http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-06-11/bitcoin-spikes-above-600-2-year-highs-sudden-massive-chinese-buying
Read this.

Great news for bitcoin community, what would be the feedback of the government with this? 

Wow that thread took a turn.  Legal?  Illegal?  Not even close.

I was trading Bitcoins.  I was operating under the assumption that what I was doing was not a business.  They claimed it was.  The regulations are very "clear" on this point:  if it is not a business I did not need a business license, if it was a business I needed a business license.

Now who decides if it is a business or not?  Regulations clearly state "whether is is a business or not is a matter of fact and circumstance".  OK, fine.  Then who is the decider of "fact and circumstance"?  In the US system the decider of "fact and circumstance" is the jury.

I claimed it was not a business, they claimed it was.  It is not illegal to claim it is not a business and technically they did nothing wrong in claiming it was a business. Both my attorney and the prosecutor stated that "this is a toss up".  They both knew and stated that it could go either way.  My claim might have been declared correct by the jury and I would have been acquitted of all criminal charges against me.  Of course their claim might have been declared correct and then I could have been sentenced to up to 5 years in prison and up to a $250,000 fine.

Now realize that even if my claim is declared correct by the jury this does not settle all the civil suits that have been filed against the property seized.  So even if the jury decided with my side (a 50/50 proposition according to both sides) I would still be facing up to an additional $100,000 in attorny's fees to prove my property was innocent in a totally separate civil court.

Faced with the option of taking this to trail and flipping a coin followed by additional expenses to clear my property on the one hand and just donating $40,000 in cash and $40,000 in Bitcoin to the federal asset forfeiture slush fund what would you do?

This had nothing to do with legal versus illegal.  Only an opinion of whether what I was doing was a business or not.

What should they have and would they have done if they did not think they could just walk away with the loot?

Send me a cease and desist letter explaining that they thought what I was doing might be a business and to get a fucking free license if I wanted to continue doing it.

Adding to the mystery, bitcoins hinge on tongue-twisting technobabble even most Wall Street pundits can't grasp.

Hi,
with bitaddress.org, off line, I can generate a bitcoin address with private key.
where is a offline service, from private key to bitcoin address???
 

But what Burt did was illegal, and yet I find myself sympathising with him, and not with self-proclaimed "legit" users. Why is it that otherwise intelligent people do not understand the difference between "illegal" and "immoral"? How can people who have understood and used Bitcoin for years not recognise that Bitcoin's very existence cuts right to the heart of that issue? I'm sorry unamis, I like your posts, but I have to say this. Where does the assumption come from that all laws are moral?

Agree with the two previous posts.

When I was arrested the prosecution asked that I be incarcerated without a bond hearing for the maximum time allowed under the Patriot act, six days.  One of the reasons for this pre-bond hearing incarceration was to make sure I did not move my funds before they had a chance to find them.  They were very concerned that I might move my Bitcoins out of seized wallets on seized computers before they had a chance to find them all and move the Bitcoins to their own wallet.

ASSIDE:  I found out later that their wallet was a Trezor that they had seized in another case.

The judge initially granted the prosecution's request for a six day hold before the bond hearing.  My attorney, after getting his mandatory $50,000 cash retainer, did successfully argue this and I was given a bond hearing and got out on bond after only four days and three nights in jail.  I assume I would have survived another few days being bored to death in solitary confinement but it would have totally sucked.

By the time I was released on bond they had found and had moved most of my Bitcoins, the Bitcoins I was holding for my non-tech savvy parents, and some other Bitcoins that were not mine (was holding for a friend until he got his own Trezor).

Not only that but they give out awards to their students and LEO will use these awards on their resumes.

https://www.desertsnow.com/pages/view/6

Now most of the stuff they have to do and seize to get the award could be argued as "a good thing" but this requirement:


is a little bit shady.

Yes, they will look at the time of the move relative to the seizure.

They (Homeland Security) are not as bright as they are made out to be on TV but not quite as stupid as you might want them to be.

You are both saying basically the same thing.  Fixed typos there.

However, I actually believe that if you do manage to prove your funds are innocent you will get them all back and the government would take the 7.7 loss or get it back from the vendor.

Once they do finally decide to give you back what they decide to give you back you do get it back.

The real loss to you would be the $50,000 in attorney's fees it will cost you to get it back.

they can take funds from prepaid debit cards because its not a registered account.
remember prepaid card is different compared to bank account debit card

meaning whether innocent or guilty your 7.7% worse off the moment the card is swiped.
and if found guilty later in court. the police get to keep the other 92.3%

yep store bitcoins on your phone with a phone keypad lock.
store your private keys at home in a way that they wont find it if they raided your house.
then when they are trying to bruteforce the phone hopefully you or a relative can move the funds making the old private keys useless

other advice if your using a online wallet app on your phone. set up 2 accounts.. if ever asked to log in to display balance. only log into the account with least funds, should you be in a threatened situation where they wont back off unless they move funds in your presence,making you unable to move funds secretly

Yes, I was charged for simply trading Bitcoins on localbitcoins.com.  It did not matter that it was face-to-face or that it was for cash.  They claimed my trading activity on localbitcoins.com was a business.  I claimed it was not a business.  After about $300,000 and several months of negotiations by my attorney we basically agreed to disagree on whether it was a business or not and they agreed to drop all the criminal charges against me and all the civil charges against all my stuff they had seized for a one time donation to their civil asset forfeiture slush fund.

BTW the cops have always been able to and motivated to ask you if you have any cash in the car when they stop you.  If you say yes and they think it is "too much" cash they can just take if from you without any charges being filed.  It is then up to you to prove that the cash they took from you is totally innocent of any criminal activity.  If you can prove that your cash is innocent then they might give it back to you.

I just saw that they now have a new weapon in their war on the people:  not only can they seize any cash you happen to have on you they can now take all the value off any type of pre-paid card you happen to have on you or in your car:

http://boingboing.net/2016/06/09/oklahoma-cops-can-use-scanners.html

Nice.

Now you have to prove your pre-paid Appplebee's or Amazon card is innocent of criminal activity in order to get your money back!

It won't be long before they can take your phone from you during a traffic stop and see if you have a Bitcoin wallet on your phone.  If you do they will then confiscate your phone and you will have to prove your Bitcoins are innocent (and your phone is innocent) before they will consider giving your phone and Bitcoin wallet back to you.

When they arrested me they took my phone, all of my Bitcoins, all my computers, etc.  It was only after they dropped all the civil charges against my stuff - and I paid them the donation of cash and Bitcoins they squeezed out of me - that I got my phone and wallet back.

Bot Download
Download the bot here then replace the motogame executable with the downloaded one. To start the bot, click the "Play to Mine" button in the "Play" tab of the wallet. The bot was compiled by ElvenArcher and the source code is included in the download.

theres over 2million bitcoiners.. so you are right. we wont see many(compared to entire community) people do it.. but we could easily see a couple thousand people do it. and knowing the average transaction is ~500bytes the block would be full with just a couple thousand transactions,

but what would be a bit of comedy is if a pool SPV mines a block and gets to solve the 420,000 block before the 2 minutes are up where they would usually start adding transactions. meaning its a 'empty block'

alot of people will be upset if the halving block had no transactions in it and all the "messages" ended up in the next block