The SEC Shows Why Bitcoin is Doomed.

[Mowcore]

Its doomed because there is going to be to many asic on the bitcoin network (Hence the difficulty going sky high) hence people turning off the miners, hence no transactions processed,asics have basically killed bitcoin

I don't have an asic but that doesn't mean I can agree with what you said. We need asic's for bitcoin to make the network stronger, to protect it against the theorized attacks which I am sure you have read countless times. The only thing that might suck for you is the fact you can't mine with gpu's anymore. Yeah, I hated that too. I still mine alt coins (as much as I hate it) to get my BTC fix and with these impending "scrypt asics" that may one day actually appear, I feel the same thing could happen, though the Litecoin network will sure benefit in the same way as bitcoin has.

Imagine a bitcoin world without asics, I really could not see the price of the coin being what it is now!

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[johnyj]

Bitcoin's value is backed by all the infrastructure investments in mining operations, you can copy the source code, but you can never copy the hardware infrastructure

Since the essential of bitcoin is a consensus that people around the world using one currency with fixed limited money supply, any addition of other cryptocurrencies will just inflate the money supply and make that experiment more and more close to fiat money, which is not interesting. Majority of people will come back to bitcoin when they finally realize this

Litecoin could work as a backup in case the bitcoin failed, but since bitcoin is not unchangeable, when an extinction level event occur, miners around the world will agree to switch to a new protocol, so it is almost immortal

[Fundmanager23]

It don't think the SEC cares much about bitcoin.  It has too many other things to worry about unless someone tries to sell bitcoin stocks or bitcoin securities without proper registration.   There are other branches of govt that might be more interested.  Again it is US only and they have't stopped online gaming.

[e521]

Bitcoin's value is backed by all the infrastructure investments in mining operations, you can copy the source code, but you can never copy the hardware infrastructure

Since the essential of bitcoin is a consensus that people around the world using one currency with fixed limited money supply, any addition of other cryptocurrencies will just inflate the money supply and make that experiment more and more close to fiat money, which is not interesting. Majority of people will come back to bitcoin when they finally realize this

Litecoin could work as a backup in case the bitcoin failed, but since bitcoin is not unchangeable, when an extinction level event occur, miners around the world will agree to switch to a new protocol, so it is almost immortal

I disagree with you and I think you actually contradicted yourself.
We will never ever see Bitcoin changing from SHA256 to scrypt.
ASICs are the real value behind Bitcoin right?

[BCB]

It don't think the SEC cares much about bitcoin.  It has too many other things to worry about unless someone tries to sell bitcoin stocks or bitcoin securities without proper registration.   There are other branches of govt that might be more interested.  Again it is US only and they have't stopped online gaming.

+1

Most US Law enforcement and Regulatory Agencies are already on the record as saying they are only concerned with virtual currency to the extent is is used for illegal or fraudulent activities.

This includes
The Fed
US Secret Service
Department of Justice (FBI, DEA, ATF)
Department of Treasury
Security and Exchange Commission

[Bob Derber]

Just FYI, before you say they haven't stopped online gaming ...

Do check out Blizzard closing the Daiblo III auction house..... the rationale per Blizzard is its impact on game play, which I am sure it has, but they could have integrated the auction into their gaming  environment in another way but chose not to.... I highly suspect that choosing to just shut it down has quite a bit to do with what is happening in virtual currencies generally....

It's not all about bitcoin out there.  Rather, we're the bad boy on the block, and the block is otherwise quite occupied - gamers and VR envronments (Second Life) were there well before virtual currency took hold.   We need a little image control/brand development, I think......

I peeked up during the holiday and saw the recent 'offering' on this forum for a new 'bitcoin' investment: growing marijuana.  I thought, as the discussion went on about shares for sale and no business plan but what a cool idea...  Just another PR opportunity for FinCEN if they want to bash bitcoin, or the SEC if they feel interested in tempering any positive traction bitcoin might get.

We seem to have a knack of bringing it on ourselves.  We should have outted Silk Road way before they did......

[marcus_of_augustus]

It don't think the SEC cares much about bitcoin.  It has too many other things to worry about unless someone tries to sell bitcoin stocks or bitcoin securities without proper registration.   There are other branches of govt that might be more interested.  Again it is US only and they have't stopped online gaming.

+1

Most US Law enforcement and Regulatory Agencies are already on the record as saying they are only concerned with virtual currency to the extent is is used for illegal or fraudulent activities.

This includes
The Fed
US Secret Service
Department of Justice (FBI, DEA, ATF)
Department of Treasury
Security and Exchange Commission

.... except in most cases the laws are so vague and subjective that they can declare lots of things "illegal" in one of there "guideline interpretations" and entrpreneurs are out of business if they wish it to be so (or face an insurmountable legal challenge) e.g. Mike Caldwell of Casascius coins https://www.casascius.com/

You're in la-la land of how the govt. really operates, it must be fun living in such a denial bubble?

[bluemeanie1]

I just read this Timothy Lavin Bloomberg story and wondered if it's been discussed yet. I can't seem to find anything on it. If it has please direct me to the thread. The comments at the bottom are as interesting as the article. He raises some interesting points considering all the recent action from government agencies lately (like Mike Caldwell's recent letter forcing him to close up shop). Will governments simply regulate Bitcoin to death like so many good ideas of the past? Will business competition cease to make Bitcoin a worthwhile alternative? Is this just another naysayer that is missing the "point" of Bitcoin? Is the "point" to provide an outlet for crime or does Bitcoin have a place alongside other payment systems and is simply waiting to claim its market share?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-08/did-the-sec-just-validate-bitcoin-no-.html

I certainly would like to know why the US Taxpayer is funding these witchhunts for people who are building alternatives to an obviously broken, biased and corrupt system?

in the name of our own personal safety?  who are they kidding?

[bluemeanie1]

Regarding Mike and the Casascius coins, Mike just chose not to get the licensing. (Which is proving great for those who already have his coins as the price has of course shot up. But bad for newcomers).
Titan has the licensing and they have also raised prices A LOT. Go figure. I do think Mike will get the licensing, at least in some states as he was doing just too well imo.

SEC stopping BTC? LOL, please, this isn't just about America, much less regulations...

Of course, that's the point of the article. Did you read it?

SEC isn't attempt to stop Bitcoin. Again, that's what they are talking about. Bitcoin isn't about America. It's about India, the UK, China, the EU and everywhere else. What's happening in India and China right now?

I had not read it but gave it a read and am still not clear on it! These titles are just getting a bit old and I once again was only partly pulled in.

Regarding India and China, first India, I think they are trying to get a grasp on what BTC is. They seem a bit against it.
China on the other hand, and shockingly so, seem to just want to separate it from their money system and categorize it as a commodity. I'm still shocked by it.
It will take time to play out and I think the run continues once things get clear in China (then later, much later, India). Of course, it can get ugly in either case, but at least with regards to China, I'm not so worried.

Your perspective on India and China?

the thing with China is that there is an 'inner circle' of wealth elites there who seek to avoid taxation and the like, then there's the rest of China(the peasants).

so China has to appear to be tax compliant, when really the people running the show want to evade taxes, thus it appears they have a schizophrenic stance on this.

China even has two official currencies.

[bluemeanie1]

It is my understanding that bitpay is a "third party payment processor" which is EXEMPT from "money transmitter licensing"

Essentially Bitpay has a contract with their clients, the merchant and when a consumer sends bitcoin to bitpay and bitcoin converts that to cash and sends it to the merchant, the consumer is "legally" sending "other value that substitutes for currency" directly to the merchant. There for bitpay is not a "money transmitter."

But is it not possible for a drug dealer to sell drugs for btc then buy a couple of lamborghinis at a dealership for btc and sell them for dollars. In that scenario isn't BitPay enabling money laundering?

A drug dealer would not be able to open an account with bitpay. (If that is what you are asking???)

A drug dealer WOULD be able to open an account with Confidence Chains.  They could even loan out money with it.

BUT, the crime is dealing drugs, not using untraceable money.

[QuestionAuthority]

I just read this Timothy Lavin Bloomberg story and wondered if it's been discussed yet. I can't seem to find anything on it. If it has please direct me to the thread. The comments at the bottom are as interesting as the article. He raises some interesting points considering all the recent action from government agencies lately (like Mike Caldwell's recent letter forcing him to close up shop). Will governments simply regulate Bitcoin to death like so many good ideas of the past? Will business competition cease to make Bitcoin a worthwhile alternative? Is this just another naysayer that is missing the "point" of Bitcoin? Is the "point" to provide an outlet for crime or does Bitcoin have a place alongside other payment systems and is simply waiting to claim its market share?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-08/did-the-sec-just-validate-bitcoin-no-.html

I certainly would like to know why the US Taxpayer is funding these witchhunts for people who are building alternatives to an obviously broken, biased and corrupt system?

in the name of our own personal safety?  who are they kidding?

Alexander Hamilton believed the American electorate was a "great beast". He said it best:

It has been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity.

[bluemeanie1]

I just read this Timothy Lavin Bloomberg story and wondered if it's been discussed yet. I can't seem to find anything on it. If it has please direct me to the thread. The comments at the bottom are as interesting as the article. He raises some interesting points considering all the recent action from government agencies lately (like Mike Caldwell's recent letter forcing him to close up shop). Will governments simply regulate Bitcoin to death like so many good ideas of the past? Will business competition cease to make Bitcoin a worthwhile alternative? Is this just another naysayer that is missing the "point" of Bitcoin? Is the "point" to provide an outlet for crime or does Bitcoin have a place alongside other payment systems and is simply waiting to claim its market share?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-08/did-the-sec-just-validate-bitcoin-no-.html

I certainly would like to know why the US Taxpayer is funding these witchhunts for people who are building alternatives to an obviously broken, biased and corrupt system?

in the name of our own personal safety?  who are they kidding?

Alexander Hamilton believed the American electorate was a "great beast". He said it best:

It has been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity.

Hamilton advocated for central banking, he somehow got the title of 'founding father' of America although he was never a president, but was the treasurer.

I do agree with that quoted statement.  Capitalism is the solution to the tyranny of democracy.  I want to put Capitalism back in office.  That's what http://altchain.org is about.

It's pretty clear from the article that the very people who manipulated our system into giving them trillions of dollars are now terrified at the prospects of what Peer To Peer Finance can actually do.  The OP article reads like a scary bedtime story.

[QuestionAuthority]

I just read this Timothy Lavin Bloomberg story and wondered if it's been discussed yet. I can't seem to find anything on it. If it has please direct me to the thread. The comments at the bottom are as interesting as the article. He raises some interesting points considering all the recent action from government agencies lately (like Mike Caldwell's recent letter forcing him to close up shop). Will governments simply regulate Bitcoin to death like so many good ideas of the past? Will business competition cease to make Bitcoin a worthwhile alternative? Is this just another naysayer that is missing the "point" of Bitcoin? Is the "point" to provide an outlet for crime or does Bitcoin have a place alongside other payment systems and is simply waiting to claim its market share?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-08/did-the-sec-just-validate-bitcoin-no-.html

I certainly would like to know why the US Taxpayer is funding these witchhunts for people who are building alternatives to an obviously broken, biased and corrupt system?

in the name of our own personal safety?  who are they kidding?

Alexander Hamilton believed the American electorate was a "great beast". He said it best:

It has been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity.

Hamilton advocated for central banking, he somehow got the title of 'founding father' of America although he was never a president, but was the treasurer.

I do agree with that quoted statement.  Capitalism is the solution to the tyranny of democracy.  I want to put Capitalism back in office.  That's what http://altchain.org is about.

It's pretty clear from the article that the very people who manipulated our system into giving them trillions of dollars are now terrified at the prospects of what Peer To Peer Finance can actually do.  The OP article reads like a scary bedtime story.

It is kind of scary. The real problem with saving people is making sure they know they need to be saved. America is described as a great melting pot that accepts anyone into the fold. Really it's a salad where a multitude of different peoples that hate each other are tossed together and that is reflected in the way they vote and choose leaders.

[prophetx]

Someday food will need to be purchased in the black market.

I think gasoline will be first.

guns and explosives black market already exists

[prophetx]

thats from the Aug 8, 2013.

Using similar logic, I expect eventually all non-open source services/products that could potentially steal a users funds will be regulated in a way similar to MSBs.  Even something like the Trezor (if purchased as a complete device, not as hardware to which you load open-source firmware) I could see regulated in the USA because it's possible that the Trezor has hidden code that eventually steals peoples coins.  

but why isn't the NSAs hidden code on every machine regulated??!?

[luqash3]

Let everyone make their own predictions they are either big liars or no nothing. Did they predicted the crisis in 2007? Simply answer is No then how come we believe in their prediction today. Let them say whatever they want while we should hold bitcoins and wait patiently for it to rise. 

[johnyj]

Bitcoin's value is backed by all the infrastructure investments in mining operations, you can copy the source code, but you can never copy the hardware infrastructure

Since the essential of bitcoin is a consensus that people around the world using one currency with fixed limited money supply, any addition of other cryptocurrencies will just inflate the money supply and make that experiment more and more close to fiat money, which is not interesting. Majority of people will come back to bitcoin when they finally realize this

Litecoin could work as a backup in case the bitcoin failed, but since bitcoin is not unchangeable, when an extinction level event occur, miners around the world will agree to switch to a new protocol, so it is almost immortal

I disagree with you and I think you actually contradicted yourself.
We will never ever see Bitcoin changing from SHA256 to scrypt.
ASICs are the real value behind Bitcoin right?

Switch to a scrypt-based protocol will require re-investment of the hardware infrastructure, which is very unlikely. What I meant for new protocol is to solve some existing limitations, for example, scalability is a concern in not-so-far future

[Coin_Master]

I just read this Timothy Lavin Bloomberg story and wondered if it's been discussed yet. I can't seem to find anything on it. If it has please direct me to the thread. The comments at the bottom are as interesting as the article. He raises some interesting points considering all the recent action from government agencies lately (like Mike Caldwell's recent letter forcing him to close up shop). Will governments simply regulate Bitcoin to death like so many good ideas of the past? Will business competition cease to make Bitcoin a worthwhile alternative? Is this just another naysayer that is missing the "point" of Bitcoin? Is the "point" to provide an outlet for crime or does Bitcoin have a place alongside other payment systems and is simply waiting to claim its market share?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-08/did-the-sec-just-validate-bitcoin-no-.html

Far too often I see the 'government' referred to as this 'thing that wants to stop people from conducting private legal activities'.  Please remember the 'government' are people, elected representatives of the people (at least in democratic countries, sorry to all those that don't get a say in who they would prefer to represent them).  If the people choose to allow Bitcoin, the 'government/elected representatives' will do exactly what they are paid to do, as employees of the state, if they don't they get fired/not re-elected.  Bitcoin will continue to be a success, as it already is (by the people, for the people).

Were you the one that voted for the 21 kiloton atomic bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki? I'm against genocide for the greater good so I voted against it. Oh, I voted against Vietnam too, twice.

Don't assume governments will do what the citizens want and don't assume that you are in the voting majority.

Really, you voted against dropping an Atomic Bomb on Nagasaki? I do not see how that is possible given The Manhattan Project was 'Top Secret' until after the war.  Perhaps you are confusing fantasy with reality?

[justusranvier]

That concept "the rest of the world will save us" really doesn't seem to be working anymore. I think it's not working because most of the worlds governments/regulatory systems are as dysfunctional as the US system.

You've got it wrong: the rest of the world will save themselves, and Bitcoin is going to help them do it.

The dysfunction of other world governments is an advantage here. Outside the G7 governments aren't nearly as capable of maintaining the illusion of benevolence.

People in Latin America, Asia, and Africa are very comfortable operating in the informal economy and there's no particular stigma toward doing it. In fact, most of the world's population operates in the informal economy as a matter of survival. Outside certain pampered population in Europe and North America, you won't find people declaring that Bitcoin has to shed its black market enabling properties in order to reach mainstream adoption - those will be its primary selling points for the other six billion people in the world.

[skivrmt]

That concept "the rest of the world will save us" really doesn't seem to be working anymore. I think it's not working because most of the worlds governments/regulatory systems are as dysfunctional as the US system.

You've got it wrong: the rest of the world will save themselves, and Bitcoin is going to help them do it.

The dysfunction of other world governments is an advantage here. Outside the G7 governments aren't nearly as capable of maintaining the illusion of benevolence.

People in Latin America, Asia, and Africa are very comfortable operating in the informal economy and there's no particular stigma toward doing it. In fact, most of the world's population operates in the informal economy as a matter of survival. Outside certain pampered population in Europe and North America, you won't find people declaring that Bitcoin has to shed its black market enabling properties in order to reach mainstream adoption - those will be its primary selling points for the other six billion people in the world.

I agree almost completely with this.  So many people think Bitcoin will become the main currency in the major countries around the world.  I think it has little or no chance of that.  While the starting influx of money and growth in Bitcoin will come from developed countries, I think its the developing world that will embrace it.  The US, Europe, developed Asia will use Bitcoin to the extent that each individual economy (and government) embraces it, but I think down the road (5+ years), you'll see countries in Africa, Middle East, and Latin America using it as a greater % of currency that any developed nation.