Bitcoin Forum

sources are telling me that there is chatter and likely action focused on  "killing btc" before it grows up, by card companies and their trade associations.
Visa and other usury based entities are nervous that if BTC is successful, that there will be many other copycats that pop up, that essentially kill
their debit transaction business.  Theres little fear on the credit side of things at the moment, because that is loaned money, but the debit drafts are another can of worms and there are billions in global fees to lose.

The banks and credit card companies have the security knowledge to pose a hostile threat to BTC based companies and exchanges.
Of course these same entities are in bed (or at least exchanging nude photos) with central governments, although they make it appear that the government is cracking down on their business with regulation.

My contacts believe that some of the recent attacks were orchestrated by groups with sophisticated understanding of market dynamics and exchange platforms. For instance, The trading on MT GOX was in a bullish break out pattern, meaning that the market was wound up and ready to move higher based on price action.  At the apex of this setup the attack was launched effectively killing the market dynamic at a critical point.

make of it what you will....

Do your sources hand out tin foil hats along with this sort of information?  Just curious.

My sources are telling me that there is a reason I have a bottle of hand lotion near this computer...

Visa makes more in a day than the entire BTC economy is worth.  Stop believing/making up silly sources.  You just sound like a silly person.

Yea, Banks and alike are known to be always trustworthy and never have any scandals related to lying, cheating, stealing, etc.

-EDITED-

Bitcoin is small now, but every big thing was small at some point. Why wait until it becomes unstoppable years later?

like I said take it or leave it,  I CARE NOT

My sources tell me aliens are using our hashing power for nefarious purposes. Make of it what you will. Take it of leave it.

"Let's stop cashing in billions of dollars a year... there's an online currency worth literally millions of dollars, theoretically!"

I agree... this bank scandal has to be real.  This is the new derivatives scam.

I actually agree with your post, BTC is definitely an enemy of the credit card companies.

obviously you cant read.  *OTHER COPYCAT SYSTEMS*

keywords: FREE, ANONYMOUS, FEES LOST, DERP, FUTURE, KILL PRECEDENT

GET IT?

Yes, I agree also.  I know personally the thing I hate about my credit cards is being able to dispute transactions and reverse them if I get screwed, and their complete lack of insecurity for the web interface.  I don't want to go through the hassle of typing in passwords or two factor authentication.  I'd rather if someone wants to borrow some money, they can just download my account info from Pirate Bay.

check out the big donors to Shumer.

can you guess who?

I bet none of them are RICH WHITE PEOPLE WITH AN AGENDA!!!

Yo. Mama.

It's right there in the disclosures...

She's behind all tin-foil inducing stories....

Yo mama is so fat, she's almost as fat as yo OTHER MAMA that sleeps over on the weekend and wears timberlands and plaid shirts!!!

Hey, don't you talk about Shirley like that. Shirley is a very nice lady. All her biker friends are so kind to me.

Well Shirley needs to stop stealing all the AA's from my xbox controller on friday nights!

Oh how lame is that?  Unnamed sources from unnamed places?  You figure that gives your prognostications more credibility?  

Those sources might as well be voices in your head, and probably are...

I agree with the OP.  For anyone who thinks otherwise, I suggest you start reading books like "The Creature from Jekyll Island", which gives an exhaustive history of banking, which is rife with banksters going to any length to protect their government-sanctioned cartel (i.e. the Fed) from any possible threats.

If they were smart, they'd be allowing people to buy BTC with their credit cards... whether it succeeds or fails, they'd get their fees and interest.

Nope, the radio in his head comes in loud and clear without it.

I am don`t get it - are we already overtaken by fake personalities  ?

While the OP's suggestion that a large financial institution was behind the mtgox hack has no evidence, his/her suggestion of a link between large financial institutions and Chuck Schumer is a matter of fact.  You can see on www.opensecrets.org (as previous poster did) how much Chuck receives directly from financial institutions.  Schumer didn't learn about bitcoin because he likes to surf the web and read up on tech stories.  He learned about it from the same people who told him what bitcoin is and what he should do about it.

A good example of what will eventually happen can be found in the recent attempt by AT&T to keep Wisconsin public schools/libraries from completing the fiber network they are working on.  This guy did a good synopsis if you missed it in the news. http://bit.ly/lD8N8x

If you don't think a large company will bribe public officials to have them write legislation to destroy a competitor, you haven't been reading a broad enough sources of news.

Where'd you find that information?

i take seriously our OP.  i have read Creature From Jekyll Island and i follow the news in the eCONomy quite closely.  

in fact, it was my first thought that perhaps a bank was behind the hack.   why would an individual take the time and effort to squash the price to zero?  why wouldn't he just steal the bitcoin from an unlimited withdrawal acct before anyone would notice?

no, the intent of the hack was to drive the price down and destroy confidence.

You're wasting your time.  These morons have been told that political intrigue doesn't exist and they eagerly lap it up because it precludes them from an adult and comprehensive world-view that requires a rigorous understanding of history and an analytical mind that can process all this without falling into despair at the present condition of mankind.  Needless to say, this is a hard thing to come by.

Julius Caesar tripped and fell on his own knife.
William Henry Harrison died of the flu.
Abe Lincoln was killed by a lone nut, JWB.
JFK was killed by Lee Harvey Oswald.
19 mentally deranged low-grade morons overcame the most defended and secure airspace on the planet with box cutters on 9/11.

Also, it's a complete coincidence that the Senate just voted to limit debit card fees.  That was not at all intended to send a message to transaction processors or anything remotely like that.  That would be an insane conspiracy theory, and we don't believe in those.

Agreed. Named + verified sources or not - some things are just too obvious. Why would any hacker try to destroy Bitcoin? Why would any criminal try to destroy Bitcoin? Why would any greedy person try to destroy Bitcoin (except for: when they know they can make more money if Bitcoin wasn't there)? Driving the Bitcoin price to $0.01 only makes sense for one very specific rationale: Destroy the market, destroy trust in Bitcoin. So far, it seemingly wasn't too successful.

The really bad news: Given the markets are open to everyone - what keeps them from gradually buying up significant amounts of Bitcoins so they can "play" with the markets whenever they want to? Early adopters owning a significant part of the available Bitcoins could be trouble in theory - but given that they are early adopters and most likely in it because they like Bitcoin and believe in Bitcoin, it's unlikely that this would be a real problem. Banks buying up significant parts, however, would certainly be a severe problem. And at the moment, I can't think of anything that would keep them from doing that. If I was a bank, it would be what I would be doing.

So, everyone: Buy Bitcoin so the banks can't. And don't sell (buy stuff or ... um ... donate to me instead ;-) ) ... we just need to outnumber them in due time!

Please, sell all you can.

I'll be there to buy them up from you, silly trading newbies.

these banksters are having more and more battles to fight and even though they are quite a daunting adversary they are losing steam and breaking down behind the scenes. They will attempt all they can to maintain their face through fear, and the more they try and the bigger their stunt the more we realise how week and desperate they are and not the other way round. Fear is a very very weak level of power and I remain utterly convinced that this control system is done with one way or another and the world will be rid of these parasites gradually in a manner that we collectively can handle. I expect and contribute my thoughts and action to the dismantlement of this illusion.

The credit card companies have nothing to fear from us.  We need them just as much in a bitcoin world as we do under our current system.

My sources tell me that NO_SLAVE hasn't posted again in this thread he created.

This is an anonymous forum where anyone can join. We have no way of telling whether you are a troll.

FUD posts like this one should automatically be considered trolling. Until proven otherwise.

I'm am not saying that you definitely are are troll, but give us some proof, or a least plausibility, that you know those "sources", or stop polluting this forum with FUD posts.

Im not getting into a slug fest with trolls, who has the time for that BS. I put the information out there, take it as you may.

It's always good to be a little paranoid either way - crypto & source code attacks aren't the only attacks on Bitcoin.

The BTC economy is in its infancy and is in a good period to test out its dynamics - both intended and unintended. There are vanloads of laws around established currencies and market trading for good reason (i.e. to stop themselves imploding), but very few of these apply to Bitcoin as it stands, so I can imagine both individuals and companies looking for ways to exploit it.

Way I see it, some exploits will benefit individuals but not affect the overall sustainability of Bitcoins, while others will attack Bitcoins as a functioning economy. Are technical protocols enough to withstand or circumvent either or both? Maybe the true test of Bitcoin won't be how spread out individual nodes are, but how much the Bitcoin community establishes new controls and agreements on top of it.

Whether or not NO_SLAVE has sources, it'd be foolish to pretend everyone is in it for the long-term survival of Bitcoins.

p.s. Surely Bitcoins are more of a threat to other net-payment services like PayPal at the moment?

+1. A bit of paranoia is healthy. Sometimes the resulting theories are indeed correct.

I dont see any reason for banks NOT to be attacking bitcoin. Better to eliminate the competition while it's weak than deal with it after it has become entrenched.

Does LulzSec have a "side"?

But they don't need us.

I walked right into that one!!   ;D

This was my speculation.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/i4ign/conspiracy_theory_its_the_banks/ (http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/i4ign/conspiracy_theory_its_the_banks/)

Fake personalities?  Are you referring to the military project to create fake people on the internet (http://www.disinfo.com/2011/02/why-is-the-military-creating-an-army-of-fake-people-on-the-internet/)?

Me and the other government-loving, mainstream TV watching, ignorant, arrogant, know-it-all statists here on this thread laugh at such a notion. It's not mentioned TV now, is it? Right?!

+1

The fearful and the uneducated make up the masses. Maybe most people just don't want to look for a different path.

First you have to know there's a different path and that it's valid. If you notice the disinformation agents embed themselves in a group of "tin foil" hat wearing conspiracy theorists to trivialize their ideas so others don't take them seriously.

It seems on these boards the idea is to disrupt conversation and turn the community agains one another. We must  be careful to not be too harsh with each other. I think the topica of this board is valid. It doesn't matter who the "sources" are.

The point is that if it is not happening, it will. Given the numer of trolls on these boards we can only assume it is.

If the banks and credit card companies "go after" bitcoin it will not be with DoS attacks or any such nonsense. It will be quietly and calmly discussed between attorneys and lobbyists. They will develop a rational legal case against BTC and present it to authorities.
If you want to fight their efforts you will need to do the same. Quick witted one-liners and crazy conspiracy theories may win a flame war on the internet, but they won't even be entertained by a court.

Exactly why we must educate the uneducated. It will be slow at first, but it will exponentially pick up speed as more and more people share their information and knowledge with others. The information revolution and the development of internet have set the stage for bitcoin to now be availble to the world. But the duty of spreading this treasure of a knowledge with the uneducated lies within each of us. More people we share about bitcoin with the better everyone will be off at the end. I mean this not only as a metaphorical grand scheme sense, but also in a monetary standing terms for every individual involved and invested in bitcoin's success. It's by design.

The most important difference now is that more and more people are becoming aware that something is wrong with the current economic system. They just really need someone to show them what it is that is truly plaguing the current system and how bitcoin can be an answer to many of it's shortcomings.

That is certainly a good point. We could just ignore them. If we do I think BTC will continue to have some value among some people. But for very wide adoption it will need to be legal.

But do they want to be educated? Have you seen some of the hate videos and comments that's been going around on Youtube? It's like teaching pigs to fly. I think the biggest barrier of all is that Bitcoin is so new, so much of a polar opposite of "normal" currency, and way above the technicality of your average joe, that by the time that they might get the idea, those in position of powers would have already killed it.

I have done some venture capitol investing. Quite successfully in fact. And I have done very well with bitcoin. But many people will not even consider using BTC if it is illegal. Businesses/investors will will risk much less capitol on BTC. Scammers will see the lack of legal protection for users and move in. I would not put $100k of my money into such a shark tank. However if it had some legal protection, I might.

ah yes.  but this is how you make real money.  investing when there is fear, uncertainty, doubt.  i don't see how the gubmint gets away with declaring btc illegal.  there is just no good argument for it.  yes, they can huff, puff, stomp around about drugs, sex, porn, assassination but knowledgeable ppl will laugh in their faces.

ppl complain about the whipsaws but what do you expect for a fledgling currency?  as long as the block chain remains intact, we are good.  and i think it will be as i think it would have been broken by now. 

and as for taking over 50% of the network?  have you seen the network figures recently?  insane!  45x the biggest supercomputer in the world?  i think its unbreakable.

Let's look at the game theory...

You're in a senior position within a bank.
You hear about Bitcoin.
You think it will be a success. (At least to the point where it threatens the dominance of current banks i.e. VERY SUCCESSFUL)

You have at least two options...

1. Construct a complex and expensive clandestine group to destroy Bitcoin from the inside.

OR

2. Buy some Bitcoin now and reap the rewards of being an early adopter and make a comparably trivial loss if it fails.

On that basis, what the OP is suggesting is RIDICULOUS!

PS. I'm a libertarian who's keen to see the current government backed, crony capitalist, banking oligarchy smashed. Libertarianism would be great and might actually get somewhere if it didn't attract so many nutty conspiracy theorists.

These are not mutually exclusive choices, just as the standard "high road" legal / poltical / PR route does not forbid the "low road" hack-fest.  A top hedge fund manager could personally buy up the entire BTC market with a fraction of one year's salary.  It's also cheap to pay, through back channels, a handful of hackers a million bucks a pop to destroy it.  That's actually far cheaper than lobbying Congress.

I'm also not sure you understand the advantage of a monopoly on money with the Federal Reserve.  The ability to control the money supply, decide who gets access to the discount window and who doesn't... this is more than just getting rich, it's serious political power.  Believe me, banksters don't want to relinquish such control, even for the promise of being bitcoin billionaires.

I expect the banks to take an "all of the above" approach.  And it will still be a pittance to them.

The point I'm trying to make is that if you think Bitcoin will be a huge success then it'd be much better to buy bitcoin than try to harm it. MUCH better. As a strategy, I can't see why anyone would hold both positions.

What would you do?

I hope you're right.  If THEY buy in, we'll be headed to $1k / BTC soon.

How to not be scared of BTCs as a bank:

1. Use a day's profits to buy lots of mining hardware, go.
2. Use a second day's profits to start buying up all the BTC available.
3. Wait until ALL btc are mined.
???
4. Have more money than god.

Until God steals it. God invented the orgasm, so for God to bruteforce the bank's private keys and spend all the coins would be trivial!

Sorry, fixed it.

my sources tell me you are a HOMUNCULI

Until they invent Faithcoin, anyway. Or Pedocoin.

Until they invent Faithcoin, anyway. Or Pedocoin.


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