It's 2014. People should get this by now.

School and teachers are paid for by local property taxes. Ditto for police.

Medical care is a life expense. You pay it like any other bill. If it's too expensive, cut regulation and get the government out. Catastrophic insurance is a great concept to address this too.

Roads and such are paid for by gas taxes.

Practically every service a citizen expects from government is paid for via other means. Income tax goes to pay the interest on the national debt, meaning the private banks that own the Federal Reserve get your sweat and blood.

Of course, this primarily applies to the USA, but also to some degree to some other countries.

I'll say it again: income tax is unnecessary. Even if you thought everything a government wastes money on is actually necessary, it can be paid for by far less intrusive, less destructive means than taking a super-tithe of people's personal incomes.

Disagree.

How the funds are used isn't the issue. The fact remains that an income tax is immoral, destructive, and unnecessary, and should be abolished.

Indeed it is not.

Someone thought it best to salvage the guy's reputation.

Yeah, that guy comes off as just an ignorant tool.

He called it a fad, and a fraud, and a ponzi scheme, and said it won't have a place in history. He wasn't even wanting to address the idea of whether the concept of cryptocurrencies might be viable, and might survive Bitcoin. He just wanted to dog on Bitcoin and disparage it as much as possible. In his mind, it's less than used toilet paper.

I'm betting not only did the guy make it to where he is through social connections rather than real skill or talent, but that he's incapable of programming a VCR without assistance.

So, who's up for some sort of organized, distributed bitcoin-oriented campaign/activism to unseat this guy?

In Kentucky, no less. Not at all surprised.

Wow. I've still got a half-hour to go on this video, but I'm really impressed. This is a great talk between these two. Informative and inspiring!

And to anyone wanting more detail about the Mt. Gox debacle... the first half-hour should fill in all the holes for you.

The key word there being cooperate, which is the opposite of forcing those who disagree through threats and coercion.

Somehow Western society seems to have gotten it into their heads that "cooperate" really just means "obey every dictate of public servants."

It's not "with dollars," it's "with cash."

You can't put paper bills (or a quarter) into your USB port and have it pop out at someone else's. Electronic forms of money are superior to cash in that regard.

Not bad, definitely will repost elsewhere. However...


ftfy

You completely missed the point of the article.

It inverts the situation between bitcoin and "normal" money. It posits a world where electronic currency exchange is how transactions are done (note that Bitcoin is nowhere mentioned, so yes, bank cards can be presumed if you like.)

In that world, where people already have Bitcoin/bank cards/whatever, and that's all that exists... you don't see how the idea of fixed denominations might come across as odd?

Frankly, I found the article incredibly accurate in portraying how people react to new, somewhat-threatening ideas.

I'd argue that the people who advocate pointing guns at adults in order to force them to wear seatbelts (among other petty tyrannies) are the ones who need to grow up and join civilized society.

That these people can't see how wrong such things are also speaks volumes about how thoroughly modern society has indoctrinated this last generation of youth, to the point where things that would have been seen as unconscionable just when I was a child (hint: not the 18th century) are now defended like it's the Perfect Will of God (tm).

+1

For now. Let's see how long that remains a viable option.



Yup, probably beyond what we can imagine.

No, it's not. The scenario you describe is irrelevant to this issue. Chase is blocking cash deposits to accounts that don't have your name on them.

There is simply no benign reason for a bank to do this, or for a government to request/demand it. It points to a crackdown on using cash in general and/or using banks as a facilitator of cash transfers (like plenty of parents do for children, spouses do for each other, friends for one another, etc.)

And to think, there are folks who want to dilute the privacy of bitcoin because they're so eager to be in compliance with governmental wishes. Some people just can't see the writing on the wall.

It doesn't seem so. Many have received them at cold-storage wallets--addresses that were only used to receive funds (even if only once.) And at least one person seems to have received the satoshis at a *change* address!

This is someone searching through the blockchain for addresses, and possibly only targeting those addresses that have not yet spent funds (I've yet to hear of a report to the contrary.)

I use Bitcoin-Qt as my "home wallet," but I also have a few Mycelium wallets (as in, different phones, some bought dirt cheap for the sole purpose of using with the app.)

I primarily use Mycelium for my spends, and Bitcoin-Qt for handling the bulk of my lukewarm-storage funds.

As advertising, this is pretty annoying and quite intrusive.

As an address-linking scheme, it's almost hilariously incompetent. It appears that primarily cold wallets have been targeted. Which suggests that most people who get these satoshis won't even notice they were sent before the transactions get dropped. Even if any of the transactions confirm, going after wallets (and change addresses) which might not be accessed for months or years, if ever, doesn't exactly seem like an ideal way to go about this.

As an attack, spreading FUD and jamming some wallets... well, seems like it's actually had some effectiveness in that regard. Temporarily, at least.

Indeed.

I love this wallet.

Shouldn't that say, "79% of U.S. Consumers..." ?