11-27-13 Reuters: Bitcoin is a step back not forward

[Steveia]

Epic fail:

http://blogs.reuters.com/edward-hadas/2013/11/27/edward-hadas-bitcoin-is-a-step-back-not-forward/

Establishment cronies cannot accept any currency unless it is government issued. The threat that government can outlaw Bitcoin is absurd--no one government controls Bitcoin (no government controls Bitcoin). It is decentralized. Exchangers can be outlawed, but this will drive the Bitcoin economy even more underground.

[goxed]

"Money is inevitably a tool of the state." whaaat!

[beetcoin]

hey will fail, because money that is not issued by governments is always doomed to failure.

so where do they come up with this? this is such fallible logic; there has never been anything like bitcoin, so to make such claims is ludicrous. the correct way of putting it is that "we don't know if bitcoin will work or not, because there has never been anything like it in the history of mankind."

instead, this guy is just an apologist for the establishment.

[pgbit]

I am just guessing that comments are turned off, at the bottom of that partisan article.

His comment: "there would be no authority which could decide how much new money to print. Indeed, the knowledge that governments could not create new bitcoins in a crisis would only increase thrift" is priceless
as it appears to be a self-admission of failure to understand the current problems with governments, banks and fiat. Implicitly suggesting that thrift is bad in a crisis (bad for who?), yet with no mention of the potentially devastating harm to whole populations with fractional reserve lending, debt and hyper-inflation.

[cr1776]

I am just guessing that comments are turned off, at the bottom of that partisan article.

His comment: "there would be no authority which could decide how much new money to print. Indeed, the knowledge that governments could not create new bitcoins in a crisis would only increase thrift" is priceless
as it appears to be a self-admission of failure to understand the current problems with governments, banks and fiat. Implicitly suggesting that thrift is bad in a crisis (bad for who?), yet with no mention of the potentially devastating harm to whole populations with fractional reserve lending, debt and hyper-inflation.

Comments were on for me. FYI

[odolvlobo]

His basic thesis is that money must be centrally managed and that only a government is capable of doing that.

[oakpacific]

Yup, like how classical liberalism is a step back to totalitarianism.

Not every idea more recent is one with good merits.

[Dabs]

Bitcoin exemplifies some of the problems of private money. Its value is uncertain, its legal status is unclear and it could easily become valueless if users lose faith. Besides, if bitcoin ever really started to take off, governments would either ban it or take over the system.

Uncertain = maybe this means volatile.
Legal status = not really needed or required, but would be nice if "accepted" by governments, like Fincen etc.
Ban it = how do you ban the internet? Try banning torrents.
Take over the system = well, they can certainly do that, but at what cost to them?

But I suspect another important factor is political: bitcoin appeals because governments are not fully living up to the responsibility that comes with state-sponsored money. Bitcoin, or something like it, will thrive until the authorities do better.

And authorities can only do better by creating a decentralized coin that has initial funding from the government.

[bitbouillion]

They will fail, because money that is not issued by governments is always doomed to failure.

This guy did poor research. What he claims is true for government issued money. Average life time in history is 27 years. Only 23% of government issued currencies have survived. That's a poor track record.  It's only a matter of time when a government issued currency fails.

http://dollardaze.org/blog/?post_id=00405&cat_id=17

[Bitware]

Since we lost the net neutrality battle, ISP's may be able to "prioritize" data.

That said, banning Bitcoin is as simple as filtering the protocol at the ISP level. Simply drop the packets. But I do not see that happening any time soon, as their greed makes them want to control and guide it for maximum profitability. They see regular people prying open their wallets to obtain BTC's and associated Bitcoin technology. Something their advertising/psychological professionals have not been able to do so completely, so they will want to harvest from this new-found path to extract more of our saved wealth from us..

[Dabs]

That said, banning Bitcoin is as simple as filtering the protocol at the ISP level. Simply drop the packets.

How do you identify the protocol or packets? What if it was encrypted?

[bitlancr]

So what's a step forward to this guy? More centralisation, and top-down (mis)management? One world fiat currency? No thanks.

[davidgdg]

He quotes Graeber's book. I've read that book. Still not sure what it says.