This should be in all stickys and faq's! Seems like every week lately we have a thread on this same old topic. I know the search engine is very bad on this forum, but i think most of the noisemakers are just too lazy to even use it.

I think at least this video from the summit should be compulsory to watch before being able to post on this forum.

Yes, i think that one can use legal tender to pay for everything, including taxes, and the recipient is legally obligated to accept it.

If this Rickards is right, it really explains very well why the eurozone is still together, including Greece, and why the status quo will probably hold for the next few years:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAjYSq9tn4w

So, could it be that in Greece the people who have money to put away would rather put it into gold coins than Bitcoins?

Are gold and silver coins "legal tender" in Greece?

Gold and silver legal tender in Russia!  

I am Russian, and was born in the Soviet Union. So, i am aware from people who participated in those wars that without American involvement France and other parts of Europe were unlikely to free themselves from the Third Reich. And if they did, they would have been under strong influence of the Soviet Union...

The Americans were even sending a lot of military equipment to the Russian front via Lend-Lease, which helped my people in the beginning of WW2.

The reality is only "more complex" until it was time to call for American heavy airlift, refueling and other military capabilities, which no other nation since the Soviet Union has anymore. Considering the numbers of equipment and soldiers with which the French and other countries were "in" those joint operations, these interventions were impossible without the US military.

Since it was surrounded on all sides by NATO countries, of course, France could afford to be out of NATO, and pretend that it could defend itself if the Soviet Union attacked it any better than when Germany did, for example.

That's exactly what i mean: the US has been more than a hired gun for most of Europe directly, France indirectly, and others; it has provided free defense departments for them. Nothing wrong with mooching off American defense department, if American tax payers are willing... 

Anyhow, the point is: the average citizens of a nation that's willing to do that war after war, decade after decade, are not likely to favor or have a society in which there are really "gun-free zones" and  "guns almost never show up".

Agreed! Yet, those same parts of the world are not willing to kick the US military out of their territory, because the latter allow them to have miniscule "defense" budgets, and the US bases in their countries transfer considerable US taxpayer money into their local economies.

So, in deeds rather than words, those nations DO want to continue to "mooch" off the American taxpayer to police their regions of the world, at a profit rather than expense to the former. 

The point is, it's absurd to expect real "gun-free zones" in a war nation with the biggest military-industrial complex in the world.

I think you don't see the big picture either. America has been a war nation for a century, which continues to be the biggest arms exporter in the world, and continues to provide free defense capabilities for most of Europe and much of the Far East.

Without its willingness to resort to violence on behalf of others, your country and most of Europe would probably still be provinces of the Third Reich, and most of the Far East a part of the Japanese Empire. More recently NATO (which really means US military) interventions in places like Serbia and Libya would not have been possible without American support and propensity for solutions through superior firepower...

That kind of willingness to go to war cannot come from a relatively pacifist society like yours. American populace has always been relatively well-armed.

Europeans and other critics of American gun culture can't have their cake and eat it too; they can't expect American soldiers to go conduct violence in other countries on behalf of Europe/NATO, and then return to their own home land and disarm to the point that they can't even protect themselves and their children in their home, local movie theater, at a school. It's too much of a mindset change for rational citizens and soldiers of a warrior nation to make.

What i mean about the American way with guns was best said by some Texas businessman/politician; i can't find the exact quote, but it was something to the effect that "When I was a kid in Texas, all the kids had guns. We just didn't bring them to school!"

I am not sure there is such a place without other adverse side effects, especially for a female child. (As you know, gum law is one of the least of Singapore's "unusual" laws.) If no one else hurts them, kids often find a way to hurt or kill themselves for no good reason...

As someone whose family had to bury a loved child as soon as he grew up, i definitely sympathies with the sentiment and the affected parents; few things are harder than burying a child for any reason, especially something senseless... 

However, with regard to the mass murders of children in America, Russia, Norway, et al,  i would settle for a couple of well-armed, ex-military or police  guards or even trained, armed parent volunteers in the school, who could put up a good fight on my child's behalf.

If that were not enough, i guess, besides crying i would just have to remember that even presidents of "strong" states are not immune from being shot, even though they spend their lives in well-protected, "gun-free zones"...   

I am not sure why then they allow civilians to carry concealed firearms, if they can't be removed from the armory. In any case, "an effective state" and "moderate degree of repression" are in the eyes of the beholder and recipient, and as Americans say - "a slippery slope".

Singapore is a great example of that. Many other legal actions we take for granted in our countries are subject to corporal punishment in Singapore. So, i doubt any of us would wish to have those in addition to protection from gun violence.

America actually has more police presence than any other country. It just chooses to have a great deal of it outside its borders on other country's territories.

American soldiers have landed under various pretenses of American government in many different countries, were allowed to impose American will and "laws" in those countries by shooting the local citizens - in some cases unarmed and simply on-site!

At the practical, personal level, to tell those millions of highly-trained American soldiers that when they return home to America they can't have a personal firearm when they go to a movie theater or to their child's school seems absurd to me.  My point is that if America can't afford to police both the world and its territory, it should concentrate its resources on the latter. 

It's not that weak. The organized crime is strong, because Americans love to buy Mexican drugs, which is a whole other debate. 
Really, i can rest my case, if you are serious about that. 


For 2/3 of the time in the chart you cited, America was a frontier nation, trying to subjugate or kill off the indigenous population, and many people living in areas without police. Cowboys or the army shooting it out on the frontier is not the same as shooting defenseless people in a building...

We had that kind of strong state in the Soviet Union, where gun violence was rare yet still existed. Everyone, including the criminals, was pretty safe from gun violence. I understand why state agents or members of a country's upper class would advocate for such a state, but in practical terms, it's only desirable in theory.

Most of the Russians don't want that kind of strong state back, even though it was "safer", because that kind of a state comes with a lot of other restrictions, which would mainly benefit state agents and the elite. 


Or you could pull American armies from their numerous bases in other countries, and have them become security guards at American school, or border guards. If what you said about violence reduction due to effective police is true, America needs more  such police in "gun free" zones more than it needs impractical private gun ownership prohibition.

Speaking of Singapore, its firearm laws seem to be more like some of the more restrictive American states, such as CT - automatic weapons, multiple weapon possession, unlimited amounts of ammunition, carrying in public concealed or openly, and  so on seem to be allowed with a license and training.

"Gun-Free zones" anywhere are an oxymoron.

And we can see from America's neighbors that prohibition of private gun ownership is not the solution: Canada has stricter gun laws and gun violence seems to be rare. In Mexico, where private gun ownership is effectively prohibited, gun violence is rampant. So, there is a strong cultural element in this issue.

Rocks are not prohibited in any country; yet, in some countries people are stoned to death, and not in others. And private gun ownership in America long preceded mass murders with them. So, something else changed in American society since then.

Seems like there aren't financial resources in America to put an effective armed guard presence in schools and other "gun-free zones."

Maybe if America stopped providing free defense for other countries, and moved those resources from foreign bases to protecting its own borders and high-value targets, this violence could be stopped, along with illegal border crossings, and associated problems...

Really, this unfortunate community was visited fundamentally by mental illness; the resources for its treatment are limited everywhere, and in America further curtailed by limited health insurance coverage of such illness, co-payments, deductibles, for-profit health care, etc.

Any American who dealt with lifelong mental illness in themselves or loved ones, knows how prohibitively expensive it is to access treatment on a continuous basis. Once again, seems like a question of misplace societal priorities and misdirected resources in American society. 

Deepest sympathies for the people involved in this tragedy.

+1 MtG has always been suspected, and will continue to be. Every xchange has incentive to do that.
It will be impossible to prove until Bitcoin is big enough that the government regulators move in.

That also means that a lot of people still have more than enough fiat to pump and dump for dollars or Bitcoin.

+1 Bee Brothers make great gift boxes. Bitcoin Alpaca socks are nice this time of the year in northern hemisphere. 

There is of course a ton of other vendors in the B world now. And that's more useful to the success of Bitcoin itself in the long run.

Plus, wherever i buy gifts for fiat, i always tell them that i want to pay with B in the future.

I gave several gifts that i bought with Bitcoins. Is that giving Bitcoin, or not?

Right now, most people really don't value getting a Casascius coin or something like that, because it takes other actions before one can spend it, people don't understand "cryptocurrency", etc.
The ones to whom i've given them were suspicious and unappreciative. I think there is a good chance they will somehow lose or even throw away the value in them.

So, i think it's more useful to just buy gifts with Bitcoin for now.

Does anyone have any pros & cons regarding moving to the new Brinks vault in Singapore, which GM just announced?

Go Jon!

Testify, dude!

Tell the banker wannabes like it is!  

To suggest that it can't be done betrays a gross misunderstanding of human nature and short-sightedness.
 
We'll see when most large exchanges and >51% of the commercial miners "partner" with the banks and their government regulators in their respective countries.  Not only are they going to be "bought out", but there will be no way to prevent the banks and governments from changing the fundamental rules of the Bitcoin software, and making it into a p2p PayPal with their usual rules.

And as we can see here with banking, most of the masses will cheer or won't even care about bank/regulator "partnered" mining also, led by self-serving "integrators" like you and davout.

We'll see for example, how many "partnered" exchanges continue to allow anonymous accounts, the way bitcoin-central did.

I bet you do! Thank you for your honesty. We  should be honored, because we are getting a rare chance to interact here personally with evorhees and davout - the rising stars of international bankers/payment-middlemen class, which includes the the current banking and credit-card system elite.

In a few years, we'll only be able to message with their secretaries, while they are busy opening  "a bottle of champagne" (paid for with OUR BTC) and celebrating at the country club with their old banking system "partners"...  

Indeed, calm down with your concerns. No other exchange will ever want to partner with a major bank for at least the next few weeks or months. And no banks - central or otherwise - will ever want to buy out the main mining operators, and change the Bitcoin rules for probably at least a year or two. Until then, you are in control, just as Rassah said. 

After that, as usual there is no telling what will happen. I think that the Bitcoin system might be subverted in the most ordinary way - by having anyone who goes against the current powers that be being bought out and/or absorbed with their eager consent into the current banking system, as Paymium is...

Then some other Satoshi might appear with some other revolutionary way to make a killing... Maybe it will be Jed McCaleb and Co. that time, with the RippleCoin?!  Perhaps, this virtual currency thing will also turn out to be "A Bill of Goods" or a ponzi, just like fiat, and we are just too blind with our own greed to see that yet. We'll see.