What would happen to the price with a bitcoin funded terrorist attack?

[BitcoinAshley]

Wow, a lot of people are very uptight about this issue. Elwar was speculating about the effect of a given event on price. It belongs in this section, it should not be locked/deleted, and YES good can come of this discussion. Stop being dipshits, guys. If the discussion scares you and gets your panties all up in a bunch, DON'T PARTICIPATE. Don't come in here and whine about it. "Oh noes Elwar is gonna give the terrorists some ideas..."

BACK ON TOPIC

Bitcoin is a fucking honey badger. Buying bombs with bitcoin and setting it off in public places will plaster it all over the news, sure, but price will certainly go up. Remember, increased scrutiny and increased regulation/intervention RAISES prices, not lowers them.
A lot of people are still convinced that this kind of thing would hurt bitcoin. Meanwhile, bitcoin is being battered left and right by banks, Paypal, regulators, etc and price is over 10 times what it was in December. How long is it going to be before people finally get it through their heads that no matter how many times they say "lol buttcon mass adoption will fail if it gets bad press and super regulated by gov't," the EXACT OPPOSITE is happening and has been happening for years.

I can guarantee there are terrorists and criminals already using guns, RPGs, etc purchased with bitcoin. Ever heard of the darknet? There are weapons sites shipping guns and other illegal weapons all over the world. Get your head out of the sand. It's internet cash, what did you THINK it was going to be used for? Refusing to talk about uncomfortable things doesn't make them just go away.
It hasn't been on the news too much yet because reporting on one specific instance of a "bitcoin funded terrorist attack" is, in TPTB's opinion, the "trump card" that they will only pull as a last resort. Problem is, it will have the opposite intended effect.
"If terrorists can buy bombs with bitcoin and not get caught, I can launder my millions of dollars offshore with bitcoin, and not get taxed!" -A bunch of rich people who have known about bitcoin for a while but keep hearing about it gaining legitimacy on the news - eventually they reach a breaking point and decide maybe it is worth using to get government off their backs or out of their bank accounts. Maybe not the super-rich so much but the wealthy are already interested.

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[ElectricMucus]

Wasn't there a failed Bitcoin ransom demand out our midst a few months ago?

Something about Mitt Romneys tax returns, a USB stick and a Cat?

[Hfleer]

Hypothetically, if there were a boston bombing or 9/11 type of attack on the US or another country and they found out that all of the funding was through Bitcoin, what do you think would happen to the price afterwards?

You know you would have the talking heads on the networks talking about how evil Bitcoin is with the usual "something has to be done" type of message. There would be knee jerk reactions aplenty.

Would this drop the price? Or would the publicity, however bad, raise the price?

More drama and b/s about how BTC is used for crime and such.  Hopefully it doesn't happen.  Think we might see some blackmail and things like that eventually.

[r3wt]

the epitome of greed, this thread.

[Elwar]

the epitome of greed, this thread.

Welcome to Speculation.

[johnyj]

Cash is much easier to fund a terrorist attack, terrorist fund all held up at MTGOX indefinitely

[faiza1990]

The funny thing about the media is that you can make people believe whatever you want them to if you have enough money

[jarhed]

........terrorist fund all held up at MTGOX indefinitely

Lol, That would explain the extended calm we've been experiencing.

[faiza1990]

........terrorist fund all held up at MTGOX indefinitely

Lol, That would explain the extended calm we've been experiencing.

cheers   

[xxjs]

Wow, a lot of people are very uptight about this issue. Elwar was speculating about the effect of a given event on price. It belongs in this section, it should not be locked/deleted, and YES good can come of this discussion. Stop being dipshits, guys. If the discussion scares you and gets your panties all up in a bunch, DON'T PARTICIPATE. Don't come in here and whine about it. "Oh noes Elwar is gonna give the terrorists some ideas..."

BACK ON TOPIC

Bitcoin is a fucking honey badger. Buying bombs with bitcoin and setting it off in public places will plaster it all over the news, sure, but price will certainly go up. Remember, increased scrutiny and increased regulation/intervention RAISES prices, not lowers them.
A lot of people are still convinced that this kind of thing would hurt bitcoin. Meanwhile, bitcoin is being battered left and right by banks, Paypal, regulators, etc and price is over 10 times what it was in December. How long is it going to be before people finally get it through their heads that no matter how many times they say "lol buttcon mass adoption will fail if it gets bad press and super regulated by gov't," the EXACT OPPOSITE is happening and has been happening for years.

I can guarantee there are terrorists and criminals already using guns, RPGs, etc purchased with bitcoin. Ever heard of the darknet? There are weapons sites shipping guns and other illegal weapons all over the world. Get your head out of the sand. It's internet cash, what did you THINK it was going to be used for? Refusing to talk about uncomfortable things doesn't make them just go away.
It hasn't been on the news too much yet because reporting on one specific instance of a "bitcoin funded terrorist attack" is, in TPTB's opinion, the "trump card" that they will only pull as a last resort. Problem is, it will have the opposite intended effect.
"If terrorists can buy bombs with bitcoin and not get caught, I can launder my millions of dollars offshore with bitcoin, and not get taxed!" -A bunch of rich people who have known about bitcoin for a while but keep hearing about it gaining legitimacy on the news - eventually they reach a breaking point and decide maybe it is worth using to get government off their backs or out of their bank accounts. Maybe not the super-rich so much but the wealthy are already interested.

Very well written. I just want to point out that there must not in fact exist a bitcoin funded attack, for this the trump card to be played.

[Luckybit]

I was only speculating on price. That is why I posted in the speculation forum. There have been several other threads about this topic in other subforums so it is not like I am giving any clue to terrorists. The media itself says Bitcoin is used to fund drugs and terrorists (however untrue that may be).

It is not a question of whether or not the USD has funded past attacks, they would point out that it is the anonymity of Bitcoin that allowed them to pull it off.

I agree that it is likely that the terrorists are not using Bitcoin as it still is mainly a computer geek currency, but our whole effort is to make it mainstream so that anyone can use it.

I think my personal opinion is that if the attack was 9/11 huge then I would trade my BTC for gold. If it was a Boston bombing type of size I would hold, maybe even buy into the short term panic.

I think something like Bitcoin would be fine because it's somewhat transparent and could be traced. I think Zerocoin and the push for anonymity would be forever linked with support of terrorism. I think Bitcoin would become less popular but I don't think it would kill the idea of cryptocurrencies, it would just remove the idea of anonymity being included.

[massivebitman]

If that we're to happen, the value of BTC would drop through the floor. As it would almost cettainly no longer be possible for any bank linkex exchanges to exist so the currency would cease to exist. 

Another crypto currency would take it's place. A commercial one perhaps

[Peter Lambert]

If that we're to happen, the value of BTC would drop through the floor. As it would almost cettainly no longer be possible for any bank linkex exchanges to exist so the currency would cease to exist. 

Another crypto currency would take it's place. A commercial one perhaps

Bitcoin existed before there were bank linked exchanges, and it will continue to exist even if no banks will allow transfers to or from official exchanges. There are other ways to move money in/out of bitcoin.

[Luckybit]

If that we're to happen, the value of BTC would drop through the floor. As it would almost cettainly no longer be possible for any bank linkex exchanges to exist so the currency would cease to exist. 

Another crypto currency would take it's place. A commercial one perhaps

Perhaps the solution is to push for transparency instead of for secrecy. Secret transactions don't benefit anybody. Public transactions benefit everybody and increases the long term value and security of the concept of cryptocurrencies.

What about in the case of fraud? Even if the person is pseudo-anonymous it should be possible to track all the transactions made by the pseudo-anonymous person. If a certain Bitcoin address is associated with terrorist activities then perhaps it should be flagged and transactions with that address could be avoided. That in my opinion would be the ideal way of dealing with it, it would be to remove the anonymous nature but maintain the pseudo-anonymous nature.

If a certain address is obviously associated with terrorism then you'd be damn stupid to conduct any transactions with that particular address. I'm fairly certain that the addresses associated with Julian Assange and Snowden are being monitored and that isn't even terrorism. If it were terrorism then they would probably do a combination of social network analysis, counter intelligence operations, and monitoring of certain addresses associated with terrorism. The NSA would almost certainly be involved and if those addresses are associated with IP addresses then those IP addresses would be flagged to.

On top of all that, most of the Bitcoin community would be assisting in tracking and tracing those addresses. Julian Assange and Edward Snowden are mainly political issues and for that reason there is a diversity of responses to these situations, but when you have actual terrorist groups plotting to kill or put innocent people in danger I think the response would be entirely different. There would be a lot less diversity in the opinions and people would gang up on or use mobbing tactics to find the individual. It's very difficult to hide when the entire community is trying to track you down.

Consider also that as Bitcoin becomes more valuable the users in the community will have a lot more to lose. When Bitcoins are worth only $100 each there aren't a lot of people with millions of dollars worth in Bitcoins or hundreds of thousands of dollars worth in Bitcoins. When the price is in the $1000 range this will begin to change. How many people do you think would sacrifice $100,000 or 100,000 euro in Bitcoin savings to have anonymity?

The choice will be a Bitcoin where the price continues to rise and it becomes something mainstream someday, or anonymity which might be useful only to terrorist groups and no one one else which would drive the price way down as people move to other cryptocurrencies which wont be anonymous but which will be worth much more.

What would happen is the people holding $100,000 in Bitcoin would immediately put their Bitcoins into another more transparent cryptocurrency to save their stash. Even people holding a few $1000 would do the same. Bitcoin price would go down from $2000 to $2 probably in a matter of days and the lucky people would be the ones who got out when the news first breaks. Bitcoin would probably never recover from this and while cryptocurrencies would still be used there would never again be anonymity as a feature.

I think people promoting anonymity should be very careful what they are asking for and whether or not it's worth it. Pseudo-anonymity seems to work better than anonymity for honest use.

[joesmoe2012]

Isn't that why the US govt seized gox's money?

It doesn't actually have to be used to fund a terrorist attack, the US govt can shut anybody down for doing anything that appears to be involved with terrorism in their eyes.

Them seizing millions of dollars (of americans money) from gox's US accounts has caused the price to skyrocket, mainly because now the rest of the worlds banks are afraid to work with gox.

[peonminer]

this is one of those thoughts you should keep to yourself. if i could slap you, i would

+1

[chodobaggins]

Something on US soil would permanently kill Bitcoin, at least in the West.  It would be unpatrotic to use or accept BTC.  Banks would immediately block the money flow to and from, there would be sweeping, bi-partisan legislation.  All American allies would follow suit.  Price would collapse.  Mass adoption = DEAD

but being patriotic is racist, nobody is patriotic anymore, they'd all want to adopt bitcoins to apologise to the poor terrorists who we obviously wronged to make them attack us
*rolls eyes* just 3 more years...

[Luckybit]

Something on US soil would permanently kill Bitcoin, at least in the West.  It would be unpatrotic to use or accept BTC.  Banks would immediately block the money flow to and from, there would be sweeping, bi-partisan legislation.  All American allies would follow suit.  Price would collapse.  Mass adoption = DEAD

but being patriotic is racist, nobody is patriotic anymore, they'd all want to adopt bitcoins to apologise to the poor terrorists who we obviously wronged to make them attack us
*rolls eyes* just 3 more years...

You don't even have to be a patriot to want what is best for the Bitcoin community. It's not in the best interest of the vast majority of the Bitcoin community to have association with or support terrorists in any way. It is in the best interest of the community to actively deter, intercept, stop, or track down terrorists. Terrorists will bring violence to a currently mostly non-violent community and ruin it.

[xxjs]

Something on US soil would permanently kill Bitcoin, at least in the West.  It would be unpatrotic to use or accept BTC.  Banks would immediately block the money flow to and from, there would be sweeping, bi-partisan legislation.  All American allies would follow suit.  Price would collapse.  Mass adoption = DEAD

but being patriotic is racist, nobody is patriotic anymore, they'd all want to adopt bitcoins to apologise to the poor terrorists who we obviously wronged to make them attack us
*rolls eyes* just 3 more years...

You don't even have to be a patriot to want what is best for the Bitcoin community. It's not in the best interest of the vast majority of the Bitcoin community to have association with or support terrorists in any way. It is in the best interest of the community to actively deter, intercept, stop, or track down terrorists. Terrorists will bring violence to a currently mostly non-violent community and ruin it.

The bitcoin users would be interested in "wertfrei" money, value free in the sense of nonjudgmental.

[ninjarobot]

Maybe I am paranoid but I can imagine a false flag event designed to kick-off the war on cryptocurrencies.