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Canada might well be a great place to do business, but anyone considering operating an exchange there should make no mistake:
When the DHS or NSA says "jump!", INSET (Canada's equivalent of the US DHS) says "how high?". Unfortunate but true in post 9/11 Canada.
Reportedly, they have a habit of pulling up unannounced in unmarked Crown Vics, in dark suits with conspicuous shoulder holsters, to do the bidding of various US agencies. Not generally too concerned with the formalities of obtaining warrants in advance, they've been reported on more than one occasion to just say "we have an ERT on standby" or "we have direct orders from Ottawa" when asked. Compliance with their requests usually follows.
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And while I find it odd that DHS seized the account instead of FinCEN
FinCen only makes guidelines. I has no enforcement capability. Good point, thanks for the clarification. Unless there's an actual threat to national security, however, it seems heavy-handed that DHS would be involved as opposed to the FBI or whichever agency typically executes federal seizure warrants. Strangely, Mt.Gox has removed any reference to the seizure from the "News Feed" on their home page. There was a brief notice along the lines of "we're looking into it" there previously. |
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There is huge majority of engineers, technologists, scientists amongst the Chinese communist party leadership. I think like 8 out of 10 of the top guys are technical.
Maybe they just "get it" so do not feel threatened ... unlike western countries that have leadership riddled with technophobic lawyers, bean counters, humanities, polysci, MBAs, etc?
Don't worry comrades, a US cultural revolution may be closer at hand than we think:  lol. |
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This is international acceptance: http://bitnodes.io/Graphs bitcoin nodes not totally hidden by Tor, etc... Interesting distribution, also shows that China is really up there - and I didn't expect that so soon. Incredible. When did that happen?! It's been a while but last time I checked China was well behind the US. This is big. Really big. |
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This is one time where policymakers being totally ignorant about the internet actually works FOR us.
By the time they try to "do" something, it will be hilariously too late - the network is too widespread now. Couldn't happen to a better group of bribed jackwads.
+1 Yes it's already too late - the futility of the DHS action basically just highlighted that - the genie's already well out of the bottle. The venture capital community hasn't shown the slightest hesitation to invest millions despite recent the clumsy over-reaching attempts of the DHS to put the brakes on. |
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From the wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassim_talebThe final book of his Incerto series - Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder - was published in November 2012 by Random House in the United States and Penguin[45] in the United Kingdom. In the introduction of the book, Taleb describes it as follows: "Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors and love adventure, risk, and uncertainty. Yet, in spite of the ubiquity of the phenomenon, there is no word for the exact opposite of fragile. Let us call it antifragile. Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better." [46] Just as the TCP/IP based internet architecture was designed to route-around and circumvent any "disruptions" (i.e. an unrestrained US/Soviet nuclear exchange). Bitcoin, as a system, cannot be constrained, every attempt to bring it down or disrupt it, intentional or accidental, will simply act to prove its resilience. Bitcoin is to the transfer of value what TCP/IP is to the transfer of information. It is rapidly becoming a fundamental protocol upon which many new things can be built. We've already seen significant disruptions with the blockchain fork (unintentional) and the DHS action (intentional) and many smaller events. Bitcoin is clearly antifragile, at least in the sense that "whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger". Brilliant word, antifragile is.  |
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Unbelievable.
I't unbelievable only if you are one of those people still believing to tooth's fairies and other fairy tales like the one where a government is good for us. ...not unbelievable as in "whaddaya mean there's no toothfairy mom?!" - but unbelievable as in where's the media coverage and public outrage when the government is clearly operating farther and farther out of bounds on an increasingly regular basis. In any democratic society a free press has an absolutely crucial role in constraining government. Is everybody asleep or just too distracted by TMZ etc to care? I think we're in trouble. Bernanke is printing (counterfeiting?) at the rate of USD $1 trillion per year and nobody sees that the party is very close to being over? |
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The entire bitcoin market capitalization is approximately $1B - yet the DHS is seizing funds from a non-US based exchange for a possible non-compliance issue. This is indefensible over-reach, apparently to send a message: Why was non-compliance with (new) FinCEN guidelines suddenly a made a DHS issue? Remember, bitcoin wasn't even recognized as requiring compliance at the time the claimed "false statements" were made by MtGox.
... meanwhile HSBC launders USD 100's of billions - 100's of times more than the value of all bitcoins - for mexican drug cartels (obviously aware that these aren't just tortilla vendors) and is still doing business in the US like nothing ever happened: No fund seizures, no one is prosecuted and the bank is deemed "too big to prosecute" by the ever evasive Mr. Holder.
Unbelievable.
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http://reason.com/24-7/2013/05/18/bitcoin-foundation-to-hire-first-lobbyisThis is the whole (short) piece: Peter Vessenes, the executive director of the Bitcoin Foundation who's also enmeshed in a messy lawsuit against Mt. Gox, also stressed the need for governmental cooperation.
"We'll be hiring someone to work on [Capitol] Hill and interact with regulators," Vessenes said. "I'm someone who thinks we should have a civil conversation... It's time to engage with regulators and have a good, productive conversation."
Then again, that didn't stop the E-Gold online payment system from being shut down after a federal indictment on charges of money laundering. Not only did E-Gold chairman Douglas Jackson interact with regulators, he even testified before the U.S. Congress a year before the indictment took place. ... May the force be with them.
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The government did just try to stamp out bitcoin - at least a little bit - by shutting down a major conduit for USD purchases (MtGox via Dwolla).
The market barely reacted, international press is mostly questioning the true motivations of the action, and bitcoin is trading up 10% since the seizure. It's safe to assume the genie's out of the bottle and no amount of US regulatory over-reach is going to put it back now.
Scorecard:
DHS 0
Bitcoin 1
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Another RT news segment - they've been covering the DHS seizure heavily the past few days, almost hourly: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKWFdfLrZGEMr. Taaki appears without his hoodie, although the unfortunate anti-establishment / pro-underground economy ranting remains. edit: RT just ran another segment w/ Amir Taaki that included a ongoing survey of why people believe the US gov't is 'cracking down' on bitcoin. Over 50% (so far) believe it is to maintain control of the financial system. |
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Earlier this week, the US government took its first action against the bitcoin ecosystem, freezing the US accounts of Mt. Gox, which is the largest bitcoin exchange in the world, processing 75 percent of all transactions in the last 30 days. Since that time, the questions on most people’s mind has been, what does this mean for the future of bitcoin and other virtual currencies? Is this an isolated incident based on the actions of one bitcoin exchange, or is it a harbinger of a broader offensive against the ecosystem as a whole? Considering bitcoin is now trading 10% higher than it was before the DHS/MtGox smackdown, it's safe to assume the genie's out of the bottle and no amount of US regulatory over-reach is going to put it back now. Bitcoin 1 DHS 0 |
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My take is that by accepting BTC payments, Paypal could apply their customer protection features (and their existing fee structure) to the bitcoin ecosystem. Obviously they wouldn't be able to control the coins that their customers bought though. If a coin is allowed outside of the paypal interface in any way, then paypal has just become another coinbase. If it doesn't, and paypal manages to keep all of "their" bitcoins within paypal-to-paypal transactions only, then what makes that a bitcoin? They could just as easily SAY they've got bitcoins there when they don't! The technologies are just not compatible. If they enable ppl to buy btc in any way, then they've just helped a technology grow that will (mostly) destroy them. They might do just like WebMoney, and as they do with USD now, i.e. you fund your account (with BTC) and you maintain a BTC balance. No actual BTC would be transacted in the blockchain unless you deposit or withdraw, just as no USD is actually moved when paypal users transfer funds between themselves. Coinbase could theoretically do this too, but they actually process bitcoin transactions for everything instead of just maintaining a ledger. You're already trusting Paypal, WebMoney, banks, etc that they have "real dollars" underlying the transactions. Until you withdraw, you can never really be certain can you? Like Western Union and MoneyGram, Paypal's best strategy might be to find a way to incorporate bitcoin into their business model. Otherwise the risk is that they will become irrelevant. Microsoft is still paying a heavy price for not taking the internet seriously and embracing it back in the 1990's. If you miss the initial opportunity, there's sometimes no way to catch up. Apple, Google, Oracle, etc have been walking all over them in this space for years now. |
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Ah, you came back now that you understand that bitcoin is real money? Well, we don't need you anymore.
lol |
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Peter Thiel - a Paypal founder - clearly knows how to spot a viable online payment investment. Big news for the bitcoin VC community.
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What p!$$es me off is that the same people who let the banksters ruin wall st. and then gave them our tax money to make up their losses now want to protect us from bitcoin. The fraud committed by banks is staggering. They destroyed the lives of countless people and greatly, perhaps permanently, hurt the U.S.
Not a single person responsible for this mess is ever going to jail. Even the ones who got fired received golden parachutes to land on their 500 acer island estates. It is a stain on the legitimacy of us financial regulators.
Protect me from bitcoin? Pfft, right. I will secure my own future without you, indeed in spite of you.
... and HSBC launders USD 100's of billions for mexican drug cartels (obviously knowing that these aren't just mexican tortilla vendors) and is still doing business in the US like nothing ever happened: No fund seizures, no one is prosecuted and the bank is deemed "too big to prosecute" by the ever evasive Mr. Holder. Meanwhile, the entire bitcoin market capitalization is approximately $1B - yet the DHS is seizing funds from a non-US based exchange for a possible non-compliance issue. Remember, bitcoin wasn't even recognized as requiring compliance at the time the "false statements" were made by MtGox. |
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This may put Paypal one step closer to adding BTC as an additional transaction currency. It would almost seem inevitable at this point.
I dunno. The very day PayPal gives the public the ability to use their service to buy bitcoins, their stock should drop considerably... It would be enabling the enemy to conquer them. I just can't think of a way for the two to peacefully co-exist. Paypal will have little choice but to spend tons of money bribing the US Congress to make bitcoin illegal. It'll be wasted of course, but nobody said they are that bright. My take is that by accepting BTC payments, Paypal could apply their customer protection features (and their existing fee structure) to the bitcoin ecosystem. Just as many pre-Paypal buyers would never give their card info to a random online vendor, many buyers today wouldn't send bitcoin (or cash in the mail) to random online vendors. Paypal provides a level of vendor accountability that bitcoin doesn't. Time will tell, but a Paypal adoption would certainly be orders of magnitude beyond any news to date. |
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It was a different one, but did include a segment from the link above. Doesn't appear to be online yet, maybe someone could post it if it appears somewhere. |
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RT just ran a main headline news feature on the US DHS crackdown on MtGox accounts.
Quite a long feature, ridiculing somewhat the futility of the US efforts, and suggested the fact that they were fighting it suggests fear on the part of US government.
Can someone post a link to this??
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