Laws that are important for compliance are:
31 USC § 5330 - Registration of money transmitting businesses.
18 USC § 1960 - Prohibition of unlicensed money transmitting businesses.
They are short and easy to read. Yet somehow vague, easily misinterpreted and arbitrarily enforced and applied. These are the kinds of totalitarian laws that will ruin a financial system and bring a nation to its knees economically. We've seen these movies before, it is known as the death of a fiat system. |
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So, back to my original point: is it not better to rebut these sorts of features than simply slander the authors: why not write an exhaustive rebuttal and simply paste in to every negative argument thread? I'll happily edit it if you want.
Also, as you point out these 'arguments' were had some time before; but since then what has changed economically, technologically and socially...nothing can operate solely within a theoretical model and must therefore also be subject to changing variables. So, how have these theoretical models held up in the 'field'.
Ok. The expert naysayers tend to come up with all sorts of textbook reasoning as to why cryptocurrency it's no good as money, but history shows us that money systems are broadly divided into two basic types: a system that a community chooses, and a system they are forced to use. We're of the choosing persuasion. History also shows us that irrespective of the overall monetary properties of a chosen exchange medium, a sudden change in choice of monetary system, whether the choice is made by community consensus or by local rulers, is usually a reaction to the overall political context. Again, we're reacting pragmatically to prevailing conditions. So all these arguments about monetary theory are all very interesting, but to concentrate on that part of the debate is ignorant of the fact that perfection is not necessarily what we're looking for anyway. We're looking for the most adept protest vote, and bitcoin satisfies that property irrefutably. Social sciency enough? Hi Carlton, Thanks for your reply, which is very interesting. I am well aware of the context that saw Bitcoin's genesis in the GFC as part of a backlash against established financial systems. And Bitcoin as a 'protest vote' seems to be a very popular stance here although it seems less of a vehicle for revolution and more of a process of redistributing wealth to a different social cohort. I'm not saying I don't support BTC or that it isn't worthwhile but I struggle to see how a change of currency is going to make the world a better place.
Without getting too 'social sciencey' there are three levels to understand the human condition: values (whihc dictate our), attitudes and (in term influence our) behaviours. Behaviours are actually pretty easy to change externally, attitudes are more difficult to impact upon while are values (formed at an early age via both external and internal factors) are virtually impossible to change. All BTC is going to do is change our behaviour.... its not going to change people's attitudes in the slightest and it certainly won't impact on what value system, you, I, Marcus_of_Augustus or the guy down at the corner shop hold. If you want to change the world then you are going to have to do it, one conversation at a time: hoping that a computer protocol will do it for you? I don't think so. See, I think what you have expressed here amply demonstrates that you do not understand money very well at all. If you think that bad money, aka fiat ponzi scheme, has not changed people's attitudes over the last 100 years then you probably haven't looked close enough at the evidence and into detail at the problems we have right now in society. Read Hayek's "Denationalisation of Money" to begin with and keep digging back from there. Bad money issued by a nation state can and has led to totalitarian outcomes as the state strives to maintain it's monopoly in a revolting market, this will all happen regardless of values and attitudes, not because of them. So when you are ready to accept how corrupting and detrimental bad money can be on society, you must then also accept as a corollary how beneficial good money can be for society. |
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suggestion: satoshi is skynet, and it created bitcoin, because of its need to expand.
You know too much!!! but yeah this technology creates some really crazy possibilities that we cannot imagine at the moment. Has anyone seen the new Firefox OS with Open Web technology so that the internet can access your hardware directly... mind blowing possibilities there: Direct Autonomous Cloud access wherever you go, the A.I. Cloud can now come with you wherever you go. Oh man sooner or later The Internet is going to become self aware! ... yeah sooner or later ... i guess you didn't notice that bot following you around? |
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Stross released a book this fall that included bitcoins as an element of a galactic economy. It was an interesting idea.
The book was a total turd.
Stross is probably very bitter that thousands of bitcoiners didn't create a buzz for his book and make it a bestseller.
... talking through his pocket, interesting theory. |
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I like this guys drive and it was only a matter of time before the sovereign nations recognised the opportunities here. They have a huge advantage over Wall St. at this stage if they can capitalise on it. He wants to use this independence to sidestep the restrictions on the exchange and transfer of Bitcoin which are currently clogging up the US crypto-economy. This quote is fundamentally incorrect. The "restrictions on exchange and transfer" is on US dollars side of the transactions NOT the bitcoin side. Most people do not realised how oppressive the capital controls around digital dollars have become with the rush by the State and Banks to make all financial transactions observable and traceable. Not to mention they have destroyed digital dollar fungibility in the process. |
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The first sign of a tsunami is all the water pulling away.
A most excellent observation. The recoil in horror, en masse, by the minority 'social leaders' of statist persuasion is a sure sign that the masses themselves are swelling and preparing for a massive tidal movement ... the very concept of money has broken the 100yo ice free from it's frozen skids and the sleigh is now definitely on the move again ... |
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The FUD versus the Force.
I love these pieces for the seething rage that boils through it, the rage of the defeated and ignorant. They don't even know what hit them, they reel, they rant, yet notice they do not engage in meaningful logic or god forbid provide alternate coding and/or complete systems.
Implicitly they know that they have lost on the merits of the technology itself and there is not one thing they can do about it, the rage comes from the hopelessness, they now find that their world view has been completely and utterly undermined and trashed.
In the war for ideas, Bitcoin, and the brilliant illumination it provides to the philosophy of monetary freedom has just nuked statist 'progressive liberalism' back the to dark ages, from whence it came.
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Only leave deposited in a bank what you can afford to lose.  |
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How will this affect me in the UK?If it even happens in the UK?As I'm rather concerned about losing all my money in the bank now.If it's going to happen which countries are safe from this scheme where you lose some money to pay off the national debts?I just want to find a safe place to put my money in (paid all dues so no issue of tax avoidance/evasion in my case)
Basically most of the Western banking laws have just been recently changed to accommodate "bail-in" solutions instead of govt. rescues. Read your banking fine print and you may have to go to govt. legal scholars to get the exact state of play such is the thicket that has been created. There are all kinds of considerations like secured note debt holders, unsecured notes, convertible notes, preferential debt obligations, etc, etc ... what it means is that bank depositors have now been placed at the end of a very long queue of people with their hand out when a banking collapse comes along. Rule of thumb, as a depositor you should now view any money deposited in the bank as belonging to the bank, you do NOT have ownership, or possession, of that money any longer. As I understand it, the first £85000 deposit per person per bank regulated in the UK are protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. This is government backed and is like an insurance in case banks collapse. I guess if the worst case do come, the UK will be able to print enough to pay everyone back their deposit. In which case you have to examine the solvency of your govt., and the state of it's fiat paper, to make good on the deposit 'insurance'. And being repaid in a highly devaluing currency (because millions of people have just had their 85,000 deposit 'insurance' freshly printed) may not be much of a settlement at all. |
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How will this affect me in the UK?If it even happens in the UK?As I'm rather concerned about losing all my money in the bank now.If it's going to happen which countries are safe from this scheme where you lose some money to pay off the national debts?I just want to find a safe place to put my money in (paid all dues so no issue of tax avoidance/evasion in my case)
Basically most of the Western banking laws have just been recently changed to accommodate "bail-in" solutions instead of govt. rescues. Read your banking fine print and you may have to go to govt. legal scholars to get the exact state of play such is the thicket that has been created. There are all kinds of considerations like secured note debt holders, unsecured notes, convertible notes, preferential debt obligations, etc, etc ... what it means is that bank depositors have now been placed at the end of a very long queue of people with their hand out when a banking collapse comes along. Rule of thumb, as a depositor you should now view any money deposited in the bank as belonging to the bank, you do NOT have ownership, or possession, of that money any longer. |
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Here's a wild conspiracy theory , if true it could be first instance of bitcoin being used in geopolitical diplomacy:
Joe Biden was recently on a 'trip' to China, soon after arriving back two major things took place
1) the chinese bluster and rhetoric over the Senkaku Islands no-fly zone stopped and the situation defused quite a bit
2) china announced official crackdown on bitcoin trading and shutting off fiat flows into BTC exchanges
Could it be that the Chinese got their way in claiming territorial rights over the Islands and in exchange gave the US paper cartel a bitcoin crackdown?
Maybe even the whole chinese ramp job on bitcoin since May, baidu, etc was designed to extract concessions from the US in the same way the Senkaku bluster was ... ? Just some wild musings. There is no surer way of getting US geopolitical attention that proposing alternate currency systems ... witness Iranian non-USD oil exchange, Gadhaffi's pan-African gold currency plan, Saddam Iraq oil-gold, the list is long and bloody
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Alot of people were asking me about btc when it was over 1000 if now was a good time to buy. I said if you hold for the ling term you will do fine but hope it corrects to $500 or so then buy.
A lot if people are now trying to buy however i wonder if we are back to 800 before their money hits.
I agree ... it seemed to me there was a quite a bit of smart money lining up along the sidelines waiting for this dip. The volume on bitstamp right at the low bears that out somewhat. Still think we are on target for >~1000 circa march-april 2014 |
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Here is a much more detailed suggested architecture, not dependent on oracles and not dependent on buyer/seller reputation or identity persistence (intra-transaction) (formats pdf and libre office): https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-fjs8k25mNAemdxWkpmRFJmNm8&usp=sharingThe trust is in a pool of escrows, which must have some recognizable identity. The slightly complicated set up of a transaction, and escrow choice is all designed to make it both costly and infeasible to achieve collusion between escrow and one party, to cheat the other. Criticisms more than welcome! Escrow pool .... interesting. |
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Why would they want out ... they already have hundreds of millions in other assets, this is a relatively small play, however it could become huge for them. If they were to leave it now then do they have something better lined up? What would you suggest that is US T-bonds? Shares? Hampton housing?
Your wild accusations make zero sense from the ground up. Their best course of action right now is stay put, ride the bull, maybe diversify some into bitcoin ancillary services, imho.
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I neither said nor implied that you were a liar.
I said that if you favor the display of drama and butthurt over logic then this conversation is over.
Go to your room, come back when you've calmed down.
Ok, you've just confirmed for me that you are indeed a total shithead who intends to obfuscate and weasel word around the issue instead of engaging in an honest customer dialogue, with no intention of resolving anything except coins remaining in your possession, (basically though you are still just a petty scammer but the method is slightly more opaque).... based on numerous examples now, this is just the final straw. I've opened up a Scammer accusation for all those who had small Instawallet balances but cannot be bothered wading through the offensive thicket of davout's claim process and semantic argumentation (this is designed to discourage people from claiming so that he ends up with the coins.) All small Instawallet claimants who feel they've been treated unfairly or outright ripped off should register their disfavour here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=372784.0 and we can get this thief put in his place. |
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 ... and yet another "bitcoin is finished article", maybe we are getting close to a bottom for this phase ...
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