This is a good point.  If you are building from source, make sure you are checking out  v22.0 not  v0.22.0 as it will error out:

e.g.
error: pathspec 'v0.22.0' did not match any file(s) known to git

I agree. I just wonder who would be stupid enough to pay taxes with bitcoin?  One should use a currency who's value is inflating away (decreasing) like fiat instead of an asset that has had more than a decade of increasing in value. Perhaps at fiat equilibrium that would make sense, but that's likely another few orders of magnitude away.

When the world figures out that debt levels are not sustainable and people start protecting themselves by buying PMs and crypto, those people, companies and countries who already realize this will be well prepared.

He sounds like Warren Buffett decades ago not investing in tech companies because he "doesn't understand them."   If you couldn't understand Microsoft, Intel or Apple in 1990 or 1995, you must be pretty stupid. I don't think he is stupid though about investing, just about his support of fascism and socialism etc.

You would think that was the case, but think about these:
1.  It is illegal to come across the border and yet the President is not enforcing the law.
2. It is illegal to commit perjury, but see Clapper and Brennan before the US Congress.  See "parallel construction"
3. It is illegal to store (or remove it) on person devices, but see HRC.
4. It is illegal to discriminate based on skin color, but see "affirmative action".
 
etc

So a more accurate statement today might be: "that is the law, and it may be obeyed depending on if one is in a politically favored class or not."

The thing to remember is that (per AP), bitcoin usage is optional.  So all these people who oppose the law don't have to use it.  They can just go about their business as if nothing happened.  That is the nature of a free society where people can use things if they wish to, and not if they don't.

The key will come if/when a socialist, fascist, communist or some other authoritarian is elected.  Then those Salvadorans who are familiar with bitcoin and have assets in bitcoin will be somewhat protected.  Everyone else will have some time to protect themselves and their assets also.  Of course they'll probably want to swap an "official wallet" for an open source wallet at that time.

It elicits alarm in Washington because DC has gotten so far away from the founding principals of liberty and limited government that they fear people having control of their own money and lives.

The NYT is - knowingly or not - carrying water for the controlling powers in DC and statists and authoritarians worldwide.  Their policies such as perennial inflation, huge tax and regulatory burdens hurt the least well off the most, yet these same people attempt to claim the opposite.


Bitcoin is about freedom.  You are free to use bitcoin, or not.  Unlike the politicians around the world who have such terrible ideas they have to be imposed by force, not voluntary agreement.

There are several reasons, accurate or not:

First, the belief from many that stopping fighting somewhere else or at least confining it there can prevent it from spreading.

Second, that innocent people deserve help - e.g. to prevent things like the Holocaust, genocide etc. Look at the hundreds of millions that were killed by the statist authoritarians over the last century. 

Third, the (perhaps real reason) deep state (per Glenn Greenwald in 2017 ) is invested in power and war. For example, look at who provided the "evidence" of WMDs?  The three letter agencies (DoD, NSA, CIA, etc).  Look who provided the "intelligence" about Afghanistan?  Three letter agencies again. All unelected bureaucrats who have nothing to fear from being wrong for decades or committing perjury - Clapper and Brennan - about spying on the US (and the world) per Snowden.  Some, like Clapper and Brennan don't believe in liberty, only power and will do much to undermine the US overseas in order to get people to distrust liberty.

Fourth, nation building - give people a taste of a republican form of government combined with democracy and they'll be able to keep it.

Number 1 and 2 are often used as public rationale while 3 is the deep rationale.  Good, sincere people may believe in the first two while being used by those in 3.

Which are real, which are accurate, which make sense, I don't know, but those are some reasons about which I have read.  Personally, I think a lot of people believe #2, and really mean it. They're being hijacked though.

I wouldn't think it would matter - it would impact using a scanner to scan a bar code, a cash register, or a credit card etc.  So as you say, someone would just use cash, but I don't see why it would matter MORE for bitcoin than for the rest.

As Sithara007, what do you expect from a left wing paper that doesn't want people to have ownership of their lives?  They want power and that means controlling people's money so that they can inflate away its value and preventing people from having privacy - hence the desire to have no one have any privacy for their money or anything else.

End to end, on device encryption will be key and obfuscation of transactions on the block chain critical over time.

It can be a financial savior if people prepare in time. The people of Hong Kong could've converted some assets to bitcoin to save them from the communists. The people of Taiwan should be protecting themselves this way.  Just as the people of Afghanistan have had the chance to do so.

Anything that needs a cross border asset transfer that can't be confiscated easily if someone doesn't know you have it.

Just to be clear to those advocating for some type of authoritarian system:  I’m not going to accept some fake freedom where I am “free” to work as I want while you are free to dispose of my life as you want. Someplace where everyone is both a slave master and a slave.

If you think that is a good idea, I suggest that you go and live somewhere that is practicing that for a few years.  See what it is like to live under the whip hand.  If you survive, come and report back to us afterward, but don't pretend that it is for our own good that you want to impose your whims on people who want to be free.  It is for your own selfish desire to control everyone else.

 

Exactly.  The degree to which a country bans bitcoin (or crypto) is the degree to which they are or intend to be authoritarian in nature.

People anywhere facing an existential threat who can preserve their assets with something like bitcoin would do well to do so whether or not that encourages scum to use it.  Let's face it, people protect their assets with USD, Euros, gold, silver etc, just because there are bad people using them too doesn't matter.

My own view is that if you have the cash, maybe DCA over 6 months, otherwise just put it all in.  If you don't have the cash, just buy as you can.

I would say that "all in" was a good bet at any time before Feb 2021 or between May 2021 and now.  In the long run even those who bought in Nov/Dec 2017 are way ahead of other assets.  Whether that will be the case now is an open question, but EVEN at the times it was at an "all time high" one has done great by going all in.  (e.g. at $1, $30, $100, $1000, $2000, $5000, $20000 etc).

:-)

I am not mad at all, I just want freedom and forced equality is anti-liberty.  I agree that bitcoin doesn't fall in any of those ideologies which was the point - bitcoin is about freedom where anyone involved in bitcoin is there because they want to be, not because someone is forcing them to be. 

Communism, socialism and fascism all require the force of government to tell you to do what they want and how they want it.  They will take everything from every single person and then "redistribute" it to someone else.  It means you do not have the right to the products of your mind or the products of your labor.  That is evil and immoral.  It was evil when Mao, Stalin, Lenin, Hitler, Castro, Chavez, Kim Jong-un and all the other authoritarian people who have done so over the millennia imposed their will on people, just as it was evil when the US Democrat party imposed it on the US slaves.  It caused hundreds of millions of deaths over the 20th century because someone who is free isn't going to submit to the slavery imposed by fascism, socialism or communism or any other collectivist authoritarian form of government.

Imposed equality and imposed "equity" means that no one is free.  Those ideologies are about slavery imposed by an elite group on everyone else.

There are two different statements there. 
1. "U.S. government awards $10 million in cryptocurrency to track cybercriminals." - so they have done so given the phrasing.
2. The other one, is "plans" as in the future.  So they have not done so, given the phrasing.

It could be referencing things like one or both of these:
1.  https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/15/us/biden-reward-ransomware.html
or
2. https://edition.cnn.com/2021/08/15/politics/state-department-dark-web-cryptocurrency-rewards/index.html

Given the events in Afghanistan over the last week, it is a great example of where bitcoin could have been of great use to the people of the country.  The currency, the Afghani, fell to record lows.  Anyone who owned bitcoin was protected and could escape the country with their assets, not worrying about capital controls or confiscation at the border.

Given that China sees how weak the current US administration is, Taiwanese should beware and should have escape plans in place:  assets offshore in the US, EU, Switzerland etc and some large percentage in bitcoin.  The people of Hong Kong had an opportunity to do so, and probably still have a slight window, but right now Taiwan is in a place where the people should be concerned about the communists at their door.

Marxism - and socialism, communism, fascism and other authoritarian forms of control - are all based on coercion and force, the opposite of liberty and freedom.  Bitcoin requires no compulsion or coercion, everything from mining to running a node to partaking in any transaction is completely voluntary.

Marxism's/socialism's/communism's/etc ideas are so good that everyone has to be forced to do them (sarcasm).  Bitcoin's are so good that everything is voluntary.  Use it or don't, it is your choice.

Just to be clear, the capitalists are not the ones wanting to tax and control.  Around the world it is the socialists, communists and fascists who don't trust people to make their own decisions and want them controlled.  They want a cut of everyone else's income and will use the force of government to obtain it.

Capitalist systems are dependent on voluntary cooperation and voluntary trade.  All without any centralized coordination, just free people in free markets taking care of themselves.  Marxist systems are based on the point of a gun forcing everyone to act as some centralize authority sees fit.

I agree, it certainly seems unlikely that they kept it, but I hope they did and surprise people with it eventually.

I guess a question would be:  If you have the cash now, is it smarter to do it all at once or DCA over a period of time?   Certainly if you don't have the fiat now, DCA is smart.  If you do have it now and the alternative is to invest it over 4 years (roughly the time period in the article), I think the better advice is to just buy it all now or as there are dips and then don't trade it.

As for $1 million, if enough people are buying then it could easily happen.  1 to 3 more orders of magnitude is certainly possible until there is some sort of fiat equilibrium reached.

One also wonders if the restaurant was just cashing out as soon as someone purchased with bitcoin or held on to the coins.  I suspect that it was the cashing out option since that was probably easier on them. 

This is the age old ant and grasshopper phenomena:  some people will plan, work, and save, and some people will just spend without a thought to the day after tomorrow. 

The concept of "clean" coins itself is nonsense.  Who decides what is "criminal" and where?

It is a tool of authoritarian control freaks who hate liberty.