Not all virtual encrypted currency is decentralised. Some are programmed to self destruct if they leave the video game or casino that paid for their creation. Like I said up ^^^ there somewhere, Bitcoin is functional as internet currency because it is decentralised. All cryptographically protected virtual currencies can be dubbed 'cryptocurrency' but Bitcoin, while not the first version of virtual money, is the first to have cracked it so people rightly set it apart from altcoins (or shitcoins). The media likes to try & rubbish BTC by associating it with the less successful wider crypto market, so counter culture be all casual about like 'fuck crypto this is Bitcoin' to emphasise its standout importance. Technical definitions & different voices with their agendas & subtexts can be confusing sometimes but we can get our heads round it with a little discipline

I appreciate that you are perceptive enough to pick up on this yourself. For me, there is some strange timeless synergy going on between hemp cannabis and Bitcoin right now that is a generational thing. It is a millennial & post-millennial kind of digital enlightenment, & the old-timers who have had their revolution & rebelled against their predecessors don't seem to like it. It smacks of simple jealousy, unfortunately. I understand that none of us are getting any younger & that it may be hard not to let ageing & the onset of death make you bitter but we have to try to live & let live, move over & let the heirs apparent come into their own.

I would like to see the vets & cronies have a bit more faith in currency & life & a legacy of greater health & wealth all round.

Like you say, both cannabis & Bitcoin are profoundly misunderstood & demonized by fools & deceivers alike, & it all seems some sort of existential crisis about the human condition, where the oldest & most socially entrenched are influencing what would otherwise be a joyful & liberated new kind of global society with a kind of saturnine misery-guts sort of response to things that are associated with pace & spontaneity, healing & empowerment. Anti-committalists I call them, usually disguising themselves with critique of either communism or capitalism.

Simply put, if two traders anywhere on earth decide to buy/sell a car in Bitcoin, then they cannot be taxed. The caveat I am trying to add is that once people establish a business based in one or another national jurisdiction doing this then they can be taxed. Also, once people trade their Bitcoin in for any national currency the state agency responsible may impose income or capital gains tax on that. But as long as Bitcoin remains Bitcoin & in the hands of private individuals it cannot & should not be taxed. From my understanding the logic of taxation is that in partaking of a national economy & its exchange medium or currency you are using a service & there is an implied cost. The amount & kind of taxation that is acceptable will probably be the stuff of intense debate for all posterity. But to tax Bitcoin as is you would have to be the centrist state agency ruling over its jurisdiction which is the internet hence it is able to be 'decentralised'. I am not saying that state agencies would never be able to extort or steal Bitcoin & call it taxation because unfortunately anything is possible, but that it will never transparently become standard practice overall because it is contrary to legitimate authority & unethical. This is why the established 'international order' & crony capitalists & their state media have been sidestepping BTC until lately when they have started throwing all manner of kind of childish FUD its way. They don't understand it. It scares them. The opportunity for universal profiteering is unprecedented & the sleepers & party poopers are being forced to reveal themselves 

For those of us actually stranded on the physical state of 'blighty', we may be aware of some higher portion of misery. Be it the weather or the food or the queuing up & waiting forever to be told to come back next week, the national culture seems self aware as being melancholic shall we say.

I think 'globalisation' & 'decolonisation' are real processes while mostly poorly explained. I think they have something to do with the unusual levels of despair we can associate with specifically 'UK inflation' as opposed to the general fan-splattering going on everywhere but the oligarch's retreat 

Sure they can tax associated income as you say in the form of capital gains or whatever, but my broad point still stands. Bitcoin itself as a standalone thing, unlike any other currency, cannot be claimed & thus taxed by a state agency. It relies on the internet & belongs to the users. Think about a state agency claiming jurisdiction over the internet & trying to tax Bitcoin like they do national currencies, I think that is unrealistic.

For an asset to drop like it has after rising like it did is quite predictable, especially when you consider the lack of general understanding about what Bitcoin is & the innovative, experimental, even revolutionary nature of the technology.

One cannot pull up the drawbridge & breed with cousins indefinitely. That sort of thing is what got us into this mess

Never trust anyone called an 'economic expert' =)

Governments get together to decide the price of things based on supply, which as everyone knows for years in the case of gas & oil has been running out. The same governments are impeding the transition to renewables & the reason is worse than you think. They are ruling families & dynasties only maintaining their position by putting the majority of us at a relative disadvantage, so they can't be overthrown by revolution, or 'democracy'. The Russia/Ukraine war is a smokescreen for these power-mad prehistoric autocrats & theocrats who will continue to disperse & distract us as long as they are permitted.

This is the most interesting thing about Bitcoin. It is beyond the current system of 'international law' to control. All it is is a currency, & this is a system that declares the world as capitalist, themselves as liberal. So, a currency made of open-source technology based on the internet, what nation has a right to tax that? Sure, different nations can try banning it or regulating mining or taxing profits made from Bitcoin via exchanges or transactions under their jurisdiction, but what other than cronyism & pessimism & greed could be their motive? What ethical basis can there possibly be for criminalizing or legislating BTC? You can see how desperate & unscrupulous they are when they start blaming it for global warming =/

Fact is, nobody has a right to police the internet. It is in international waters, so to speak. And internet currency has made everyone take this more seriously than ever, so that workable international law & the international constitution necessary to base it on are appearing on the horizon like never before. Some people dream of this signalling a totalitarian new world order, because of their subjective experiences with national governments & regimes of the past. But I have faith in the people. As cannabis returns to the white market for global trade & Bitcoin is increasingly established as a worldwide medium of exchange, poverty everywhere is going to decrease.

And God save Prince Andrew's blessed Y-fronts!

I doubt the Americans are as eager to bring you up as you always are them though

There is a lot in the news today about how Bitcoin has just experienced its worst quarter in 11 years. I think we should remember though: that quarter followed the best performing year in its entire history. This is a natural cooling-off period, finding a new bottom & plateau. Anyone who does a little research & reflection should realise that BTC chronicles the computerization of currency with the fullness of its potential in mind.

Americans don't be havin' that kind of freedom. That is the freedom to not give a shit what powerful government agencies can do to you because your life & everyday environment are pretty rough around the edges anyway, so you getting crazy mad. All the scare stories about the rust belt & the opiate epidemic & rise of hate speech or whatever, which may well have some basis in reality, are only saleable because the American standard of life is one of the highest in the world.

What I'm really looking forward to for America is for them to get legal weed nationwide, which will speed up the decriminalization process globally. The demonization of cannabis & associated 'war on drugs' is one of the biggest crimes against humanity & impediments to happiness of living history. And the difficulties involved from Anslinger to Schumer are surely revealing about the kind of nuances we have in our imperfect 'Christian West'. I like some form of secular humanism & to consider myself an earthling whose capital centre is the sun =D

How do you think it is that as an entity this 'Britain' thing does seem to be always looking backward? Whether it is watching some 'period drama' or listening to some teenage pop star get nostalgic about their misspent youth, it does seem to me to be a regressive or at least retrospective culture. Is it as simple as the fact that we have a lot to go on when it comes to the past and history so it is easier to talk about and is less contentious than the future? Or is there something else going on. Like, does a globally oriented colonial master of this culture deliberately train/programme nationals to always be looking backward so that there is less competition for the future?

I didn't mean to make anyone feel inferior. I just want you to understand that the forces you & the community are experiencing lately have less to do with 'good & evil' & more to do with historical process & the psychological strain of superimposing upon money the value of material necessities as part of a long-term development project. These are historical & political forces roused in the cypher of Bitcoin. There is no metaphysical duality at play. Religion is a ponzi scheme

Well Ucy both of those things seem like that to me. And the topic is not good vs evil, as I said I consider that stupid. I don't care about fairy stories & horror movies, I care about history lessons & relentless false narratives & the dualistic deception of communism vs capitalism as destroying the authentic socio-political tendencies of real human beings. It doesn't have to become an oversimplified theological debate. It is a serious issue.

The belief in evil & the existence of an almighty creator who created everything presumably including evil but who now wants to destroy evil is wrong headed to me. It is the kind of bullshit that kept medieval peasants in the dark & now neoconservative reactionary forces are trying to put the masses on the same footing using another, similar dualism. Breed communists to think of themselves as good and their capitalist enemies as evil & vice versa. It is almost so simple a formula as to be demeaning & commonly overlooked. But it occupies the educational space, it is doctrine, it pervades the daily life of dominant culture through the media & so while I respect your stance in terms of basically staying out of it & sticking to what works for you personally, eventually it will interfere with your life too.

All sounds a wee bit jewish to me Ucy I think it's childish & half baked. You see it states explicitly in the Abrahamic holy books time & again that the supreme deity is 'the truth' & that is about the only statement of fact around it I can identify. The almighty supreme agency is 'the truth' because anything opposed to the truth has to be by definition a falsehood, fabrication, delusion or lie. And however enjoyable that opposition to the truth may be, that lie, it will always get found out & discarded for something more useful, i.e. the truth. Truth is not a judge or a creator, though, these are merely the subjective experiences of those who have entertained lies with an unconscious awareness meanwhile of the overpowering presence of the truth, which is everywhere and cannot be contained or explained.

The difficulty with wanting to serve good & destroy evil is of course that you are probably going to be required to hurt & oppress others that you perceive to act on the behalf of this superstitious force. At which point their innocent loved ones may understandably declare you to be evil, & the vicious cycle continues

For the record I would only ever identify religiously as a Taoist, as to me that is the only form of religion which always bears in mind the ungraspable nature of the infinite.

What so you think that the world goes through stages of being good & evil? Sounds a bit superstitious to me Ucy. What if the idea of evil was only invented to give evil people an excuse for imposing themselves on those they had singled out as evil? What if they are scapegoating, creating fall-guys, abusing & undermining the force of law & order & carrying out unjust persecution against people they secretly hate on a prejudicial partisan basis so seek to stigmatise?

For my part I would argue that the false dichotomy of communism vs capitalism is evil, because (not without irony) of the falsification of the dualism. They are interdependent aspects of one complex whole & to convince the uninitiated that their apparent differences are down to separateness & conflict goes against the constructive scheme of things. I think most people think & act as individuals to transcend the irrational apathetic parts of themselves to try & keep up with the organic world around them. Not the decisions of other people, but the motions of the solar system & phenomena in the universe etc..

America doesn't need Trump or Biden she needs to get back to her original ethic & support an end to the war on weed & promote the non centrist global model with things like Bitcoin. If America would energetically support an inclusive global market in cannabis Bitcoin incorporated then her 21st century legacy could quickly become one of beginning the end of absolute poverty & human slavery in our lifetimes.

 

It's internet money so can be used everywhere there is internet which is pretty much global like sklopan says. And some myopic reactionary elements in the international economy feel threatened by it. They fail to recognise that as a medium of exchange with arguably universal value Bitcoin streamlines all economics & fiat trading. Also as the default global currency the USD relies as we know not on a gold standard but basically on America's 'national security' & 'standing in the world' which boils down to enforcement. War is a racket like Smedley Butler said & the value imposed by the collective consciousness onto dollars is largely as a result of military & structural power. So when something like Bitcoin emerges that can be & as said is perceived as a threat the response can be in some ways violent or reminiscent of violence.

I think that's a little bit pessimistic to say the least. The only context within which life as we know it could have come about is an endless universe of infinite possibilities. So everything has been around forever & will continue that way. Granted some of 'us' will probably kill each other or ourselves or both this very instant, somewhere. But in more mundane terms we will see the historically established order pass away & see Bitcoin change the face of capitalism forever, over coming decades.