Bitcoin press hits, notable sources

[grondilu]

I am also trying to be a responsible spokesperson for bitcoin. I will be presenting at a prestigious business school in August and I am very aware of the importance of words. As eluded to above, bitcoin will be delivered to the masses as a story. We can shape that story now, but perhaps not later. Do you want bitcoin known as a convenient, private way to buy and sell on the Internet, or as anonymous drug money for terrorist?

Actually, bitcoin should be known for neither. Bitcoin is a nonpolitical decentralized cryptocurrency with user-determined anonymity and transaction irreversibility. Most people are happy transacting on the Internet with VISA/MC/AMEX when it comes to plane tickets, hotels, etc. Terrorists and drug dealers already use $100 bills but that is not the fault of the innocent $100 bill.

I believe that, in the media, bitcoin needs to be positioned as a way to restore financial privacy to the individual:

1. Secrecy does equal concealment, but rather secrecy equals privacy;
2. Large-scale private value transfer should not be impeded across national boundaries (money laundering is a pejorative term);
3. Freedom from confiscation and tax levies;
4. Freedom from money being used to track identity;
5. Protection from the depreciating nation-State political currencies subject to constant debasement.

+1

I'm pretty sure people do not consider financial privacy as being some kind of a right.

Financial privacy is incompatible with income tax.  And very little people consider income tax as being non acceptable.

[MoonShadow]

I'm pretty sure people do not consider financial privacy as being some kind of a right.

Financial privacy is incompatible with income tax.  And very little people consider income tax as being non acceptable.

They will change their minds.

[grondilu]

I'm pretty sure people do not consider financial privacy as being some kind of a right.

Financial privacy is incompatible with income tax.  And very little people consider income tax as being non acceptable.

They will change their minds.

One funny thing is that we don't actually need bitcoin to have financial privacy.

Financial privacy was possible as soon as assymetric cryptography was invented.  Strangely enough, nobody asks why one should give his name and address when opening a bank account.  A public key should be enough.

[speeder]

Here you have to give all government issued ID numbers as possible to open a bank account, no matter how much you want to put in it.

And it has already been proven that the government can access it at will (once a minister got fired after somehow getting his hands on the financial data of a farm maintenance worker that worked for a political adversary... btw: that minister got hired back :/)

[MoonShadow]

I'm pretty sure people do not consider financial privacy as being some kind of a right.

Financial privacy is incompatible with income tax.  And very little people consider income tax as being non acceptable.

They will change their minds.

One funny thing is that we don't actually need bitcoin to have financial privacy.

Financial privacy was possible as soon as assymetric cryptography was invented.  Strangely enough, nobody asks why one should give his name and address when opening a bank account.  A public key should be enough.

Financial privacy means privacy from the bank.  Anonymous systems were never instituted in the US because it was never in the interests of the bankers to do so.  If one was willing to do it back in the 1980's, we wouldn't have the same issues today.

[Bimmerhead]

The SmartMoney story is currently being linked to from the homepage of Yahoo! Finance:

http://finance.yahoo.com/

[grondilu]

The SmartMoney story is currently being linked to from the homepage of Yahoo! Finance:

http://finance.yahoo.com/

OMG,  if this is not mainstream, then what is???

[Vladimir]

Yep this is as mainstream as it gets, except maybe first page of Forbes or Time or Financial Times.



The currency that's up 200,000 percent
http://finance.yahoo.com/banking-budgeting/article/112854/currency-up-200000-percent-smartmoney;_ylt=AuzqrH9ybd3nM5iP2IQbNya7YWsA;_ylu=X3oDMTE1YzVrbHVjBHBvcwM4BHNlYwN0b3BTdG9yaWVzBHNsawN0aGVjdXJyZW5jeXQ-?mod=bb-budgeting&sec=topStories&pos=5&asset=&ccode=

[mewantsbitcoins]

strap your bicycle helmets on people

[Terpie]

We can't be far from national evening cable news. I think the Al-Jazeera English story will be the catalyst for that. From there, I would expect we get some interesting stress tests on the BTC economy.

[jerfelix]

Yep this is as mainstream as it gets, except maybe first page of Forbes or Time or Financial Times.

Naaah.  When grandparents read about it in AARP magazine or Reader's Digest, then it's mainstream.
When you can walk down the street and ask ten people if they've heard of Bitcoin, nine people have.  Then it's mainstream.

This is a huge milestone, but there's room to grow until Bitcoin is as much a recognized word as "Facebook".
Then I'd say it's speculative value has peaked.  Then we move to utility value.

[Vladimir]

We are talking about mainstream press here m8, not about a granny buying milk for nanobitcoins.

Explanation: Yahoo front page as opposed to slashdot or hacker news front page.

[jerfelix]

edit:  Chatter removed.

San Francisco Examiner: http://www.sfexaminer.com/opinion/daily-outrage/2011/06/supermarket-illegal-drugs-pops-internet

[xf2_org]

Gents, please move chatter to another thread.

This thread is for links (or screenshots like vladimir's).

[n0m4d]

http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2011/06/links-june-3-2011.html

[unemployed]

Just a thought, that it would be a good idea to spread the press and blog links that appear here by submitting them to sites like reddit, digg, stumbleupon.

Btw. I have two accounts with nice names bitcoin@reddit and bitcoin@digg, and I am willing to sell them for 2BTC each.

[hazek]

Bad press continues:

"How to Purchase Guns and Drugs Anonymously"

http://blogs.forbes.com/benzingainsights/2011/06/03/how-to-purchase-guns-and-drugs-anonymously/

http://www.benzinga.com/trading-ideas/long-ideas/11/06/1137434/how-to-purchase-guns-and-drugs-anonymously

[edd]

'nother Gawker article: http://gawker.com/5808314/everyone-wants-bitcoins-after-learning-they-can-buy-drugs-with-them

[xf2_org]

Bad press continues:

"How to Purchase Guns and Drugs Anonymously"

http://blogs.forbes.com/benzingainsights/2011/06/03/how-to-purchase-guns-and-drugs-anonymously/

http://www.benzinga.com/trading-ideas/long-ideas/11/06/1137434/how-to-purchase-guns-and-drugs-anonymously

Emailed response:

Forbes Editors,

The article "How to Purchase Guns and Drugs Anonymously" contains two significant errors of fact.

1) Quote: "It allows users to exchange bitcoin files without keeping a record of the transaction."

False; the opposite is true:  to prevent counterfeiting, a record of every bitcoin transaction is stored on every computer running the bitcoin software.

See http://blockexplorer.com/ for a website that shows every bitcoin transaction that has ever existed, from its inception in Jan 2009 through today.

2) Headline "How to Purchase Guns and Drugs Anonymously"

The gun dealer in your story, The Arms Locker, is a fully licensed gun dealer.  Anyone purchasing a gun must get it shipped to their nearest gun dealer, where they must provide ID to pick it up, per federal law.  No one is buying guns anonymously.

[MoonShadow]

Technically speaking, the Forbes article did not make an error of fact by mentioning that one could buy firearms from The Arms Locker with bitcoin, as they never actually claimed that such a transaction was unregistered.  Still, they did commit an error in kind by leaving the question open, which permits the uninformed reader to draw such a conclusion from the preceeding paragraphs.