasons not to deal with them, share those reasons with us. You might convince us that you're right.

Resorting to the word "illegal" doesn't work with people like me who reason from first principles. We've grown up and that mumbo jumbo just doesn't fly.

I hear that reasoning from first principles is illegal.  >:(

All he is proposing (and I don't know if I agree or not) is to ban some specific illegal things from the forum, but only because this forum is the official face of bitcoin to the world and they're arguing that some practices would be better be hidden.

Sounds reasonable to me.

To the main public there is a huge difference between finding topics about drug sales in the official forum and finding them in alternative websites. In one case it sounds like a deviation from a purpose, in the other it looks like an official endorsement to a criminal practice.

Remember folks, it doesn't matter if we ban or censor "illegal stuff"...bitcoin will be used as it is intended to be used as well what it's not intended to be used.

Well if it happens, it happens.

I would have more respect for a community that can demonstrate through reason and evidence that a behaviour is unethical, as opposed to putting on the blinkers and pretending it doesn't exsist.


 ;D

I'm with all you guys but I agree with the "face of bitcoin" should be legal.
I have a good friend I talked to about  bitcoin for a while the other day and immediately after he went to this forum.

His response was "The first thing I saw was webpages with  drugs for sale".

Honestly it doesn't bother him that much but he doesn't want to be associated with it because of this.
I can guarantee that there are a lot of people that would say they don't want to be associated with drug sales on the internet.

Personally I don't have a problem with it, I wouldn't care if they gave reviews and sold them on the market place here but I think it's really bad for the image to put it out in front.

It should only be a matter of months if the press gets hold of the fact that the entire bitcoin community supporting ponzi schemes. (http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5103.0) We would be way too easy a target.

All of the confusion people encounter could be avoided if the owner of the bitcoin.org site provided a clear mission statement about the purpose of the site and how the owner intends to adhere to that mission statement. Everyone else just needs to make sure the owner does not stray from the mission statement.

Getting ahold of Satoshi would be a difficult thing to do.

I thought sirius runs it now, or maybe Gavin.

Sirius is the webmaster. Gavin is the lead developer.

Ok, so why is Satoshi our bottleneck? What is his mission statement? Can Sirius follow that?

Because Satoshi left us many moons ago and communication seems to be limited.

It's too bad we can't infer where he was going with this project.

He made it open source and decentralised. It'll go wherever it goes.

But do you think that bitcoin would be able to keep its value if outlawed and persecuted?

I mean if every site would have to hide behind Tor or something in order to accept donations or payments in bitcoins it would become almost impossible for the non-geek public.

It's impossible to answer such question.

It depends on which stage it gets outlawed, among many other things. If outlawed now, for example, I think it would bring much more awareness than damage, and maybe it would even raise the value of bitcoins.

And by the way, I don't think it'll be outlawed in every country of the world. As said in another thread, if a few countries allow its use and the technology really manages to do good to these countries' economies, that would push for abolishing prohibition elsewhere.

The threat of prosecution will certainly dampen the value, as well as the rate of spread, of Bitcoin; but will ultimately fail to destroy it.  Politicos aren't stupid, they look at these kind of things deeply before acting.  If they attempt it, they would have to know that it's a stall tactic.

http://www.bitterwallet.com/what-does-the-ip-in-ip-address-stand-for-ask-stephen-timms/27968

They know nothing about what they imagine they can control.

I don't know if this makes me feel more safe or more scared!

If p2p dns project takes off, it may not be a problem in the future.

Regarding "illegal stuff", I too, have to reluctanly be in favor of moving these activities out of sight for the general public.

sortedmush, I completely agree with what you say, but you are forgetting who you are dealing with. Take a look around you - majority of people are irrational, they can not be reasoned with. The talking box in their homes told them that some things are "bad" and "illegal" and so they accept it as universal truth without thinking about it. If they come here and see these things they will turn around and walk away.
I am not saying these topics should be banned or anything like that, but maybe a wise thing to do would be to talk about these matters in some obscure coner of this forum, or maybe do not put the thread back at the top of the list after answers are submitted. This way newcomers won't be scared away and people with interest can still find what they are looking for and debate.

Quite an arrogant statement. Have you actually talked to another human in person? Have you tried explaining yourself or your ideas in layman's terms so they can relate to you? Most people are very intelligent if you figure out how to talk to them in their own language. Declaring that they can not be reasoned with is your ignorance and shows you to be lazy intellectually. It will cause you stress in your life. You will not understand why other people do what they do. You will shroud yourself in your paranoia about their intentions, further running away from your perceived problem. People will just look at you like you are hiding something and therefore infer that you must have bad intentions. People fear secrets.

Case in point, the mass hysteria about the Fukushima nuclear power plant.

Dude, I agree so much with what you just said! 0.2BTC for that!

Yes abstraction, everything you said about me is correct, but I do not see how this is relevant to the topic we are discussing.

If you absolutely have to do psychoanalysis and evaluation of me, you are very welcome to pm me

Not a good example, since the mass hysteria around Fukushima was fueled by piss-poor journalism and a government that has a history of not being quite forward with it's own failures.

Holy shit that's not America.

I don't mean this to be about you personally, but about that mentality I see a lot around here. I'm sorry I made you an example.

My point is:
Governments are nothing more than a collection of individuals concerned with looking out for what they perceive as the greater good. They mean well, but they are (political) scientists employing a false science. As a result, they tend to be quite paranoid about new things they don't understand and since their scientific system is flawed, they can't even envision things being any other way. If we reach out to the actual people in governments and explain (in terms they can understand) how bitcoin can help solve a lot of problems AND let them save face, governments will not outlaw bitcoin because they will understand its power and they understand power very well. You might say it takes a bit of bravery to not think of the world in terms of "us vs them", but just "us".

Start by getting to know the people in your local community and figuring out ways to solve their problems in general. You will develop a good name for yourself and people will give you the benefit of the doubt when you present new ideas (like bitcoin).

I rewarded you for your generosity. Thank you.

They most certainly do not all mean well.

Strongly agree with creighto.

;D

Your point is invalid.
As any other group of individuals(or any living beings for that matter), they are looking out just for themselves. That is why as long as we have a centralized system which is in control of one group, other group will suffer.
Also, have you ever considered that if someone constantly has to "explain" what to do, maybe the one who is explaining should be doing the job?
"Outlaw Bitcoin"? Well, maybe.. But idea is alive and I don't think it can be stopped. I am glad this is happening now and there is enough talent around the globe to pull this off. 10-20 more years of the crap they call education these days and we'd be doomed as a race.

As to your advice, I don't want to know people in my local community at least not what has become of communities. Majority of them are nothing but ignorant oxygen wasters and the quicker we stop pretending that everyone is equal, the quicker things start getting better. Everybody should get the same opportunity at succeeding, but that's a whole different discussion.

We are here for different reasons and have different visions where Bitcoin could take us, so my advice is to keep your emotional outbursts to yourself - they aren't helpful. We have one common goal - we want Bitcoin to succeed, so lets help each other out where we can and keep out of each other’s way where we can't.
Bitcoin has it's good and bad sides, but it is not for you nor me, nor polititians to decide what is good and what is bad. It is for people to decide.

Have a nice evening

If you like jumping in front of a parade you too can be a politician.

An interesting thought experiment. Put up a standing bounty for dirt on politicians. Be it sexual ,drugs or other peccadillo's. Eventually the dirt file would mean any move against bitcoin would result in mutually assured destruction.

If you have dirt on the majority of politicos in a given area suddenly you have leverage. All they care about is their public image and will go to any lengths to protect it. Thats why cops make the best drug dealers imo.

Now that's an idea.  Like a crowdsourced version of insurance.256

Yes. When do we start it ?

bitcoinleaks     :)

The problem is finding some dirt that you can directly and definitively link to them.

I tried to make this post as tone neutral as possible.

This applies to individuals as well. As long as I have a centralized system of control over myself, others will suffer. I used to not let my opinion be persuaded by others. I used to not let others take me on their trips because I saw no point in it. I used to not let others induce emotional responses in myself because I was afraid I would get taken advantage of. I used to keep my mouth shut at the wrong times because I felt other people were idiots. I used to talk too much at the wrong times because I didn't know how to listen. All of this hurt me and hurt others who dared to associate with me.

Why do they feel the need to "explain"? What do they know? Why should I believe them?

You only need > 50% of GPU power to stop it. (think double-spends) The governments of the world only need to conjure up slightly greater than 50% support of the network to suppress the rest, kind of like "majority rule" democracy.

Me, too.

Education as a whole is a well-meaning profession gone wrong because it is currently based on false principles.

You have to be the "change" you are looking for. Obama is showing us what his "change" is based on his actions. What is your "change", based on your actions?

I think I have heard this mentality before by some pretty bad dudes in history.

Isn't this what free-market capitalism is?

Emotions are what induce us to act. My emotional outburst was based on a principle which I hope others can infer correctly from reading this post. I am not afraid to show emotions if they come from a place of truth.

I agree wholeheartedly, but how do we collectively determine what actions are helpful? Does more thoughtful conversation and analysis help the group?

I agree.  :)

Thank you. Also, my thoughts were not organized linearly and your post forced me to linearize them. For that I thank you as well.

No, even 50%+ of the network power isn't enough to break Bitcoin, only to defeat a particular portion of the system security for a period of time.  The only known way to actually break Bitcoin is to shut down the Internet, and unless that is total, then that only works for as long as the sections that are dark remain so.

It may seem that way, I'm sure.  But "education" has been surprisingly effective at it's original goals.  Horrance Mann is widely considered the "father" of the American education system, by both his supporters and critics.  Read what he said about the subject, and it will become bluntly obvious that the "education" system was never really intended to educate the children of the middle and lower classes in America, but to condition them.  The next obvious question then becomes, condition them for what?

You will not like the answer.

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

abstraction I see from your answers to few of my points that you did not understand what I wanted to say, but that is probably my fault. I apologize for my poor English.

I'll reiterate few of my and address few of your point:

Politicians are just a bunch of jokers put there so you can think you have choice. You do not!
As to people "explaining stuff" - all I wanted to say was that most knowledgeable people on a specific subject should be leading the way. Politicians or any other group do not have the means nor the capacity to comprehend everything.

Education was marvelous when it was moving us forward in a quest to understand more. Now it is merely accumulation of knowledge and conditioning us to do some specific task without understanding why. Current system even punishes us for independent thinking.

I don't know what free-market capitalism is. My statement is an idea. It does not have to be boxed into some "free-market capitalism" term. As everything else in nature, it can evolve. Only us, humans, have the need to quantify everything. It helps us to comprehend and assign meaning to it for a specific period of time, but it also restricts it. If you study nature, you'll see that nothing is static - everything is moving and constantly evolving. So should our societies.

Yes, you may have heard this before. It is called cynicism.

Yes, and it is a shame. In my opinion rational thought should be the one to induce action.

You see abstraction, we don't agree on everything, but now we are having a civilized conversation and learning from each other without imposing our value systems on each other

Except of course for the fact that the bitcoin miners actually have to expend useful energy and resources when supporting the network unlike what is commonly understood as democracy where you simply mark some boxes on a piece of paper every couple years...  :)

Interesting  :)

Perhaps the bag of winds is the internet, and we're the soldiers thinking that it's a bag of gold? Scary.

That and the fact they cant make you mine on their blockchain. If they took over everyone would give them the finger and theyd be left with a useless bitcoin fork.

I wasn't restricting my scope to American history. I was thinking of education in a philosophical sense - to pass on truths.

I understood your English correctly. Our differences lie elsewhere.

I have the choice to make up my own mind, and I do. If I can take what I know, create a logically sound message, and tailor the message in such away that it is intuitively understood by just about everybody, then I have mastered the art of persuasion and I have all the choice in the world. I understand this may sound silly to people who don't know me personally, but in meatspace, I'm learning crucial communication skills by forcing myself to converse with a wide variety of minds. I made a lot more errors in judgment before I started going around talking to people.

This may be where our greatest confusion comes from. I'm an extremely skeptical person. I try not to trust what anybody says (experts included) unless I understand conceptually what they are saying about something. In other words, determining who the "most knowledgeable people on a specific subject" requires me to understand the subject as well as they do by taking what they say and transforming the concept into some sort of paradigm that is already familiar to me. If I understand the paradigm, I can see where its strengths and weaknesses are relative to other related paradigms I know. If I bring up a "what if this plausible event happens?" question that the "knowledgeable" person did not consider before, then I really dig in on why they did not consider it. I have to translate between my paradigm and theirs to do this.

We are a group as well, so in what ways are we blind? That is what I am trying to figure out.

Based on my experiences in life, I know I am very independent in my thinking.

I don't know what free-market capitalism is. My statement is an idea. It does not have to be boxed into some "free-market capitalism" term.[/quote]
I'm working from this definition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market except that I view it in what I consider the purest sense - no government at all. I think your idea and my term are compatible, but I'd like you to elaborate on why it is not if you believe it is not.

I understand this. I see change and I seek to understand both its function in the later state and what state induced it.

I used to be cynical, but I found it limited my thoughts and I'm a free thinker.

In my rationale, the complexity in emotion is one part of humanity that distinguishes itself from other species. You used the word "shame" to describe it. Why is it shameful? Shame is not an emotion I understand very well yet. I do know that when I do act rationally, I have a selfish desire to improve my quality of life. I know that the action both makes sense and feels good to carry out. That's why I do it. Both my thoughts and my feelings harmonize, or get in phase on a good plan of action, and then I act.

I don't agree with this, yet. I purposefully imposed my value system explicitly so that it could be judged publicly so I could know where I am wrong. I need to know where I am wrong so I can eventually know where I am right. I responded this way to you originally because I sensed how strong your implicit value system is. I don't know what that system is yet, but I still sense it being imposed on me. I would like you to expose it publicly so I can understand it fully, if you don't mind doing that.

Well, maybe you are just very lucky to live in a place where you can converse with a wide variety of minds. I personally lived in few countries over the years but where ever I went, I met the same people over and over again. They all repeat what they've heard on TV or radio, but if you question them for the real reasons why they think that way, they can not answer you. The only response you'll ever get is an emotional one and usually then debate turns personal - "I am better than you, and you are not better than me".

In fact, lets try simple example. If you think you can make your own mind up and have freedom of choice, tell me, why can't you drink beer in public places. My guess would be, that you'd like to, or even if I am wrong, I know most people would like that. So why is it that it is against the law?



You are very much like me in some respects. We both have a curious mind which is constantly questioning things. What I wanted to say was that we can not have one group deciding everything as it is simply not possible for it to be knowledgeable on every subject. My proposal is that if someone feels strongly about something they should be able to go and learn about it and participate in debates where majority of that specific group decides the way forward.
In other words, I hope one day all information will be free and accessible to everybody. And anybody who wants and has the knowledge to do so will be able to influence things directly.


Again we are getting lost in translation. By saying "It's a shame" I wanted to express my disappointment. In my opinion we, as a race, are capable of so much, but current state of our world is a very sad reflection on that wasted potential. You see, I think that "what feels good" usually leads to destruction. We are savages by nature. The only thing that separates us from animals is that we are capable of rational thought. We just should exercise it more often.

As to myself, your guess was pretty accurate. I am misanthropic and socially inept, but I would not call myself arrogant - stating something obvious does not make me arrogant. In fact, I think I am quite on the opposite side of arrogant - I don't feel important, nor do I think that anybody, as an individual is important. But then again, this has no relevance whatsoever to the subject at hand. That is what I was trying to get across all along. People's opinions should not be judged by their personal belief, appearance, value system or any other subjective criteria. If someone has an in depth understanding on a subject and presents a rational argument, it should be taken as such.

That's against the law?

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Alcoholic_beverage#Prohibition_of_drinking_alcohol_in_public_places (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Alcoholic_beverage#Prohibition_of_drinking_alcohol_in_public_places)

Hasn't stopped me yet.  And from what I can tell, it hasn't stopped anyone else either.

you just wait

in many places it is already well enforced. my point was more to encourage analysis of such laws

Let's substitute drinking at 18, 19 and 20 in the US. I personally joined the Marines at 17 and couldn't drink for 4 years.
I knew guys that died before they could legally drink. Separate issue but I think US priorities in general are out of whack.
16 drive, 18 vote (and a lot of other things, smoke, sign legal contracts, bukake porn etc etc) 21 drink....wtf?

Just pisses me off.

In The State of Georgia, you can't have an open container of alcohol in public places.  It is always a fun adrenaline rush to figure out clever ways of concealing your alcoholic beverage while walking on the sidewalk.  But yeah...you'll get locked in a government-run rape cage (that is if you get caught and don't pay the fine, of course).

They understood the potential energy of the bag of winds. They did not understand how to convert it to a useful kinetic energy. What was it about the soldiers that made them tragic heroes?

Next up in the "Is the goverment about to make Bitcoin illegal ?" question game for your entertainment and my financial edfication...

I was just perusing the forum, saw someone link to a page about "Hawala" and wandered off down the wikipedia path, to the "Informal Value Transfer System" page here.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informal_value_transfer_system

Interesting reading, but more so, reading the linked source document from http://www.fincen.gov/advis33.pdf

It has the usual rehotic about alternative non-government-regulated financial systems being used for drug dealers, tax evaders, terrorist fudning (oops, typo, but rather appropriate on 2nd thought ;) ) and ticks all the common fear buzzwords, but the interesting bit is down the bottom under "Regulating IVTS in the United States" where they say something like

"all IVTS operators must register with FinCen (Financial Crimes Enforcement Network) and comply with all registration, record-keeping, reporting and AML (Anti Money Laundering) requirements"

Now, I realise that the term "IVTS Operators" would be difficult to apply rigidly to the decentralised P2P Bitcoin network itself and that it is US-Centric law, but surely it would apply to any US-based Bitcoin-exchange business ?

Also Im betting any hostile legislator who thinks on about the level of "The Internet is a series of tubes" would just be bamboozled by any explanation of P2P networking and decide their rules apply regardless of any technicalities

It Bitcoin-exchangers are taking US-dollars and turning it into digital tokens, it sounds like they would probably be considered IVTS operators, but (without having read) all the required "record keeping and reporting" requirements, Id suspect that then sending those tokens out into an untrackable P2P network probably doesn't meet the record-keeping requirements about what they did with them.

So, by these rules, are existing Bitcoin Merchants in the US *already* illegal in the USA in a technical sense ?

And yes, I know Bitcoin is supra-USA and the specifics of USA-centric laws dont apply to the network as a whole, but as someone else said, if it can be proved (or even reasonably) claimed to be illegal, that might scare off a lot of otherwise "upstanding citizens".

Ive already had a few discussions with people regarding Bitcoin where the usual "Surely thats illegal ?" and "What are you trying to do ? Destroy the Worlds financial system ?" questions have come up..  Maybe Im not explaining it to people correctly ?

Can anyone suggest while this bit of paranoia-inspired "we need to be able to watch all money flows for your own safety" legalese would *not* apply to USA based Bitcoiners ?    Would a legal technicality of how bitcoin is "not *money*" in the FinCEN regulated sense be enough to hold off the wolves ?

Sorry if this is an unwelcome question or focus on what problems Bitcoin might encounter..  I like Bitcoin, own some, am thinking about how to accept them as payment for services, and want to see it succeed, but I cant believe the current bosses are going to take it lying down and am wondering how they might attack in the future.

Thanks for any considered opinions by those more knowledgeable than I in this area.

I read but didn't quote the whole thing to avoid a wall of text.

I was actually going to post nearly the same exact thing and you just beat me to it.
It's a scary thought but I can see them using a lot of arguments against bitcoin that would work on the majority of the people.
I believe IVTS is illegal in a few places, the US government arrested quite a few people after 9/11 for running similar.

One thing that I think is interesting is you could make it so exchanges have to keep detailed records of where they send and receive bitcoins / USD / whatever but that's not going to help you if the person that receives the btc just transfers it somewhere else and hides it. I see a lot of opposition in the future and a lot of using terms / rules that were made before this type of system was possible and a lot of people that have no idea how it works making the decisions. Remember this is the same government that thinks it's ok to fine someone millions of dollars for downloading a few songs.

Thanks for your post though, really informative and brings up a really good point that I haven't heard talked about on here yet.

I suppose, ultimately, nobody will know the answer to this question until a case has been heard in court.  However, the reality is that there are so many laws on the books that everyone is a criminal already, even the little old lady from Pasadena.  Consider all the sales tax revenue that US states lose to online sales.  How many people do you know who don't shop online?  Of the people who do shop online, how many dutifully calculate and remit the required state sales taxes?  Since everyone is already guilty of financial crimes, it's much more productive to talk about methods of defense than what is legal or illegal.  I think the best defense for this type of attack against the Bitcoin system is to have as many small exchangers as possible.  Ideally, everyone who participates in the Bitcoin economy should offer to do exchanges.  It just won't be worth the government's while to chase down and audit/prosecute everyone.  This is, in a general sense, how distributed systems will ultimately triumph over centralized forms of control.

+1

In Brazil, a lawyer took on the task of making one book with all tributary laws. The effort took almost 20 years, and the book weights 6 tons. He had to find a billboard advertising company to print it, no book printers had the necessary capacity.

And that's just the tributary legislation!! Imagine all different codes together! It's impossible to be "law-abiding". "Follow the law" means "have more and better lawyers than those who might oppose you".

Edit: A Brazilian author calls this crypto-totalitarianism (http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=fr&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=pt&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.oindividuo.org%2F2009%2F12%2F16%2Fcripto-totalitarismo%2F). It gives those in power almost complete control over people, like in a totalitarian state, only that people don't see it clearly. It's a disguised totalitarianism.

And this is a good argument for establishing a legal defense fund for the day that the government decides to make a test case out of one of these, otherwise indefensible, exchangers.  With many small exchanges, it is indeed impossible to stop it from occurring.  However, as we can see with the pot industry, they can sustain a persecution campaign for a long time; and we could lose years if the precendent is unfavorable.

I'd like to know at what point people say "NO"

The government makes saying "NO" illegal. So how far will people go ?

I don't think I need to point it out and you can infer from past human history just how far that is.

That is a correct assessment of the law. Lawyers design the law so that anything can be construed as illegal depending on the environment in which a case is being prosecuted. You are correct in saying that everyone has committed a crime under the law.
The protection used to be the Jury. And at least for Criminal Prosecutions it remains there. Civilly however, Jury's don't mean much because the looser immediately appeals and leaves the Jury behind.

Judges are now politicized which in the end will defeat the whole system.

The best laws ever written were written without lawyers and rather than politics driving the law, it was principles.  Those days, sadly, are long gone.

OK, Agreed that "there are *already* so many laws on the books that they *will* find one of them to get to stick if they try hard enough", which means Bitcoiners probably are operating in a "potentially-tagetable" area of fincial-law already..      regardless of what recent legislation that is sort-of aimed at BTC in addition.

followed by a big "So-What ?".   Well, at the current level, obviously nothing much,

but the day will come when "Public Enemy #1" is claimed by the powers that be to have used BTC to get his ransom/drug/gun/whatever money out of the good ol USA and off into Nicaragua or something without them being able to seize it, or follow it.  Followed by a PR campaign to get "all good citizens should stick to using only our "real" (cough cough") money.

Thats when its going to get weird..  Still,. I suppose its a good thing.. I'm already looking at these little bits of colored paper we value so much in a new light..  Cant see the end of the tunnel yet, but its an interesting ride.

I suspect that (as I read somewhere else), "Technicalitarianism is a dead end".   ie.  trying to find some technicality / detail  in *their* laws/constitution that tells them *they* cant do what they *want* to do to you/your-system/business is a waste of time. 

As so often has happened, the lawyers/judges will just "interpret", (or flat-out re-write the laws) to get the end decision they want.    Doesnt speak highly of my respect for the law, I know, but Ive seen too much of it in the trenches to think of it in the same glowing can-do-no-wrong terms the average citizen seems to.

So it seems to me that its just a case of "Carry on, nothing new to see hear ?" and we keep going in the current fashion hoping to stay relatively out of sight until BTC grows enough that they think twice about tackling it head on ?