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April 19, 2013, 11:31:31 AM |
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To everyone who has cheated another person out of BTC, whether by defaulting on a loan, conducting a pyramid scheme, or by issuing equity in securities and then bailing,
Think about what you're doing from an economic perspective. Whenever there's a lack of confidence in the currency, people want to hold it less, switching to other asset options in order to protect the rest of their wealth. Every time Bitcoin is stolen or a BTC contract is broken, aggregate demand for the currency falls, bringing the price down with it. The aggregate monetary supply is fixed in the long run, meaning that "investors" (meaning everyone who holds BTC in this context) are the ones who determine the price.
Whenever you steal BTC from someone else, you are devaluing the very thing which you are stealing. While you may think that individual cases of theft don't matter, remember that scams happen en masse nearly every day. The Enron and WorldCom scandals damaged the US dollar to a huge extent, and those were only a pair of scandals - when we have to have entire forum boards dedicated to weeding out thieves, you can only begin to imagine what the real extent of the problem is.
It might see like an easy (and in many places perfectly legal by the current definition of the law) way to make a quick buck, albeit at the expense of another. Moral qualms aside, such transgressions do not only impact your relationship with a single person or your reputation. They devalue the currency and rob everyone, including yourselves. In the long run, you would literally make more money by participating honestly in the system.
Scams and loan defaults are what is driving the current volatility in the exchange markets. Fraudulent activity is one of the biggest threats to BTC, as these types of actions make the currency ever more vulnerable to speculative attacks.
The currency isn't based in the trust of a central government for a reason; its backed by faith in your fellow man. When you destroy this faith, you're sending us all back to the mercy of the fiat currency, government and banking control of all financial markets, and hindering economic progress throughout the world.
I, along with the members of the BTC community, please ask that everyone consider what happened the last time people began to collectively lose faith in an economy, back in 2007. The collapse of the US housing market and the resulting liquidity crisis are a poignant reminder of how uncouth financial activity affects everyone.
Thank you, and please, have faith in one another and remember to treat others as you wish to be treated.
jjw
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