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Not necessarily. A definition of money laundering would include any commodities bartered in the process, ex diamonds, gold etc. If I sell drugs for gold and then pretend I've mined the gold from my back yard I'm still guilty of money laundering (even if I pay taxes for the 'extracted' gold). It's easy to recognize bitcoins are a commodity, without legitimizing them as currency.
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In civil cases a court should rule based on the preponderance of evidence (not beyond reasonable doubt), so a signature verified by a graphologist, a RSA signature or a witness will suffice. There's no such preponderance against a hacker that published a ripped copy, and in any case the reparations don't trickle down to the users of his ripped copy.
That's why IP authors insist very much on treating information as property: it's the only way they can encroach on established forms of property, in the attempt to strike a "fair balance" between the interests of authors and individuals. No such balance exists.
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If the program spawns a dialog blackmailing me to click or else, it's not a valid contract. I'm using my private property in every way I see fit, including clicking on any dialogs I might desire. The mere act of generating a sequence of bits does not give the author partial ownership of my physical property, nor does it transforms my computer into his agent in my house. It's my choice to let my property operate on said sequence or not, or to modify, extend and publish that sequence, because information is not property.
I have to disagree there. It doesn't matter the format of a contract, as long as it is voluntary and explicit. The same thing you said about a sequence of bytes could be said about a sequence of words printed on a piece of paper. Both are valid forms of contract. A valid contract should feature non-repudiation, for example you keep the other paper copy, or a witness/arbiter exists. Can you prove I have clicked the dialog and not skipped over it using a debugger ? You can't, as such I've never entered a contract with you. That's precisely why my property can't act as your legal proxy, if it's really my property I should be able to control it for my non-violent purposes, and have no obligation to use it to correctly represent you in the contractual matter at hand. It's all rather pedantic because, as you agree, a hacked copy without the EULA is clearly not a binding contract. |
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The property is claimed on the physical assets those bitcoins stand for, not for the string of bytes themselves. Once I move the amount to some other secure key, you can distribute the old wallet far and wide, I don't care. Suppose a city has a database that stores the exact location and size of every citizen's piece of land. If you would hack into that database and modify those records, you would be attempting to deprive me of physical property; it just so happens that the bitcoin database is distributed, yet stealing bitcoins is still stealing physical property. So why don't Eulas qualify? If the program spawns a dialog blackmailing me to click or else, it's not a valid contract. I'm using my private property in every way I see fit, including clicking on any dialogs I might desire. The mere act of generating a sequence of bits does not give the author partial ownership of my physical property, nor does it transforms my computer into his agent in my house. It's my choice to let my property operate on said sequence or not, or to modify, extend and publish that sequence, because information is not property. People are free to enter into mutual, limited agreements regarding sharing of information. They can impose on each other financial penalties if the information leaks to the outside, and so create a limited private form of intellectual property, if they feel this beneficial for them. They however have no right over what other people do with their information after it inevitably leaks. A porn movie with your wife is a contractual agreement between you two. The one who betrayed the contract wilfully or due to negligence should pay. I have no obligation to help you meet your contractual obligations, or to help you succeed in business or love. |
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Pretty good. But are the laundry needs of the Bitcoin community limited to the amount daily fresh coins ?
You might be underestimating the hassle factor, the miners know full well they are participating in a laundry operation and can be charged on that count alone, unrelated to the crime that is being hidden. Unlike TOR, there are no laws against internet traffic laundering. If the money laundry laws as they stand don't yet apply to Bitcoin, I'm sure they will amend them in no time.
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I don't know what you are talking about, what president ? Stop that treasonous clatter. I was clearly referring to the delicious medieval beverage, Potus Ypocras. As for Assange, now that's a man that deserves to be killed for terrorizing the mighty american army and people. Long live our beloved leader ! Glory to the sleveeless one ! |
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I think he can take out about 50.000$ a day without crashing the market. Would last him 8-9 months, a good timeline to liquidate and after that just live your life to the fullest as a multimillionaire  Too bad for all the poor souls ending up with worthless bits. Meh, just feed some hungry African children, those fat capitalistic geeks had it to good anyway. The Bitcoin Robin Hood ! |
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The number mined every day is constant, 50 per 10 minutes, 300 per hour, 7200 per day. This will drop in 2013 to 3600 a day, and continue to halve every four years.
All miners compete for this daily bounty, and the difficulty goes up as a result of more people mining. The question of whether it pays to mine is complex, there are a few calculators out there. You might break even in a week or never depending on price and quality of hardware, BTC rate, new people setting up rigs etc.
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"Bitcoin is a great idea and would revolutionize the world, but alas, there are only 21 million and this is not enough for our big world."
You betcha. If they are to revolutionize the world, there should be plenty of them to go around. Oh, I see now, it's not about revolutionizing the world: it's about changing the current oligarchy with a brand new plutocracy of which you are a member, that consists of no more than 21.000 people each owning 1000 BTC. What's not to ridicule, the pompous self importance these people give to themselves, or the absurd notion that they could somehow succeed ? |
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The original poster has correctly described how the speculative bubble inflates and bursts, but he maintains the illusion that it can be somewhat steered to become something other than a bubble. Sorry pal, you don't know human nature; the people who will promote Bitcoin most aggressively are the early adopters or those who invested significant sums of money. They have a vested interest to draw more suckers in and inflate it even more, so they will skip the "make sure you go against your better judgement and spend any coin you might acquire, don't hoard them like me and become rich, for that will mean it's just a bubble" part. You should expect them to cling on the dream to very end, "it's a temporary dip, a great opportunity, now is the time to buuuuy !". Some will undoubtedly live the dream and retire wealthy, but the vast majority is in for a big disappointment and even financial ruin for some. That's how a zero sum game works. Anyhow, the spectacle of human nature is just startin` and I have front row seats  |
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How does your scheme prevent the original buyer to continue reusing the same proof of work instead of doing the work ? The same for any party that receives a copy ?
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3% a year, either inflation or deflation, is not what a speculative commodity behaves like. Expect violent, random swings, nothing one could use in a contract, yet a perfect venue for speculators to extract wealth from the userbase.
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Confiscation via inflation is as bad/good as confiscation via taxation, a distinct political issue.
On the other hand, deflationary currency is provably impossible for any sensible definition of "currency".
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1. As a matter of historical fact, the gold standard was in force for the period since the fall of bimetallism at the turn of the century, throughout the roaring 20s and the start of the depression, until being denounced by Roosevelt in 1933, fixing the value of the dollar at $20.67 per troy ounce. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_Standard_Acthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_Reserve_Act2. The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 required that each Federal Reserve Note issued to be backed by 40% of it's value in gold, and this provision was still in force at the time of the Great depression. It is this debasement from 100% to 40% that created high, 20%/year inflation during and after the 1st world war. This 1:2.5 devaluation was a means to finance war expenses, and continued after the end of the war due to sticky prices. 3. After this, beside acquiring more gold (which required tax income) the only possible form of monetary expansion was via fractional reserve banking. It is natural to assume that one who implies that the Fed "printed" money during the 20s is someone who does not understand how fractional banking works - economic illiterates the likes of which these forums are full (see above). Indeed, the Fed went as far as allowing an insane level of reserve of only 3% for time deposits, without dropping the 40% backing in gold of the FRNs: http://www.fff.org/freedom/0397b.aspThe resulting monetary expansion enabled the economic growth of the US during the 20's, bringing real prosperity to millions of Americans. 4. When the illiquid and instable banking system finally imploded in 1929/30, so did the money supply created by such ridiculous shenanigans. The corset of the gold standard was once again choking the money supply of an economy that in the meantime grew much larger. The ensuing deflationary spiral halted economic activity, and the fed actually made it worse by hiking interests rates in defend of the gold standard, which was considered a critical political issue after the post-war inflation. 5. It was exactly when the gold standard was finally dropped that the economy returned to growth, enabled by an expanded, stable money supply able to grow with the underlining economy (if slightly inflationary). You may insult Keynesians at your discretion, but they do not have the ability to print jobs out of thin air:  Conclusion: the price deflation caused by a fixed monetary base was a key enabler of the Great Depression, together with dubious lending practices tolerated by the central bank, and bad reaction during the ensuing implosion. Going back to the primitive gold age is not the solution, what we need is a currency that is both stable (free of inflation/deflation in terms of PPP) and also out of the hands of bankers/goverments. |
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Nice going buddy, ruined for everybody this year's edition of The Most Retarded Business Plan contest.
Your proposal is just about as effective as bankrupting Amazon by buying up all their inventory.
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Third and most important, talking about "the gold standard" is terribly vague. The monetary systems that people label under "gold standard" are extremely different and only someone very ignorant about economics would join them together and treat them all the same. There are times where people used gold as money without any government intervention. Then governments usually start the shenerigans by imposing some type of specific gold coin, to later on create a central bank with paper (suposedly) backed by gold. But each monetary system is completely different (even when they all are using gold in some way) and its stupid to treat them all the same.
Specifically for the period of time you are mentioning: When the Federal Reserve was created in 1913 it wasnt that bad actually. It could only create dollars if they were backed by so called "real goods" and 40% of gold. Obviously this was only temporary and not 5 years were gone when they started changing the law so the Fed could expand. The first big expansion was for IWW where the Fed doubled prices in the USA in 5 years (if I recall corectly). To pay for the war the government gave the Fed the power to buy government bonds. Housing bubbles appeared all over the USA, specially in Florida. Finally the bubble popped and there was the crisis of 1921-22. This is a crisis keynesians dont like to talk about and ignore it because the government lowered taxes and reduced spending: the crisis was over in a year and a half, even when it started worse than the Great Depression.
Then the Fed finally got definitive powers to expand and it created the roaring 20's with a big stock market bubble that popped in 1929. How is this the fault of gold? And how is this related to other type of monetary systems like the ones I have explained earlier? Its stupid to group all the monetary systems that use gold in some way together because they can be very different.
For the record, during the 20's Fisher congratulated the Fed for its great job at managing the economy and during 1929 said that the collapse would not happen, that it was only a plateau. In 1927 Keynes said that they had now the hability to control the economy and that crisis were a thing of the past. Hayek and Mises said there was a bubble and that a crisis was coming. Mises even rejected a job at a big bank and remained in his professor job (earning a lot less money) because he said the bank would fail and he did not wanted his name associated with all that. His wife was not happy, but the bank end up failing 2 years later. There is unwritten law in economics: When a keynesian says they have now control of the economy and crisis are things of the past, a big crisis is coming.
First of all please let me take a stance regarding fractional reserve banking: accepting deposits, putting a fraction aside and lending out the remainder is the standard way any and all banks operate, regardless if they use gold, green paper or bitcoins. The notion that fractional reserve banking is somewhat only possible if enabled by a central bank is a Zeitgeist conspirationista type of fallacy. One who doesn't understand what fractional reserve banking is, and the way it enables monetary expansion from M1 to M2, like our friend here AV, is nothing but a crackpot armchair economist who does not even warrant a response. Secondly, the issue in question is not whether a government-imposed gold standard is better than other types of "sound money", but rather if deflation is good or bad for the economy. Regardless if it's 100% or 40% backed by gold, any fixed money supply has the same natural tendency to deflate and choke the economy, by rewarding the hoarders and punishing debtors. The US maintained the 40% gold standard until the winter of 1933-1934, which unsurprisingly coincided with the very bottom of the depression. Comparatively, the keynesian decision to float the Pound in UK lead to a much quicker recovery. The anecdotal evidence you present regarding the deep foresights of Austrian economists is largely irrelevant. Fisher was in no way a keynesian, not even Keynes was until after the onset of the depression (The General Theory was published in 1936). Indeed the depression was such a catalytic event that it provided deep insights to Keynes, much to the despair of Hayek who painstakingly prepared a compelling rebuttal of Keynes earlier work, only to be scoffed with the famous quip "I no longer believe that". So any quote from the Keynes before cca 1930 should be taken with a pound of salt. The ability to predict the future would have made Misses a very rich man shorting the stock market, I believe in this instance we're simply dealing with selection bias. |
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@grondilu: You are ignoring the tipping point where you see others sell, and your theoretical beach house vanish, and start selling also.
Hoarding is not bad because it's a risk that everybody gets rich (thermodynamics says nothing can do that). Hoarding is bad because it induces volatility and speculative mania.
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You have two periods during the USA XIX century. One, after Andrew Jackson closed the Second Bank of the USA (the central bank of the USA back then) until the civil war, and then after the depression that the civil war brought until the beggining of the XX century, although during this last period there was the National Banks Act that centralized the credit in the New York banks and allowed for some expansion of credit and some bubbles. But it was very tame compared to what a central bank could do, so there was still price deflation.
I love the part where you leave out that defending the gold standard and it's deflationary nature brought the full wrath of the Great Depression, the single most important economic event that shaped modern macro. Far from being relinquished to the outskirts of the economic science as they are today, "sound money" advocates like yourself were the top dogs in 1929, and the full scale of their incompetence has yet to be equaled. |
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The only important content of your wallet are the private keys with which you can spend your coins. The fact that you own them is stored in the blockchain for everyone to see. So when the client reconnects to the network it resyncs with the current blockchain and finds out about the money receive, just as if you hadn't turned on your computer during the last two days.
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