Bitcoin Forum

What is the difference between Bitcoin and Liberty reserve? Hope Bitcoin will not end up like Liberty reserve?

Interesting question, I wasn't aware of Liberty Reserve until reading this post.

It seems like they very much are the same - because they provide a form of currency outside government control and anonymity in who's making payments for what and to whom.

The difference is that the government has made a lot of positive comments about Bitcoin. Perhaps that's driven by the Finance industry seeing the money that can be made in their involvement in Bitcoin and using their influence to steer the Feds a different direction (e.g., focusing on ending criminal activity rather than the system by which payments are made, which is not just for criminal activity).

Here's an article: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/29/nyregion/liberty-reserve-operators-accused-of-money-laundering.html (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/29/nyregion/liberty-reserve-operators-accused-of-money-laundering.html)

liberty reserve was centralized. it had one single point of failure - the guy who was running it.

the entire point of bitcoin is that there is no single point of failure, it's distributed across thousands of systems so no one act can shut it down short of closing the whole internet.

if it's outlawed in an entire country and every single miner and user is arrested, it carries on operating just fine everywhere else. there are centralization issues with exchanges and so on, but they're not bitcoin itself.

a very good question
WIKI:Liberty Reserve was a private currency exchange system issued by Liberty Reserve S.A. of San José, Costa Rica. As of May 27th, 2013 it is offline following the arrest of its founder
LR was often used to withdraw funds from bitcoin exchanges
the main difference is that LR was a company,centralised and with an owner
once the owner got arrested the whole LR system collapsed
bitcoin is decentralised,it doesn't belong to anyone and even arrest or shutting down half of the node owners or pool owners will not shut bitcoin network down
LR was a surrogate central bank system,working in parallel and as we all know,central banks don't like compettion to their  banking system and the printing press,producing constantly devaluating money

liberty reserve was a payment processor, bitcoin is a (crypto) currency

like a bank is a payment processor and dollar is a currency

l liberty reserve is a payment processor and the currency exchange in liberty reserve are the major currencies. You cannot trade liberty reserve in forex market but bitcoin has been adopted by most broker e.g fxopen and simplefx. Most central bank around are try to adopt blockchain into there currency and usa president elect accepted bitcoin as donations during his campaign. Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency why liberty reserve is a payment procession. Op do your research very well and you will find out wide range between bitcoin and liberty reserve.

its very diffirent, in bitcoin we can mining it, minner are part of bitcoin, without minner bitcoin can't be send to other people, at this case is very diffirent with liberty reserve, where bitcoin generate by mining and liberty reserve like goverment printing money everyday.

Liberty Reserve is really popular on that day though, i'm still not understand why Liberty Reserve scam. I remember on that day, all online business like trading, gambling and many else that using Liberty Reserve become Chaos because LR scam.
Bitcoin is difference than Liberty Reserve, because all people around the world that using bitcoin can have their private key. It's different if the blockchain scam, many coins will lost.

Many thanks to you guys I really appreciate and I will welcome more comments.

Really very interesting question there is big difference between Liberty Reserve and Bitcoin. Liberty Reserve is managed by one person where as bitcoin is not managed, Liberty reserve is a Payment processor where as bitcoin complete decentralized currency, Liberty Reserve is used for money laundering where as bitcoin is also used for many other bad things, Liberty reserve is not mine able where as bitcoin is mine able, Liberty Reserve is not accepted by stores by selling their good but where as bitcoin is accepted.

I wonder if my post is invisible?
people posting exactly same messages only slightly re-worded
if you want to contribute to the discussion,try and post something interesting,something that hasn't been already covered

LR
- You can not mine your money
- Centralized business
- It's only payment processor, not digital currency
- Your money stored in their account, not in your own way (centralized)

Bitcoin
- You can mine your money
- Real digital currency
- Decentralized
- Your money store in your own way

I'm surprised Liberty Reserve isn't forgotten, yet. But I guess it's worth remembering as a wrong way to do things. One single guy got arrested and the whole thing just collapsed.

It happened because the whole system of LR was controlled by one person the owner and bitcoin is not owned by any one person and is owned by all of those who are the users so it is hard to arrest all of them so bitcoin will continue till last.

It was basically used to launder money and so is the reason he got busted.All the black money holders was using this service to legitimize their source and the guy running the service did have a shady past which brought the demise of Liberty Reserve ,the idea was an innovative one but then bitcoin brought what Liberty reserve doesnt had ,decentralization .

Bitcoin is not controlled by one or few people but for a large number of people and miners (but not fully)
And LR was controlled by someone else which when he "disappear" the whole community and users were "scammed"

I do remember liberty reserve but never used them because I never did trust in what they were toting themselves as.
And I also remember when there was another payment option at that time but they rebranded themselves and are now called Payza.

You can see the statement here from them:
Alertpay is now Payza. A new company that was formed and even better than ever. This statement was on the Alertpay blog: (blog.alertpay.com)

On May 14, 2012, the AlertPay platform will be transitioned automatically and seamlessly to Payza. What does that mean for you? Business as usual! You can access your money and use it the same way you always have. All of your information stays the same:

The same account (with your money in it)!
The same personal, business and financial information!
The same login and password!

Payza will also be bringing online payment processing to countries that have never had access to such services as receiving convenient and affordable international payments and localized banking transactions. Under the Payza brand, existing AlertPay customers will be able to send and receive money around the world, and will now have even more options to transact globally.

It also appears they are again accepting Visa and Mastercard payments (no official announcement on that yet though).

Thank you

So at times these companies do change hands and try to continue on their businesses or they just exit out of it with paying their customers or just exit with out paying anyone. The latter is what LR did which is a shame.

liberty reserve is created for money loundry that makes many people take advantage from it by doing criminal. actually the thing is like mixer of bitcoin, but it is just one of bitcoin feature. bitcoin itself is the currency. so it is far away different from liberty deserve.

Liberty Reserve offered good rates, but it ended up seized by the FBI... Now we have Paypal, Payza, Skrill. But their fees are far from good, paypal charged me a whopping $1 USD to transfer about $10?

Paypal fees are the least transparent in my opinion... At least Payza makes it clear how much you're going to be pay (%2.90 + $0.30).

I wonder when FBI will seize Bitcoin, or if they actually can... Time will tell.

Liberty Reserve users were digital criminal oriented and carried over here once it closed. Bitcoin's origination aimed towards tech savvy users and the only ones around were from this era that would eventually open up secret ventures taking BTC payments for simple goods.

Nowadays cryptocurrency became something different than what was anticipated with how popular casinos were... Things with this and faucets developed into an economy in a way Liberty Reserve didn't. It's use was to transfer money between underdeveloped countries, despite this there wasn't a fully active economy due to secrecy activities in place.

The difference is big and since LR closed off, it tends to have been replaced in a way Bitcoin differs from.

Liberty reserve were used in the general into the hyip, that were the main customers from those processor, all knowed that liberty reserve were used to scam purposes, atleas thos is the image i do remember from it. Bitcoin has just one thing similiar thats the low fees transactions, and some people does use it for scam purposes, but at century XXI its hard to believe theres till people blind that invest into hyip, and in the general end loosing their bitcoins to the scammers.

Yeah ? Liberty reserve has been shut down since multiple years now. So sure it is not accepted by stores

People can't say they have been "scammed" Nobody scammed, the FBI took control of the site. They can only blame themselves for not using a reliable payment processor system

Bitcoin - Decentralized, it will have records/ledger distributed all over the world with different individuals so whatever bitcoin an address hold will remain same for many years till real owner of that address transfer it out from it.

Liberty reserve - Centralized payment processor so all account and user details are stored in one database or datacentre which can go down or taken down by government/FBI/Cybercrime within few minute, and same happened to LR before which made many people to loss billions of their hard earned cash.

Bitcoin will not end up like liberty reserve or it can't be taken down by government just like they have taken down LR.

And i think same will happen to perfectmoney which is working exactly like liberty reserve used to. However after the introduction of bitcoin as payment system with lower fee on sending/receiving money there is no need for this types of centralized payment processors with low fee. All of this processors are vulnerable towards governmental shutdown because they can shut it down/stop with just one off switch.