It doesn't have to be, but it is inherently disruptive to the status quo, and libertarians and anarchists are going to use it. If you don't want to be affiliated with us, you will have to not use bitcoin. Sorry.

...No wait, I'm actually not sorry. I look forward to more and more people rejecting the political means.

No. Because all governments are based on repression (of individual rights in favor of the interests of the political class) and democratic law can easily and at any time outlaw any peaceful activity if it is practiced by a minority.


Currently, yes. But I'd wear it as a badge of honor if we weren't. Laws against peaceful and mutually beneficial activities deserve to be broken.

Well, you haven't met many of us, then. The libertarians I know are the most generous and compassionate people I know, which is why they reject the political violence that people like you adore so much. I wouldn't hang out with people who had the attitude you suspect us as having.

Funny - you are applying a wildly inaccurate caricatured view of libertarians, but you certainly have the elitist, holier-than-thou snobbery of progressivism down pat. Unlike you, however, I wouldn't suspect all progressives as having the same attitude. In fact, I don't think you actually believe what you're saying either. It's just too absurd. Thus I name you "troll" and end our conversation.

2nd'd

Bitcoin won't be what does the convincing. In my experience the thing that brings liberals around to accepting the free market is when they reject the violence which is the state's only means of accomplishing anything.

And gosh, I sure do hope it tries.

All government has at its disposal is violence. Violence displaces rational thought. It is not mindless, but it is certainly limited in its ability to utilize the minds of its members. And that is even more true when compared to the market, which is the sum of all voluntary human action - all the creative and analytical thought in the word combined in the most productive of ways.

Observe a spontaneous protest or rally some time. Or read some of the stories of civil disobedience being carried out by Free State Project members. Each and every time, the .gov shows up looking for someone "in charge". They simply cannot comprehend something happening without someone running it from the top down. Now that is not quite the same thing as bitcoin, but it is analogous. Government is predicated on authoritarian violence and the threat thereof. It is saturated with it. All of its "problem solving" consists of taking a hammer to what always looks, to it, like a nail.

Any individual can understand bitcoin, but in the role of a government employee or agent, he would be unable to apply that understanding to the problem. All he can do in that role is think of the best least embarrassing way to use violence to "solve" the problem. It's not that the government is completely impotent to act against bitcoin. It's just that the voluntary, creative, and highly mobile environment of the bitcoin community is exactly the sort of "problem" that governments are least suited to "solve".

All they can do is hurt some people enough to make them stop using it, or scare them with threats. That won't kill bitcoin any more than the War on Drugs has killed cannabis sales in the USA.

Not the end of the world, but certainly the end of any currency that operates on that principle. Which is good for bitcoin, in the long run.

According to some, advocating peace and free trade makes a person a "terrorist". Some can go to hell.

Not no mo' it ain't!

Ok, thanks! That's what I needed to know. We really need a "bitcoin for total n00bs" guide for stuff like this.

Semantics can be important, though. Consider the ability of the government to define the murder of noncombatants as "collateral damage", or to call whomever they damn well please a "terrorist". Words have meanings for a reason, and words related to political economy can cause damage when their meanings start to slip.

Not really. Currencies are generally political instruments, historically issued as "warehouse receipts" against specie (precious metal), but recently not connected to specie at all.

But is there a better word for it? As a medium of exchange it is actually a money. But people are scared to death of the word "money", seeing how it is "the root of all evil" (though that saying is a misquotation of a Biblical proverb and has absolutely no logical basis whatsoever).

By electing another member of the War Party, only this one rides a donkey. Precious.

I don't think this guy has the slightest clue what libertarians actually believe. I find that very few critics of libertarians do. Protip: libertarianism is an ethical philosophy in opposition to initiatory force. Start there and do some logic.

The chief advantage of bitcoin is its resistance to inflation and the lack of centralized control. If governments want to compete with bitcoin on those fronts, they will need to stop being governments.

1. Because it is predicated on force.
2. Because charity isn't even really possible when one is forced to give, and I WANT to be charitable.
3. Because it deprives me of the ability to choose who receives my donations, and who handles the distribution.
4. Because it makes people dependent on the state, which is an instrument of violence.
5. Because it aggrandizes and empowers the violent and avaricious political class and the bureaucracies associated with it.
6. Because it creates government-run monopolies and deprives people of choice in who provides their needed services.

I could go on, but hopefully those reasons suffice.

Thanks, but in regards to number 3 - what if it can't find the old one? How would I access the bitcoins stored in the old one after that, unless I keep a separately installed bitcoin program with each wallet.

Damn it, I've refreshed that page like 100 times in the past 5 minutes and it hasn't gone up at all! Guess I have to refresh more often.

None, yet. But that's only because I'm still figuring out wallet security and such. I've been into bitcoin for only about a month now, and it took me half that time just to figure out how to get any of the suckers. Eventually I decided on bitcoin2cash, which worked fine, but took a while. And I was pretty squeamish about sending money through USPS.

I'm not very technically proficient; I am just persistent. But if bitcoin is to obtain mass appeal people really need to figure out a cleaner and easier way of getting and using them.

Anyway, I'm thinking of buying a bitcoin shirt. If anyone thinks they can impress me with their design, show me.

The FAQ seems to assume a bit too much technical knowledge on the part of the reader. I haven't been able to find answers to the following two three questions:

1. When backing up one's wallet, is it enough to copy the DAT file and put it in a different location?

2. How does one make a secure address? I read in the FAQ that I should generate it from a new wallet, but I don't know how to create a new wallet without installing and running an entirely new instance of bitcoin from within my encrypted volume/USB drive/partition/whatever.

EDIT: 3. If bitcoin creates a new wallet every time it is restarted, how does one access old addresses? This seems like it ought to have an obvious answer, but as it's been explained to me so far it seems as if restarting bitcoin sort of "disconnects" any previously used address.