Silkroad: good/bad/indifferent

[BCEmporium]

resources of the State to eliminate this software are quickly and thoroughly as possible

Love the tunnel view and prepotency! What "State"? US? They rather let it fall quietly or if they go on open war on Bitcoin and make it State business tomorrow Bitcoin will be the currency of Venezuela and Russia, China and other US-less-friendly States will back it up.
There's NOTHING "the States" can do about Bitcoin, if I wasn't to believe those senators to be technologically handicapped, I would say they were consuming too much at Silk Road.
Gosh! Americans are often so self-centered that forget the World isn't USA and here you find people from all over the globe, nodes are all over the globe. There's nothing US can do about it.

EDIT: If US want to challenge Bitcoin they can create e-Dollars, signed cryptocurrency backed by USD that is as good as Dollars. Obviously such currency would never be actually need to be exchanged to fiat as it would be fiat itself, but by being Dollars they would put btc out of commission in no time... except that Silk Road users would find it even better to use, so to that end it would make things worse.
As always, technology is changing the World.

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[rebuilder]

Consider two scenarios:

A politician becomes aware of a new technology that is capable of enabling instant, anonymous transfers of bribes and kickbacks. Upon considering the implications of this development he -

a) immediately marshals the resources of the State to eliminate this software are quickly and thoroughly as possible.
b) is overcome with a sudden surge of appreciation for the free market and proposes only token, ineffective regulation, if any.

Which scenario requires less suspension of disbelief?

That cat was out of the bag the moment Bitcoin was created. People use it to buy all kinds of things, some legal, some not. You can do nothing about it.

[justusranvier]

I'm not sure you guys are getting my point - politicians are largely on the take. The degree to which Bitcoin enables criminal activity is the degree to which the criminals in Washington DC (and other places around the world) will find it useful to keep around.

It's very similar to the situation with Tor.

[BCEmporium]

@AbelsFire

I've no reasons to believe all politicians are either corrupt or criminals.

But the economic and legal trend is by far more complex than "what DC wants".
Bitcoin is now immortal as long as there're computers, internet and people and there's actually nothing US or any other political party or state can do about it - unless if that State is up to return to caveman ages by switching off internet in it or not allowing people to hold computers. Any "call for close Bitcoins" from anybody will sound pretty much prepotent, ignorant and ridiculous.
Just like to close any open source p2p technology.