Will bitcoins become illegal?

[Vexual]

What response? lol
Those think tanks are probably working on a time machine to go back and take out Clinton
Freeze the bank accounts of exchanges?
This only serves to move exchanges out of government reach, while at the same time proving that dollars in banks aren't really yours.

[cheesylard]

Yay or Nay?

I hope it will become illegal. That would only verify its legitimacy.

[Chaoskampf]

... As far as I can tell, we're quickly spiraling towards a full-on, internationally organized, government assault on the network itself. I think this will take the form of Internet regulation.

I'm afraid I have to concur.  I sense that 'the powers that be' are holding back and getting their ducks in a row at this point, but that all large countries, at least, have more to fear from their own populations than they do from one another.  I imagine that what happened to Mubarak did not go past most of the world's leaders and they have no plans to allow such a thing to happen to themselves.

The media corporations are the main ones chomping at the bit and have jumped the gun slightly to give us a taste of what's in store.  It's not pretty, and I'll bet that 'we ain't seen nothin yet.'

Just as developers are hard at work designing p2p exchange protocols, they should also be working on truly p2p internets. I know of a few projects that are already in the works (Meshnet, among others). I haven't researched the nitty gritty of these Internet protocols, but knowing that there are skilled developers at work on this issue gives me hope. Maybe we can avoid Orwell's foreboding boot from crushing humanity's face for the rest of history...or maybe not

I'm afraid that I don't have as much hope for Meshnet and the like as I wish I did.  It's a huge technical challenge in the best of circumstances, and to get it to work with anything resembling reliability and performance in the face of almost any resistance (like hunting down nodes (which are, after all, beacons)) will be a monumental challenge.

I think it likely that in order to enjoy free communications we'll have to go through a period of slipping through various narrow cracks, but eventually we'll win and things will open back up again.  It well could be the case that Meshnet and such things will be exceedingly valuable in that phase.

That's quite a dystopian future you envision!

Ya.  I've always been prone to try to anticipate the worst and try to figure out a strategy for it.  Most of the time the worst never materializes, and that's fantastic!  Sometimes my choices to prepare for the worst end up costing me, but on balance they have not.

In this case, my fears for the future are in some sense a memory/study/observation of the past.  I remember back to the struggles around availability of 'military grade' cryptography from back when the Internet fist became available to me in the mid 90's.  It was not at all clear that 'we' were going to win and there was much talk around escrowed backdoors and such.  I think the main reason we won is that there was a recognition that seeing who communicated with who was actually more critical than knowing what they said.  And we also won because of people like Hal Finney...and possibly because of Hal Finney.

I also think that fucking with anyone's monetary system is on par with an act of war (whether the transgressors fully recognize their transgressions or not...)  If distributed crypto-currencies end up having a noticeable impact on mainstream monetary systems, and if they cannot be brought under control, I do expect a pretty significant response.

Unfortunately, history has more depressing information to convey than encouraging. I really hope this can be a divergence from this trend, but I don't want to be unrealistic about the state of affairs. This is not a trivial matter we're talking about.

[bitwhizz]

true

[Micky25]

Will it be become illegal? Maybe.
Will they be able to enforce? No.

Will it have any use or value then? Probably not.

[MysteryMiner]

Will it be become illegal? Maybe.
Will they be able to enforce? No.

Will it have any use or value then? Probably not.

Cocaine is illegal. It costs over 100$ per gram.

[vitalemontea]

A girl knowing Tor? That's too much for me, you're definitely a guy a his basement

Girls do drugs too you know

[UniversalTrek]

Nay, there are always ways around it anyway

[jackjack]

A girl knowing Tor? That's too much for me, you're definitely a guy a his basement

Girls do drugs too you know

Nope
They don't poop either

[MysteryMiner]

A girl knowing Tor? That's too much for me, you're definitely a guy a his basement

Girls do drugs too you know

Nope
They don't poop either

No, they poop when they do drugs. I can post a picture of proof here but it will get deleted in no time.

[QuestionAuthority]

Everyone likes to talk about what Bitcoin is and are always trying to describe it. It seems to me that Bitcoin has become a concept more than anything else. It has become a platform for many people worldwide to vent their frustration over the status quo. It represents change and to most people, if your life is ok now, change is bad. If they don't feel the effects of the problem they don't care. Unfortunately for all the people burying their head in the sand, the world is going to change anyway. The last recession created homeless families that never before experienced suffering because of massive numbers of forclosures. Entire classes of people were shifted down in relative worth around the world because of the greedy system.

In all the forums discussing cryptocurrency that I've read there seems to be a common theme. On one side is a group of people angry with their government that want Bitcoin to change the things they hate about the system that controls them. On the other side are those that like the system so they bash Bitcoin and anything that might help change the system. The people who want change are now many (thanks to world wide financial mismanagement) and can't be stopped simply because one government or another decides to make some aspect of Bitcoin illegal. Even if Bitcoin ceases to exist these people will still hate their situation and spend their lives trying to change it. No, concepts can't become illegal so Bitcoin the concept will live until the struggle is over.

[jackjack]

A girl knowing Tor? That's too much for me, you're definitely a guy a his basement

Girls do drugs too you know

Nope
They don't poop either

No, they poop when they do drugs. I can post a picture of proof here but it will get deleted in no time.

Is it a picture with two girls and one cup?
Anyway I'm sure such a pic would fit in off-topic sub-forum

[areebmajeed]

They are already! #NEW WORLD ORDER!

[RodeoX]

Who's law? Bitcoin dwarfs the scale of mere countries. If say Botswana makes it illegal it will only hurt their economy in the future.   

[tvbcof]

Everyone likes to talk about what Bitcoin is and are always trying to describe it. It seems to me that Bitcoin has become a concept more than anything else. It has become a platform for many people worldwide to vent their frustration over the status quo. It represents change and to most people, if your life is ok now, change is bad. If they don't feel the effects of the problem they don't care. Unfortunately for all the people burying their head in the sand, the world is going to change anyway. The last recession created homeless families that never before experienced suffering because of massive numbers of forclosures. Entire classes of people were shifted down in relative worth around the world because of the greedy system.

In all the forums discussing cryptocurrency that I've read there seems to be a common theme. On one side is a group of people angry with their government that want Bitcoin to change the things they hate about the system that controls them. On the other side are those that like the system so they bash Bitcoin and anything that might help change the system. The people who want change are now many (thanks to world wide financial mismanagement) and can't be stopped simply because one government or another decides to make some aspect of Bitcoin illegal. Even if Bitcoin ceases to exist these people will still hate their situation and spend their lives trying to change it. No, concepts can't become illegal so Bitcoin the concept will live until the struggle is over.

I'm a bit unusual in that I am kind of in awe of the current system.  Though remarkably opaque and is increasingly abused, it is really something that a system so complex it works so amazingly well even for society as a whole (even while it works much better for the highest tier of course.)   So, although I consider the current monetary systems 'a scam' to a large degree, it is a scam that has wide ranging benefits to many.  In my humble opinion or course.

My interest in Bitcoin are several, but very high among these are my concerns about what lies around the corner.  Our Western monetary systems, and most of the rest of the world's systems which are influenced by them are, I feel, stretched like a huge spring in order to keep the music playing.  When the dam breaks it's going to be a awesome sight.  Distributed crypto-currencies are a very interesting study in alternative systems.  Probably the most important role they are playing (and by 'they' I mean 99% Bitcoin) is that they are proving that viable alternatives have some track record of function.  It will not be possible to claim that SDR's or whatever are the only way forward if/when currency crisis fires are popping up everywhere.

It still may be possible to attempt to damage the function that distributed crypto-currencies posses, and I'll be very surprised if we do not see this attempted with a vengeance, and on a lot of fronts, if/when crises of various types pop up.  Right now attacking Bitcoin would mostly give it an excuse to fail and produce a reasonable argument that absent attack, it could work OK.

[QuestionAuthority]

The complexity that you see and admire I see as a web of deceit spun to lull the population into a position of complacency. I am fairly well off and really want for nothing. I could drive down the street stopping at traffic lights and roll up my window when a homeless person walks by with a sign but instead I give him a few bucks. I wonder how many homeless we could feed with just one less aircraft carrier. I drive from Oakland to San Leandro and see the horrible poverty and wonder why we can't change it. Then I turn on the TV and see reports of the masses of money that my government wastes. I watched WAMU, Wachovia, Merill Lynch, IndyMac and many more go bankrupt from greed and mismanagement. The government makes sweetheart deals with company's like Chase to take over the failed branches, wipes out the mortgage debt, bails out the auto makers all using my wallet. I read about organizations like the CIA that have secret budgets and new agencies like DHS that are set on controlling the masses. All these things add up to a far less than magical system that desperately needs to change. The Occupy Movement is made up of people that see the inequity and mismanagement but they are too few in number to really make a difference. These problems are happening worldwide too.

Bitcoin might not be the solution but it's a place to start. Bitcoin can't feed the homeless but it might be able to take funding away from greedy banks and corrupt governments. I'm sick of my government telling me what to do when they clearly don't know what they're doing. I intend to support Bitcoin as long as it remains a system powered by individuals free from government abuse and control. They're going to attack Bitcoin. What lies around the corner is a very rough road but a survivable one.

[RavinTavin]

Bitcoins become nonexistent when everyone unplugs all the computers

True

[cbeast]

Bitcoins become nonexistent when everyone unplugs all the computers

Please lead by example.

[StarfishPrime]

Bitcoins become nonexistent when everyone unplugs all the computers

Actually, they only become nonexistent when the very last copy of the blockchain is non-recoverably erased from the very last hard drive of the very last bitcoin node. As long as a single copy exists somewhere in the world, the bitcoin network will reconfigure itself automatically as nodes are reconnected. It is as resilient as the internet itself.

Making bitcoins illegal in any given jurisdiction would be about as pointless as making TCP/IP or electrons illegal. Bitcoin just don't care.  

[flavius]

in essence they already are