Bitcoin Forum

cause if it is.  i think we should stop fighting.  and use the US dollar instead..

Yes and we have the precedent of how they shut down the internet in 1998 when it was only for porn.

Mr. Burns...Are you attempting to burn Bitcoin? ::)
Why such a snide remark ???

Yes, it is.


https://i.imgur.com/w5F9w32.gif

...

Gold (and on occasion platinum) payable in Bitcoin is available from at least four companies.

Once you can get gold in (many) other countries with BTC, now you're talking!  Adios capital controls, at least until "they" figure out how to shut THAT down.

You can also use it to store your files:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=916642.0

Bitcoin can be about many types of freedom, not just "drugs".

lolwat.

There are probably 100's of other legit uses for bitcoin other then to buy and sell (illegal) drugs.

For one, bitcoin offers much greater privacy then what fiat will generally allow. It will also make it very difficult for anyone to force-ably take your money from you

yes. ok, we use dollar.

LOL

I just offered to accept bitcoins as payment for something I sold on Ebay when the buyer told me that Paypal wouldn't process his credit card.  When I saw this question posted by the OP I immediately thought, nope.

But there's so much more to it.  Bitcoins did make illegal drugs more accessible.  But many of those "illegal" drugs are either entirely legal in some places or becoming legal.  The point of bitcoin is everything.  It's to open markets and make people think differently about money, life, freedom... well the list goes onandonandonandonandonandon

and on.

But I just realized how excited I am for bitcoin because of my own thinking.  The way I considered offering bitcoin as payment option for my stuff on ebay and craigslist. 

WTB NEWBIE JAIL

You can buy things at newegg, tigerdirect, gamestop, much more sites...
You can use it for literally anything right now as long as they are accepting it.
I don't believe drugs the only point

The world market for drugs is $6 trillion.

The Bitcoin market cap is $4 billion.

If Bitcoin was only used for drugs Bitcoin would only make up .07% of all of the drug trade.

If Bitcoin was used more than other currencies for drugs (>51%), every Bitcoin would be worth $230,000.

I applauded loudly when the silkroad bitcoin-enabled illegal-drug website was shutdown because I knew a lot of people would draw this exact conclusion.

Bitcoin could enable a thousand good and noble efforts, but if it makes it easier to do any form of evil, that's what will get all the news and influence opinion.  That's what people will immediately think of when they hear the name "bitcoin".

We should all fight against illicit use of bitcoin to protect the good name of bitcoin.

Hmm, drug user ->

Bitcoin:
Wants drugs, goes online, open Tor/Silk Road 3, pay bitcoins for drug, wait for drugs in the mail.

Cash:
Wants drugs, goes to the gang area of town, buys drugs, dealer is selling from rival gang's corner, gun fight breaks out, tries to get away with his life.

So, you choose the violent option?

Trolls have been missing a good slippery slope argument here.

What about child pornography gangs? I don't think there are any, but honestly, I've never seen an actual drug gang either. -Or pimps for adults. Pimps are usually violent in movies -- well, not porn movies, cause porn studios have a reputation to uphold, obviously. .... ::)

If children were sexually abused in the privacy of their home rather than beaten on the street AND sexually abused, should we applaud bitcoin's triumphant entry into the market and post comments on news sites about how bad child rape was before bitcoin came on the scene?

-Or the assassin market. How many people wanted to hire assassins but were assassinated upon payment before crypto-escrow? I bet more than one.

Although silk road is the way i 1st heard abou bitcoin it's not the only way, it's a smallish market compared to the rest, correct me if im wrong but i think it was about 5% of all coin were said to be used for illegal purposes at the peak.
I hold most of my coins but also spend a few like here
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=797982

lol...why was that not the BitPay sales pitch during the Bitcoin bowl?  ;D

As far as I know(I am not an expert on that) there is not much money in cp.
Your example about children are raped on the streets is just ridiculous. Cp is not produced on the open street. If it is send via your post office or via the internet or traded on the street is also pretty much irrelevant for the children.

I was more thinking child sex trafficking and I guess I decided to blur that together with child pornography and 80s-90s movies with gratuitous pimp-slapping. Okay, let me get this back off-topic -- let's change what I said there to being about child escorts. ... but then there'd still be turf wars - the opposing sides would just order the invaders' escorts.

So... wait. We need to remove the "turf," right? A local group of nobodies isn't going to go kill a guy 500 miles away for selling vacuum-packed weed and taking what would've been their transaction. -But that doesn't really apply for child exploitation since they aren't generally mail-order (in Soviet Russia, child bride mail-orders you! ???). Uhhh... Anyway, there's probably a troll with a functional brain who'll go with a similar line of melodrama some day.

I am of the opinion that active pedos are rapists pure and simple. However, when the only outlet at all is child rape, then society is failing those encumbered with this "mental" problem and their victims. Law enforcement lost moral authority in my view, when they started going after simulated CP, art, adult girlfriends dressed as schoolgirls, that sort of thing. Also believe that non-active pedos, should be able to communicate together, as group therapy if nothing else. IMO, to insist that all pedo thinking persons intend to harm children is the same as thinking that everyone with heterosexual normative (or Homo) thoughts, fantasies, and those who seek material related to that are rapists. Therefore, if bitcoin enabled access to materials that involved no children in production, then that IMO would be a societal win. The alternative IMO is sealing up the valve on the "pressure cooker" of pedo thinking individuals and expecting them not to explode.

However, who wants to have to moderate/gatekeeper that shit?

This question has been answered to when Silk Road was destroyed and the price of bitcoin raises. Not 1 Bitcoin out of 1000 is used for drugs. Dollars are used for drugs.

Most of the drug markets are running on fiat... so yeah stop fighting and fall back to sea shells and bags of barley.

No. Bitcoin is a decentralized peer to peer currency and you can buy many things with it, one of those things being drugs, which is a good thing. I know what we can buy is limited right now but that is changing and growing daily and the hope for the future is that one day we can buy absolutely anything we want with it.

No, that's not the only point!  Not just for buying drugs.

Bitcoin is used for various ponzi schemes, money laundering, hiring of hitmen, funding terrorist organizations anonymously, and stealing your exchange side wallets claiming to be "hacked".

It is all these nefarious things all rolled into one!  


http://i.ytimg.com/vi/kdyW7BFQgu8/hqdefault.jpg

http://31.cdn.bit2host.eu/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/bitcoin-silk-road-shut-down.jpg

https://monolithik.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/bitcoin-bullets.jpg

http://media.coindesk.com/2014/02/Mt.-Gox-bitcoin-protest-Mark-Karpeles.png

http://insidebitcoins.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/BitstampBroken-Hacked.jpg


Leave now before Bitcoin steals and desecrates everything!   :o

i think bitcoin started because of its easy access and untracable like usage but as people became more and more aware of bitcoin then they used it for other things because its not as much of a hassle as a credit card or anything else that takes fees. also its good to use for gambling if its illegal in your state or country

In as much as bitcoin supports victimless freedom of expression and victimless freedom of lifestyle, I support bitcoin's enabling of those.

While I am uneasy that it may enable psychopaths to get guns, and drug money may ultimately support violent cartels, I regard this as an artefact of prohibition, that is not really bitcoin's problem. However, if it allows a level playing field such that average citizens may defend themselves against psychopaths who will make all efforts to obtain guns whatever, or enables ethical sources of drugs to compete on a level playing field with cartels, then it's pushing things the right way.

Anyway, drugs are not THE point, they just happen to be a "headline" hot button topic that can be seen as an extreme of the freedom of lifestyle/expression continuum. Maybe innovation flows first to where it is most needed/wanted, so that use case was a disproportionate early adopter.

Being able to do something illegal and get away with it shows that the currency would even be useful under a tyrannical government.

Imagine using bitcoins to buy a bible in a country where that is illegal. Would you consider that immoral?

I think fiat will also just work as well for that, though obviously the price or supply can be manipulated by those in power as they see fit. But I agree bitcoin should be used to purchase whatever you want just like any money should.

All fiat currencies are used for many more many crimes.

OK, score one.  Good point.

But it's still a very bad idea for bitcoin to be known as the medium of exchange for illegal drugs.  It's like painting a bullseye on it and daring Congress to outlaw, regulate or tax it in some very egregious way.

Bitcoin enables freedom.  But a lot of lawmakers and policy makers hate freedom and don't need much excuse to curtail it anyway they can.

slow down cupcake

Surely this is one of the major problems of Bitcoin. Difficult to solve.
But think on the bright side, with Bitcoin you break boundaries and shun corrupt governments

Sure, if we can agree that the only point of dollars is violence.

I recall a similar debate when Bittorrent got started.

There were several people who would not use it because it was being used to send child porn.

Bittorrent is still going so I guess it was not boycotted by everyone.

Gambling credit :)

 
http://i4.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article83024.ece/alternates/s2197/drugs-pic-getty-images-199264845.jpg

Nah there are plenty of uses. It's magic internet money.

Then imagine your wallet with 10 or 20 BTC :D

valence your talking about the legitimate pharmaceutical companies... which are estimated at $400 billion
http://www.who.int/trade/glossary/story073/en/

as for all illegal trade that happens in the streets of red light districts, under developed cities like detroit, etc.. the illicit trade is much more.

but the amount of trade on online blackmarkets such as silk road was much much much smaller then real world trade.

and then when you compare the fact that blackmarket trade of drugs was mainly on 1 website. and the fact that there are over 100,000 legitimate business selling legitimate products and services for bitcoins on their own websites.. you will all come to realise that bitcoins drug stigma is less intoxicating than you think.

but of course media spoonfeeding you lies always out wins the truth because the truth involves people actually researching, rather then just watching tv

That reminds me of the guy who put his DNA sequence on some kind of blockchain... In the future, I'd guess assassins could send you DNA proof in the form of something much smaller than a severed head which you could compare against their public DNA sequence. ..... .... You know, with that DNA sequencer you had made up at the local bitcoin-accepting 3D printer rental outlet at the strip mall.

Or maybe the government "assassins" would just synthesize matching skin samples in the FBI vat labs. :o ETA: To clarify, the latter definitely doesn't exist. No, sir.

Please tell me you write SciFi and have several novels available already!

If you don't, then please start writing today.  Bitcoin's concepts offer up some areas of thought that even Arthur C. Clarke couldn't have thought of.

I don't know where you live, but I spent most of my life living in and around Los Angeles and I can assure you, drug gangs and pimps exist. Before I moved out of the city and into a more rural part of the So Cal desert I'd see them all the time. When I was a kid there was a drive-by shooting in my neighborhood at least once a week, all drug related gang activity. Child pornography gangs, on the other hand, are something I've never seen or heard of.


There's a difference there. When you choose to use drugs, you're not harming anyone but yourself with that choice (unless you consider that you may be giving money to violent drug gangs.. which is an argument in favor of sites like Silk Road). When you choose to sexually abuse children, you are harming those children, there is clearly and undeniably a victim no matter where you do it or how (or if) you pay for it.


I'm sure more than one, but still, if you hire an assassin that's a crime with a victim no matter how you pay for it.

Honestly, to equate a victimless "crime" with child abuse/molestation and murder for hire where another human being is being harmed or killed is to miss the point and buy into all the "drug war" propaganda we've been fed for decades or longer. To this day, in the United States, alcohol and tobacco are legal in most places and kill more people than all other drugs combined, but the government still insists (in spite of all scientific studies to the contrary) that marijuana needs to be illegal because it has no medical use. Are these the people you want dictating what you can and can't put into your body?

I do realize that you intended that as a "troll argument" and even said so, but it makes no logical sense to argue that just because we shouldn't condone harming children or murdering people we also shouldn't allow people the choice of what to do to their own bodies. By the same logic as the "drug war" we should also ban smoking, drinking, tattoos, piercings.. why stop there? Why not dictate every aspect of a human being's personal life on the grounds that a group of men and women who can't even balance their own budget know what we should or shouldn't do to our own bodies more than you or I do?


While society is definitely failing their victims, I have absolutely no sympathy for rapists and child molesters. I don't care what kind of "mental" problem they have.


+1


Psychopaths will get guns anyway, even if you make them illegal they'll get them. Look at what happened just this past week in France, the police retreated because even they didn't have guns.. but these criminals had no problem getting their hands on them. Likewise, violent drug cartels will exist as long as there is a viable black market for drugs. That black market will never completely go away unless those drugs are legalized and regulated, although Bitcoin may or may not take some of that black market money away from the cartels and put smaller dealers on a more level playing field. Notwithstanding either of those points, the vast majority of illegal gun and drug deals are done with fiat money.


+1 again, I'd buy that book.. and probably the movie too.

The point of Bitcoin is to have a decentralized mean of payment and store of wealth. It is working well and adoption is increasing.

Bitcoin has a multitude of purposes but personally I like that it was first adopted by drug dealers and people who want to buy drugs. If you want them you should be able to buy them and the government shouldnt be able to stop you.

Well I put mental in quotes, since psychotherapy is the only "treatment" which if pedo is a hardwired sexual orientation might be as effective as "praying the gay away". It's possible that it could be effective in the situation of an abused child becoming an abuser though.

I think we only have studies done on actual abusers, which is something of a problem, since to my mind there could be three classes, "hardwired", "abused" and "amoral psycho who just didn't care victim was a child". 3rd class there is a complete wildcard, hopefully rare, no measures will be effective. However, within the first two classes, we just don't know how many turn into actual abusers, and how many are possessed of enough self control and social responsibility never to act on the urges they have. What I would expect, is that if victimless material is available, more of them would be empowered to self regulate vs the sealed pressure cooker effect. Possibly the second class, could "work through their demons" themselves somewhat. Which may be necessary, because I have heard that in some areas, it's impossible to get "treatment" for pedophilia, without actually being convicted of doing the act. Anyway, we've practically made pedophilic tendencies a "thought crime", you have those thoughts, you are evil, hammer that idea home long enough and someone cursed with it will have their ego shatter and reconstitute itself with "Yah, I'm evil then, so what, means it's not my fault, can do what I want". You can see where that leads. I would think the better message to be "Acting on those thoughts is evil"

Anyway, hauling it back round to how bitcoin might have anything to do with that, is, if tightly repressed as a "thought crime" in all regards, those with pedo tendencies might have a high chance of "blowing up" and acting, say 50%. If instead allowed victimless outlets,  art, sex dolls, stories, that bitcoin might allow them to buy without stigma, then the chance of acting against a child may be significantly reduced, say down to 10%. If in the random course of life, I knew my children were 10% likely to come across a pedo, I would far rather that it then be 1% likely that he harmed them, than 5% likely... Whatever the figures may be, bigger figure bad, smaller figure better. Since child abuse may have a snowball effect if unchecked due to some abused becoming abusers, even small reduction is going to be very beneficial in reduction in future generations. While I would find it distasteful if a public figure was outed as having a child sized sex doll, I would be hopeful that meant that that had kept him a functioning respectful contributor to society otherwise, and not an active abuser.

All in all, we either have freedom of expression or we don't. If "just this one thing" is a thought crime, pretty soon it will have company. To be completely clear for those who might get all emotive and go off on one, I am not advocating child abuse, photos using actual children or anything like that. Why do I seem to be engaged in the topic? Well let's just say that circumstances occurred several years ago where I had to do a hell of a lot of real world practical thinking about it.

i cant beleive things like this, this question is abstract, because:

• can you tell me how many drugs have been buying with usd?
• or how many weapons?
• or how many corrupt politicians have been payed?

etc etc etc... and i dont see anybody saying that usd is bad because of that, i think that ppl who made those questions only want to fu*k BTC and are really scared about the potencial of the BTC.

Let them continue with this stupid war, they already loose it...

Yes but it is mostly a question of the % of the currency used for illegal activity. The percentage of % used for drugs is very low.

The percentage of bitcoin related transactions used for illegal drugs is higher then the percentage of transactions used for illegal drugs with dollars. However the overall value value of the illegal transactions used for dollars greatly outweighs that of bitcoin

this is from the usual bunch of social rejects that post these types of threads

At first, I tried to see if this was a necro-thread which had been bumped up.
Might have made sense to discuss this in 2013, not so in 2015.

No you can pay a hooker in Bitcoin, finished by the time it confirms :D