Wikileak's Survival now Depends on Bitcoin

[doobadoo]

It would be like saying:
why have bitcoin.  People can just write what they owe each other in emails and email it back and forth.  Much easier. Much cheaper.

Fundamentally thats what bitcoin is.  Only the emails are public, and use a form of PGP.  maybe people *should* stop calling it a currency.  its really a distributed accounting ledger/system. no?

[Steve]

It would be like saying:
why have bitcoin.  People can just write what they owe each other in emails and email it back and forth.  Much easier. Much cheaper.

Fundamentally thats what bitcoin is.

Bitcoin is not about people owing each other anything.  Having a bitcoin does not entitle you to the fruits of anyone else's labor.

[tvbcof]

good old julian assange, well...............i'll give him only one credit, he knows how to protect himself.

I find it inspirational that a severe underdog can come up on top against the might of the corpgov system by employing some cleverness.  So it seems at this point.

I'm sitting on some BTC with Wikileaks name on it in hopes that the price spikes a bit from the current levels, but I'll send it as soon as I feel that the noose is tightening around conversion systems so much that people as cagey as those at Wikileaks will have troubles.

[P4man]

maybe people *should* stop calling it a currency.  its really a distributed accounting ledger/system. no?

So is (at least 90% of) our fiat currency. Its less distributed, but good enough to fit your definition

cur·ren·cy  (kûrn-s, kr-)
n. pl. cur·ren·cies
1. Money in any form when in actual use as a medium of exchange, especially circulating paper money.
2. Transmission from person to person as a medium of exchange; circulation:

Sounds like bitcoin to me. Perhaps more so than fiat currency since most of those transaction dont happen from person to person, but through what you call a "distributed accounting ledger" at the bank.

[netrin]

Goat, as a purely hypothetical situation (with parallels in reality elsewhere in the world), suppose you witnessed the Thai military rounding up Burmese refugees and exchanging them for cash on the Myanmar border. Suppose you then report the information to the press. Then suppose the reporter after exposing greater atrocities is imprisoned on Lese Majeste charges and refuses to name his sources. Now suppose WikiLeaks gets hold of many previously hidden documents. Under what principal and for what purpose should WikiLeaks dump your name to the public?


Of course this would never happen in Thailand. Long live the King!

[Crypt_Current]

Goat - your avatar photo is wrong fyi

[tvbcof]

BTW, The Young Turks just uploaded a segment about Wikileaks, but did not mention Bitcoin.

I went ahead and made the donation I was planning on, and stated so on the comments.  Several other people have also mentioned Bitcoin in the comments and thumb'd up one another enough to get these comments on the top.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5KkmcMonY4&noredirect=1

[relmeas]

i think this is great news, this is basically the very reason bitcoins still do have any kind of chance to survival. because this is the only thing bitcoins are really useful for - the anonymous payments that would otherwise be impossible due to gov't interference.

if uses such as thie would become widespread due to bitcoins utility, the usage value would grow and so would hash rate which would reinforce the bitcoins.

however with great usage may come great danger as well. when gov't realizes they can no longer shutdown wikileaks contributions, they may as well spend a relatively little money to shut down bitcoin itself. but this would happen sooner or later anyway if bitcoin would gain any real impact so it's all the same.

i wonder how will they react though - by technical means (using some supercomp cluster plus simultaneous DDOS on several largest pools to pollute blockchain with mundane blocks) or just shutting down the exchanges since that's essentially where will people like JA collect all the donations they received.