Governments and Bitcoin

[eMansipater]

I realise that there are many anarchist-inclined bitcoin enthusiasts excited about the fact that bitcoin isn't government-run; obviously however we're not all anarchists so just thought I'd try and flesh out the topic of governments and bitcoin from the other angle.  Yay textwall!

It's one thing to be opposed to governments in principle, but especially for people who don't know anyone working in government there's a bit of a tendency to go all crazy around here about what "the government agenda" is or how "the government" will try and automatically repress any new idea.  The truth is that governments are just made up of people.  Forming any kind of cohesive idea amongst government members is a massive job in and of itself, as I well know from my own experience in politics--it's simply not true that there's one big organised conspiracy called "The Government" in any country.  Even flat-out dictatorships have a wider array of differing opinions "within the ranks" than you might think.

Governments and technology have an interesting relationship.  On the one hand members of governments tend to be well-connected, established people with an investment in the status quo.  It also takes a lot of time to succeed in politics at any significant level, which means that many policymakers aren't exactly on the cutting edge of technology.  I won't be so unkind as to call them flat-out dinosaur luddites (or maybe I just did ) but they don't tend to grasp the value and significance of new, disruptive technologies quickly.

On the other hand, I actually know many individuals who work at high levels of government, and a significant portion of them are genuinely trying to improve society's function through their work.  Don't forget that, as amazing as it sounds, a government invented the internet (the american government no less!).  Governments sent humans to space.  Governments even created the first computers!!  The american government created Tor!!!!!!!  -my head just exploded.

Governments are not mindless anti-tech zombies.  When something is really different they often have trouble understanding it.  Like p2p filesharing--they've completely dropped the ball on that one!  And vested interests generally tend to distort and mess things up.  But if the regular actual people who work in governments see a true opportunity for something to benefit everyone, they tend to get just as excited about it as "us" (intended in the most fully ironic sense as if there is some fundamental divide between anyone-who-can-use-bitcoin and anyone-who-works-for-a-government).  At the end of the day, if bitcoin can present a good case for providing real value to interests across the board in an area where other solutions have been sorely lacking, I think a lot of people-in-governments can get on board with that.

But one thing's for certain--if we turn bitcoin (or even the community surrounding it) into a destroy-all-governments, end-of-all-fiat-money, never-pay-taxes-again conspiracy, it will end up on the terrorist watch list before the first report even hits the desk.

tl;dr:Bitcoin is what bitcoin is.  Like the internet, it enables both traditional enterprises and disruptive possibilities.  There's nothing wrong with loving bitcoin because of the latter, but it's worth it to differentiate between your reasons for loving bitcoin and bitcoin itself.  Get excited about the fact that bitcoin could be the first successful non-government-initiated currency!  But don't fall into this trap of thinking that there's some fundamental reason that governments and bitcoin are in a conflict to the death.  I can tell you that any dinosaur worth his salt goes completely glazed over when any such topic comes up.  It's too psychologically complicated at that point in life to actually parry and dissect really different ideas--it's a lot simpler to just shut them out and bitcoin with them.

For any anarchist who faults the state on its use of force, the only fair response is to out-compete it fair and square.  If anarchism is truly better, bitcoin will probably be an important milestone in the path to getting there.  Work hard on it!  Help make it succeed!  But remember that bitcoin is about all of us, not just about those who believe that.  Don't worry though, I still love you even if I think the world isn't ready for anarchism yet .

And for anyone else out there who thinks anarchism leaves something to be desired--stick around!  You're not the only one.  We need you because the way bitcoin actually succeeds is not as some fringe project of the libertarian community (no offense to the hundreds of toes I just stepped on there ) but as a truly world-changing technology that encompasses people from many different points of view.  Bitcoin won't succeed unless non-anarchists accept it and that's pretty much that.

/steps down from soapbox, however briefly

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[CryptikEnigma]

The government just labeled anyone who supports competing currencies a special kind of domestic terrorist. Maybe its time to stop defending them and get on board with the Libertarians

[FreeMoney]

I'm an anarchist and I agree with what you wrote so I don't think you have much time left as a non-anarchist.

Those good things the government did, individuals actually did them. The bad stuff, stealing, destroying, lying, was also individuals. As an anarchist all I'm saying is that you don't get a pass when you do bad stuff because you are dressed a certain way or have the approval of a certain process.

[ryepdx]

Well said, eMansipater. I'm not personally an anarchist either, nor am I much one for conspiracy theories. I simply see the value in switching to a currency that is decentralized and limited in quantity. I would much rather have my government sanction bitcoins (provided they do not attempt to control the network) than oppose them. Not everyone is willing to break the law. Opposition from governments would severely limit our user base.

[MoonShadow]

And for anyone else out there who thinks anarchism leaves something to be desired--stick around!  You're not the only one.  We need you because the way bitcoin actually succeeds is not as some fringe project of the libertarian community (no offense to the hundreds of toes I just stepped on there ) but as a truly world-changing technology that encompasses people from many different points of view.  Bitcoin won't succeed unless non-anarchists accept it and that's pretty much that.

You were doing fine until you conflated anarchism and libertarianism.  For the record, they are not the same.  Ideologically speaking, an anarchist is one who believes that he can govern himself, and that all individuals can rationally do so as well.  A libertarian is someone who believes that government is an evil that attracts the worst kind of person to be trusted with it's power; but that it is a necessary evil, and that there is a few minimum functions of government that are legitimate, and the kind of people who shouldn't be trusted are also the same kind of people that tend to be very good at actually performing those core functions so long as they can be restrained in expanding the scope of their authorities.  (i.e. sociopaths make great generals, but crappy overlords)

Personally, I'm of the latter camp.  I can see the potential for success in anarchism, but I can also see the potential for an epic failure.  I believe that violence is not a legitimate means of social or political change, but I also believe that there is such a thing as justifiable use of force, either collectively or individually.  I also believe that the founders went through this same kind of discovery process; which is why they chose to replace the Articles of Confederation with the US Constitution. moving from an almost anarchist society of states to a more uniform, but more restrictive, libertarian state.  Not a perfect example of either, mind you.

Still, even as I contest the idea that anarchy is sustainable, I can accept that it is possible; and perhaps one day technologies that we can't even imagine today will make a stable anarchy a reality.  That could only come if technologies make the primary functions of governments obsolete.  But as we have all witnessed over the past 20 years, we can't really fathom what may yet be.

If Neal Stephenson is to be believed (and I am one to wonder if the man is really a technological prophet, not a sci-fi writer) then the emergence of a digital, anonymous and distributed monetary system is the technical precursor to an entirely different form of political association, based upon voluntary social and cultural identities, as opposed to to geographical association and imaginary lines on a map. 

Time will tell.

[eMansipater]

@FreeMoney we'll have to see   @ryepdx Thx netizen!  @CryptikEnigma Don't you mean someone within a particular government did?  No one who sets policy I live under has, to my knowledge.  But I'm not really here to defend anyone or anything, except BitCoin.

And for anyone else out there who thinks anarchism leaves something to be desired--stick around!  You're not the only one.  We need you because the way bitcoin actually succeeds is not as some fringe project of the libertarian community (no offense to the hundreds of toes I just stepped on there ) but as a truly world-changing technology that encompasses people from many different points of view.  Bitcoin won't succeed unless non-anarchists accept it and that's pretty much that.

You were doing fine until you conflated anarchism and libertarianism.

It's true, the text does sort of lump them in together despite their clear differences.  But combined what percentage of the planet's political spectrum do they represent?  What I mean to say is that bitcoin as a technology needs to be bigger than either or both.  The community needs to be whoever cares about the technology, whether they match the world's spectrum perfectly or not--but it's good for newcomers to clearly understand they are welcome in it even if neither term is homebase.

Regarding imaginary lines on a map--that I can get behind.  Bitcoin and other borderless realities are the way of the future!

[genjix]

Not everyone thinks the government here is evil. I genuinely believe there's many individuals who believe they can do/are doing good for people. However the entire system has evolved into a corrupted organism. It's not an evil conspiracy but a 'stand alone complex'.

Stand Alone Complex eventually came to represent a phenomenon where unrelated, yet very similar actions of individuals create a seemingly concerted effort.

Many of these government institutions once instituted can never disappear. A cancerous growth that drains it's host. War budgets will only ever get larger.

Still, even as I contest the idea that anarchy is sustainable, I can accept that it is possible; and perhaps one day technologies that we can't even imagine today will make a stable anarchy a reality.  That could only come if technologies make the primary functions of governments obsolete.  But as we have all witnessed over the past 20 years, we can't really fathom what may yet be.

People are socially evolving and changing as a species. New attitudes are taking the place of old attitudes. Economies are shifting to non zero-sum game, service oriented. We may see the first people on Mars this century. In a creative economy, one sees neighbours as team mates rather than competitors because the sum of intelligence of the whole > the few. Because a country has more to gain by pooling intelligence with others than by warring it's inhabitants.

Regarding imaginary lines on a map--that I can get behind.  Bitcoin and other borderless realities are the way of the future!

Whether one likes it or not. The leaderless future is inevitable. Extrapolate the ongoing trend and it's clear where everything is headed. Technology has helped massively.

[ben bernank]

I'm an anarchist

Im an antichrist. Pleased to meet you.

[deadlizard]

I'm an anarchist

Im an antichrist. Pleased to meet you.

Don't know what I want but I know how to get it 

[LMGTFY]

I'm an anarchist

Im an antichrist. Pleased to meet you.

Don't know what I want but I know how to get it 

And our figurehead [ben bernank]
Is not what he seems

Oh God save history
God save your mad parade

(etc etc, repeat to fade)

[no to the gold cult]

I realise that there are many anarchist-inclined bitcoin enthusiasts excited about the fact that bitcoin isn't government-run; obviously however we're not all anarchists so just thought I'd try and flesh out the topic of governments and bitcoin from the other angle.  Yay textwall!

It's one thing to be opposed to governments in principle, but especially for people who don't know anyone working in government there's a bit of a tendency to go all crazy around here about what "the government agenda" is or how "the government" will try and automatically repress any new idea.  The truth is that governments are just made up of people.  Forming any kind of cohesive idea amongst government members is a massive job in and of itself, as I well know from my own experience in politics--it's simply not true that there's one big organised conspiracy called "The Government" in any country.  Even flat-out dictatorships have a wider array of differing opinions "within the ranks" than you might think.

Governments and technology have an interesting relationship.  On the one hand members of governments tend to be well-connected, established people with an investment in the status quo.  It also takes a lot of time to succeed in politics at any significant level, which means that many policymakers aren't exactly on the cutting edge of technology.  I won't be so unkind as to call them flat-out dinosaur luddites (or maybe I just did ) but they don't tend to grasp the value and significance of new, disruptive technologies quickly.

On the other hand, I actually know many individuals who work at high levels of government, and a significant portion of them are genuinely trying to improve society's function through their work.  Don't forget that, as amazing as it sounds, a government invented the internet (the american government no less!).  Governments sent humans to space.  Governments even created the first computers!!  The american government created Tor!!!!!!!   -my head just exploded.

Governments are not mindless anti-tech zombies.  When something is really different they often have trouble understanding it.  Like p2p filesharing--they've completely dropped the ball on that one!  And vested interests generally tend to distort and mess things up.  But if the regular actual people who work in governments see a true opportunity for something to benefit everyone, they tend to get just as excited about it as "us" (intended in the most fully ironic sense as if there is some fundamental divide between anyone-who-can-use-bitcoin and anyone-who-works-for-a-government).  At the end of the day, if bitcoin can present a good case for providing real value to interests across the board in an area where other solutions have been sorely lacking, I think a lot of people-in-governments can get on board with that.

But one thing's for certain--if we turn bitcoin (or even the community surrounding it) into a destroy-all-governments, end-of-all-fiat-money, never-pay-taxes-again conspiracy, it will end up on the terrorist watch list before the first report even hits the desk.

tl;dr:Bitcoin is what bitcoin is.  Like the internet, it enables both traditional enterprises and disruptive possibilities.  There's nothing wrong with loving bitcoin because of the latter, but it's worth it to differentiate between your reasons for loving bitcoin and bitcoin itself.  Get excited about the fact that bitcoin could be the first successful non-government-initiated currency!  But don't fall into this trap of thinking that there's some fundamental reason that governments and bitcoin are in a conflict to the death.  I can tell you that any dinosaur worth his salt goes completely glazed over when any such topic comes up.  It's too psychologically complicated at that point in life to actually parry and dissect really different ideas--it's a lot simpler to just shut them out and bitcoin with them.

For any anarchist who faults the state on its use of force, the only fair response is to out-compete it fair and square.  If anarchism is truly better, bitcoin will probably be an important milestone in the path to getting there.  Work hard on it!  Help make it succeed!  But remember that bitcoin is about all of us, not just about those who believe that.  Don't worry though, I still love you even if I think the world isn't ready for anarchism yet .

And for anyone else out there who thinks anarchism leaves something to be desired--stick around!  You're not the only one.  We need you because the way bitcoin actually succeeds is not as some fringe project of the libertarian community (no offense to the hundreds of toes I just stepped on there ) but as a truly world-changing technology that encompasses people from many different points of view.  Bitcoin won't succeed unless non-anarchists accept it and that's pretty much that.

/steps down from soapbox, however briefly

I agree with all of this.

I'm tired of whining about libertarians, and I'm sure libertarians are tired of hearing it too, so I've been trying not to do that anymore. But I think the forum is so focused on people that hate government or are paranoid of evil banking cabals that... that I for one have found it off-putting. I'm way more interested in bitcoins and the possibilities of them than I am about the ideological tone of the forum. I think a lot of people would find it off putting. Bitcoin should be above politics.

People can agree or disagree about whether it's a good idea to have an agency that is (in principal) democratically empowered to do things like build hospitals, schools and roads etc. People can agree or disagree as to whether bankers are the most evil force in the world, or just a corrupt oligopoly that needs to be replaced by something better, and people can agree or disagree about whether inflation is part of an elaborate scheme to steal wealth from people or just one of the poorly controlled forces that are a flaw of the money system we have now. But bitcoin itself can be used quite happily by anyone regardless of their political/economic point of view.

I think this should be recognized, this should be a Big-World technology, not just a political niche affair for people of a certain political mindset. Bitcoin has something to offer everyone, heh, even state-socialists, fascists and Islamic theocracies probably.

Having said all that, I did start a thread about bitcoin on an anarchist forum, and on a forum that's quite left-wing. Maybe the bitcoin forum itself though should be more politically neutral, for the good of bitcoin itself.

Just my two satoshi.

[dissipate]

For any anarchist who faults the state on its use of force, the only fair response is to out-compete it fair and square.  If anarchism is truly better, bitcoin will probably be an important milestone in the path to getting there.  Work hard on it!  Help make it succeed!  But remember that bitcoin is about all of us, not just about those who believe that.  Don't worry though, I still love you even if I think the world isn't ready for anarchism yet

I think you are confused about something. A government, by definition, does not 'compete fair and square.' Just to use an extreme example, Kim Jong Il does not let the people of North Korea try out new ideas. He throws them into a labor camp for an indeterminate amount of time for dissenting. This is an extreme example, but there are many other less extreme examples which are analogous. I cannot open a private post office in the U.S. that delivers first class mail as a less extreme example.

A government is an entity that externalizes costs. What this means is that the government consists of individuals allocating, diverting and regulating resources that are not their own. They do this through the popular belief that their political processes grant them the de jure right to do so. It is this belief that I vehemently challenge. No political process can grant anyone the right to touch resources they didn't receive on a voluntary basis. People in the government may or may not be trying to do 'good things', but they are doing it with other people's resources. I don't care what they invent, or what your or they think they are doing. The grabbed other people's stuff under duress.

To sum all of this up, my desire is to destroy any entity that externalizes costs. This includes, gangs, thieves, mafias and governments. For me there is no 'government lite'. Smash it all to bits NOW is my modus operandi.

[sortedmush]

A government is an entity that externalizes costs. What this means is that the government consists of individuals allocating, diverting and regulating resources that are not their own. They do this through the popular belief that their political processes grant them the de jure right to do so. It is this belief that I vehemently challenge. No political process can grant anyone the right to touch resources they didn't receive on a voluntary basis. People in the government may or may not be trying to do 'good things', but they are doing it with other people's resources. I don't care what they invent, or what your or they think they are doing. The grabbed other people's stuff under duress.

Bang on!

What brought me here is the the possibility that I can exchange goods and services without paying tax! I'm not paying for one more god damn fucking war! I've had enough! I'm not going to dance around the issue! And I'm not going to hold back logic and reason to attract more PC people to the forum.

[no to the gold cult]

A government is an entity that externalizes costs. What this means is that the government consists of individuals allocating, diverting and regulating resources that are not their own. They do this through the popular belief that their political processes grant them the de jure right to do so. It is this belief that I vehemently challenge. No political process can grant anyone the right to touch resources they didn't receive on a voluntary basis. People in the government may or may not be trying to do 'good things', but they are doing it with other people's resources. I don't care what they invent, or what your or they think they are doing. The grabbed other people's stuff under duress.

Bang on!

What brought me here is the the possibility that I can exchange goods and services without paying tax! I'm not paying for one more god damn fucking war! I've had enough! I'm not going to dance around the issue! And I'm not going to hold back logic and reason to attract more PC people to the forum.

Whatever has Political Correctness to do with the matter?  

[sortedmush]

Whatever has Political Correctness to do with the matter?  

Nothing hopefully. That was kind of my point.

[deadlizard]

PC people

Whatever has Political Correctness to do with the matter?  

I think he's a Mac user

[no to the gold cult]

Whatever has Political Correctness to do with the matter?  

Nothing hopefully. That was kind of my point.

Well, I do see your point, I find it difficult not to challenge what I consider to be wrong-headed thinking as well. It's just that I want bitcoin to succeed, once it succeeds that victory (whatever that means to you in terms of bitcoin) is a... what do the French say... a fait accompli?

Anyway, when there's enough interest in bitcoin in the general populace that lots of people that don't hate government as an article of faith want to discuss it, then I'm sure that people will start other forums, or just discuss it on the forums and other internet media to which they are already partial.

So er... carry on. Hell, I'll even join in... "Government Sucks! Grrrr!"

[no to the gold cult]

PC people

Whatever has Political Correctness to do with the matter?  

I think he's a Mac user

 

[sortedmush]

PC people

Whatever has Political Correctness to do with the matter?  

I think he's a Mac user

NEVER! .. I like to right click on things! 

[eMansipater]

@. thanks netizen!

For any anarchist who faults the state on its use of force, the only fair response is to out-compete it fair and square.  If anarchism is truly better, bitcoin will probably be an important milestone in the path to getting there.  Work hard on it!  Help make it succeed!  But remember that bitcoin is about all of us, not just about those who believe that.  Don't worry though, I still love you even if I think the world isn't ready for anarchism yet

I think you are confused about something. A government, by definition, does not 'compete fair and square.' Just to use an extreme example, Kim Jong Il does not let the people of North Korea try out new ideas. He throws them into a labor camp for an indeterminate amount of time for dissenting. This is an extreme example, but there are many other less extreme examples which are analogous. I cannot open a private post office in the U.S. that delivers first class mail as a less extreme example.

I wasn't calling the government to compete fair and square, although I do in other arenas of life demand a higher standard from it than what I typically see.  I was speaking specifically to anarchists who fault the state on its use of force.

A government is an entity that externalizes costs. What this means is that the government consists of individuals allocating, diverting and regulating resources that are not their own. They do this through the popular belief that their political processes grant them the de jure right to do so. It is this belief that I vehemently challenge. No political process can grant anyone the right to touch resources they didn't receive on a voluntary basis. People in the government may or may not be trying to do 'good things', but they are doing it with other people's resources. I don't care what they invent, or what your or they think they are doing. The grabbed other people's stuff under duress.

To sum all of this up, my desire is to destroy any entity that externalizes costs. This includes, gangs, thieves, mafias and governments. For me there is no 'government lite'. Smash it all to bits NOW is my modus operandi.

That may be your desire, but if you act on it you do end up rather hypocritical--faulting the state on its use of force yet considering it fine to use force for your own agendas.  It's kind of a "don't sink to their level" issue, dontcha think?  If anything, I would think a political process has more legitimacy behind it than an individual's desire does, though I personally think the way forward is to give people more freedom as to which jurisdiction they want to live under.  Speaking of which--Somalia is pretty anarchist these days.  Just saying.  The option is there.

[dissipate]

I wasn't calling the government to compete fair and square, although I do in other arenas of life demand a higher standard from it than what I typically see.  I was speaking specifically to anarchists who fault the state on its use of force.

So why do we have to play fair but the government doesn't? Your whole position sounds like a massive double standard. The government can audit us, spy on us, inflate away our wealth, give trillions away to the wealthy and connected, but we gotta 'play by the rules'.

That may be your desire, but if you act on it you do end up rather hypocritical--faulting the state on its use of force yet considering it fine to use force for your own agendas.  It's kind of a "don't sink to their level" issue, dontcha think?

I do not support 'opposition groups' or any kind of action that flies under a political banner. Therefore, I don't support a collectively organized overthrow of the government, because the leader of that group would just form another government. This has happened in Egypt and other countries where an unpopular regime has fallen, only to be replaced by an 'opposition group' that gets its meat hooks into the country's resources in due time. That being said, I have no problem with the use of violence to defend one's property against the terrorcrats. Unfortunately, such action is not currently practical and is rather foolish due to the overwhelming force the state employs. That's why I agree with John T. Kennedy, who says that the revolution will occur when the cost of ruling people goes up too high for it to be worthwhile: http://anti-state.com/article.php?article_id=242. Bitcoin is an excellent means towards that state of affairs.

If anything, I would think a political process has more legitimacy behind it than an individual's desire does, though I personally think the way forward is to give people more freedom as to which jurisdiction they want to live under.  Speaking of which--Somalia is pretty anarchist these days.  Just saying.  The option is there.

The political process is controlled by individuals with desires that are no more legitimate than anyone else's, but are actually less so, because as I stated before, the political process is an illegitimate means of acquiring resources. Take away all the the ceremonies, signatures and political cheerleaders and it is tantamount to saying "These guys over here want me to take and control your stuff, so I'm going to do it." Most people drive themselves crazy because they can't decide if the government is a legitimate entity providing services or just a type of 'mafia'. It really is just a 'mafia'.

As for Somalia, I leave that to be debated elsewhere. I would like to point out that North Korea is the logical epitome of a government enthusiast's world view. However, the vast majority of statists living elsewhere wouldn't want to live there. They enjoy too many luxuries and comforts provided by hampered but still anarchic business activities of their home countries.

[eMansipater]

I wasn't calling the government to compete fair and square, although I do in other arenas of life demand a higher standard from it than what I typically see.  I was speaking specifically to anarchists who fault the state on its use of force.

So why do we have to play fair but the government doesn't? Your whole position sounds like a massive double standard. The government can audit us, spy on us, inflate away our wealth, give trillions away to the wealthy and connected, but we gotta 'play by the rules'.

Calm down here--I've not advanced a position, merely followed a position to it's own conclusion.  I've yet to say anything about what I do or don't expect from a government, since I'm not addressing any government in this thread.  In this case the 'rules' to which you refer are not my own, but simply the rules of the position "force is wrong" applied reflexively.

If you were curious about my own position, here it is:  I don't believe the type of behaviour you describe is acceptable from a government, though I would finesse those concepts rather a lot further.  I do believe, however, that the most effective way to address any ineffective system is to build a better one.  Building things is a lot harder than grumbling about them, in my experience.

That may be your desire, but if you act on it you do end up rather hypocritical--faulting the state on its use of force yet considering it fine to use force for your own agendas.  It's kind of a "don't sink to their level" issue, dontcha think?

I do not support 'opposition groups' or any kind of action that flies under a political banner. Therefore, I don't support a collectively organized overthrow of the government, because the leader of that group would just form another government. This has happened in Egypt and other countries where an unpopular regime has fallen, only to be replaced by an 'opposition group' that gets its meat hooks into the country's resources in due time. That being said, I have no problem with the use of violence to defend one's property against the terrorcrats. Unfortunately, such action is not currently practical and is rather foolish due to the overwhelming force the state employs. That's why I agree with John T. Kennedy, who says that the revolution will occur when the cost of ruling people goes up too high for it to be worthwhile: http://anti-state.com/article.php?article_id=242. Bitcoin is an excellent means towards that state of affairs.

And having concluded what you conclude in that sentence, whether I agree with your reasons or not, don't you also include that bitcoin will be ever so much more successful if it is itself above politics?  Just a thought.  The one I typed up in the post which launched this thread. 

If anything, I would think a political process has more legitimacy behind it than an individual's desire does, though I personally think the way forward is to give people more freedom as to which jurisdiction they want to live under.  Speaking of which--Somalia is pretty anarchist these days.  Just saying.  The option is there.

The political process is controlled by individuals with desires that are no more legitimate than anyone else's, but are actually less so, because as I stated before, the political process is an illegitimate means of acquiring resources. Take away all the the ceremonies, signatures and political cheerleaders and it is tantamount to saying "These guys over here want me to take and control your stuff, so I'm going to do it." Most people drive themselves crazy because they can't decide if the government is a legitimate entity providing services or just a type of 'mafia'. It really is just a 'mafia'.

The position does rather improve by virtue of the fact that "Those guys over there", a.k.a. other citizens, submit themselves to the same rules they ask of you; and provide you with rather a lot of beneficial interactions to boot.  I presume that's why you don't want to move to Somalia?

The unattributed comment that "democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time" still rings rather true at this point in history.  I live in a city which has the world's longest continuously functioning Anarchist collective.  If Anarchy really works, I expect that collective to grow to the level where it can simply elect into place someone who will dissolve the government.  If it doesn't, one really has to wonder why.  In the meantime, I tend to disregard any person who rants on about the state while still using roads, municipal water, emergency services, etc.  I won't presume whether you are such a person or not, but if you have forgone the benefits of a modern state feel free to announce it proudly.

As for Somalia, I leave that to be debated elsewhere. I would like to point out that North Korea is the logical epitome of a government enthusiast's world view. However, the vast majority of statists living elsewhere wouldn't want to live there. They enjoy too many luxuries and comforts provided by hampered but still anarchic business activities of their home countries.

In real life opinions exist in more forms than just their most extreme.  But I suspect that you knew that, and that this comment was made rather disingenuously.  You do not help your case to generalise so.  Surely you will have to convince some portion of the citizenry to join you if you hope to bring about a functioning anarchism?

Anyways, if you're interested in discussing the issue of governments vs anarchy we ought to take it into "off-topic".  This thread is for the advancement of the idea that bitcoin should be above political viewpoints; it would be truly ironic to debate them here.


Basically, I'm planting a flag here for non-anarchists to be part of bitcoin.  The purpose of a flag is not what it signals to me, but what it signals to everyone else.  I'm here whether the flag flies or not .  Thanks for your comments, everyone.

[CryptikEnigma]

I'm an anarchist

Im an antichrist. Pleased to meet you.

LMAO

[ihrhase]

I might just as well say something here...

Not going to quote people...

OP:
Primarily your argument works out if you are not in tune with historical fact as opposed to the slop the public education system pours into people's heads.

Space: The US government threatened to level Brazil as it was actually approaching attaining orbit before the US and the Soviets were, they dismantled their project.

The ability of private enterprise to be involved in space without government in the US was thwarted when Kennedy made it a military task, furthermore the US government stopped (violently) three other attempts since the 70's for private interests to begin space tourism.

Not to mention the treaty the US was eagerly a part of, signed by Johnson to make it illegal by international law for anyone (individual, business or government) to own anything beyond the atmosphere.

Internet: Have you seen what the government did as far as internet was concerned?  If it was not for private commercial interests the internet would still be a barren network of text based messages.

It is never that it is some conspiracy, it is the natural effect of power when granted to humans, just because you know a guy and you think he is a good guy does not lend that government is a good idea or even the best of the worst ideas people can come up with.  When you give people power the incentive is to preserve and grow that power, history is a testimony to this fact.  Besides if your friend is in an elected office outside of some small district where everyone knows everyone else, I am going to say it is unlikely he is a good guy, as these types of people would not make the empty promises needed to attain elected office.

The guy who thinks libertarianism =/= anarchism
Mr. Libertarian, he is also known as Dr. Murray N. Rothbard.
Not all people who call themselves libertarians are anarchists, but then again not all people who are libertarians are actually libertarians as well (Wayne Allen Root and Bob Barr for pertinent examples), a logically consistent libertarian realizes he is an anarchist.

And the gentleman who brought up the Liberty Dollar case is absolutely correct, I think you guys do a great disservice to a bitcoin using community by not accepting the reality that government is VERY HOSTILE to competition with a function it decided it would have and no one else should (research Spooner and the Post Office).  Bernard von Nothaus was indited terrorism charges for minting silver and gold, no one here is special and potentially safe in any means, if you are adverse to breaking decrees by government it may be wise for you to forget this, it is already illegal for you to be Human (See Controlled Substances Act then research DMT).

[dissipate]

If you were curious about my own position, here it is:  I don't believe the type of behaviour you describe is acceptable from a government, though I would finesse those concepts rather a lot further.  I do believe, however, that the most effective way to address any ineffective system is to build a better one.  Building things is a lot harder than grumbling about them, in my experience.

As I pointed out before, you aren't asking us (anarchists) to merely build something better, you are asking us to build something better under the duress of regulation, taxation and forceful seizure. Let me know when I can build a private post office that delivers first class mail. Oh wait, someone already did. His name was Lysander
Spooner, and they shut down his operation. Don't tell anyone to build something better while at the same time you support individuals in power who are actively disallowing such private institutions to be built in the first place.

The position does rather improve by virtue of the fact that "Those guys over there", a.k.a. other citizens, submit themselves to the same rules they ask of you; and provide you with rather a lot of beneficial interactions to boot.

That doesn't improve the position. In fact it makes it look very bad. Your position is more of brute force, rather than anything rational. Many people support states for a number of reasons. I believe they do out of fear, uncertainty and doubt. None of that changes the illegitimacy of the actions of the individuals in government.

The unattributed comment that "democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time" still rings rather true at this point in history. 

I have no desire to investigate the best or worst form of government. I'd rather see the government shrivel up, die and blow away in the wind.

I live in a city which has the world's longest continuously functioning Anarchist collective.  If Anarchy really works, I expect that collective to grow to the level where it can simply elect into place someone who will dissolve the government.  If it doesn't, one really has to wonder why.  In the meantime, I tend to disregard any person who rants on about the state while still using roads, municipal water, emergency services, etc.  I won't presume whether you are such a person or not, but if you have forgone the benefits of a modern state feel free to announce it proudly.

Let me know when I can get a permit to rip out public roads and start building private ones. The fact that someone uses monopolized services has nothing to do with their ideology, and the government monopolizing such industries can't take any credit because there is nothing to compare their work to. You are striking out big time on logic.

In real life opinions exist in more forms than just their most extreme.  But I suspect that you knew that, and that this comment was made rather disingenuously.  You do not help your case to generalise so.  Surely you will have to convince some portion of the citizenry to join you if you hope to bring about a functioning anarchism?

No, what is disingenuous is switching back and forth between arguing for the free market and arguing for statism and socialism. By constantly switching back and forth between these two beliefs, one can look like they are bringing the 'best of both worlds' together. In reality, they have just created a new insanity.This is because they are saying the same entity that is needed to run the roads (something of lesser complexity) cannot run a stock market (something of much much greater complexity). And the same types of entities that can run a stock market cannot run roads. Third way politics is insanity. Fortunately, I was able to free myself from such conundrums years ago.

You clearly didn't read the essay I linked to because your question was already answered there, and the answer is no. People don't need to be convinced to bring about a functioning anarchy anymore than they need to be 'convinced' of the merits of millions of already preexisting businesses. Did anyone need to be 'convinced' that a supermarket, donut shop or movie theater should be built? Not really. They already desired groceries, donuts and movies. In the same way a functioning anarchy would be created out of individual desire in absence of government institutions.

Anyways, if you're interested in discussing the issue of governments vs anarchy we ought to take it into "off-topic".  This thread is for the advancement of the idea that bitcoin should be above political viewpoints; it would be truly ironic to debate them here.

No, I don't want to debate this any further because your arguments have been very poor, and have been addressed in many other places all over the Internet. Here is one place you can start off at: http://www.ozarkia.net/bill/anarchism/faq.html

[eMansipater]

I think it's safe to say that this last post brings us full circle to my original point 

[sortedmush]

I think it's safe to say that this last post brings us full circle to my original point 

Nice try.

But let's wait and see what happens when BitCoin takes off. Do you really think government will welcome it with open arms?

[ryepdx]

Nice try.

But let's wait and see what happens when BitCoin takes off. Do you really think government will welcome it with open arms?

Depends on the rhetoric swirling around in the bitcoin community at the time. It's possible that we could sell governments on the idea if we undertook to do so. Though bitcoins are a cash analogue, they are ultimately more trackable due to the existence of the blockchain. If a government were to get ahold of a mapping of addresses to identities, calculating tax owed by an individual from bitcoin activity would be as simple as mining the blockchain for data. If a country moved to using bitcoins exclusively as legal tender, they could feasibly replace most of their tax departments with a computer program.

[eMansipater]

I think it's safe to say that this last post brings us full circle to my original point  

Nice try.

But let's wait and see what happens when BitCoin takes off. Do you really think government will welcome it with open arms?

I think it depends rather a lot on what percentage of BitCoin users rant on about it being a tool to end all governments and fiat money in an anarchist revolution.  If that percentage is low I suspect they will see it the way I do--as just another disruptive technology (in the business sense, not the social) with incredible potential for fuelling online innovation.

In my experience, people never fail to underestimate the difference between established powerbrokers disliking or opposing change, and an organised government conspiracy to thwart it.  Some time ago an otherwise highly intelligent friend of mine told me that the concept of open source would shrivel up and disappear because the business interests of proprietary software were far too powerful to take on, and they were all in cahoots with political heavyweights.  It hasn't quite turned out that way .  On the other hand, the former hasn't completely displaced and destroyed the latter either.  Instead, they exist in parallel segments for the time being, and I suspect it will be a long time before open source truly enters a position of clear dominance.  That's the way disruptive technologies tend to work--Linux is finally desktop-usable due to Ubuntu et al, but it hasn't destroyed Windows.  It has however, like Firefox-IE competition, kept Microsoft on its toes and been an indispensable force in the push for open standards through preventing wider homogenization of the market.

That's how I see BitCoin--as the Linux or p2p filesharing of the money world.  True, established players won't like it and will use dirty tricks of many kinds to slow it down or try and stop it.  But there won't be a full-on conspiracy to destroy it.  People have to keep things in perspective--currency is one tool of power for governments, but far from the only one.  Even people directly invested in the current fiat mechanisms are not quaking in their boots because BitCoin exists.  They're just plain underestimating it, and later they'll be fighting it like Microsoft fights open source--sneakily and underhandedly, provided we don't give them the ammunition to do it effectively in the court of public opinion.  Don't use bitcoin to trade in illegal arms, fund terrorism, and advertise tax evasion, and we'll all do just fine.

[sortedmush]

Don't use bitcoin to trade in illegal arms, fund terrorism, and advertise tax evasion, and we'll all do just fine.

To me this translates to:

Don't trade is arms unless they conform to a violently imposed criteria.
Don't fund violence for the purpose of advancing a political ideology.
Don't advertise avoiding funding violence for the purpose of advancing a political ideology.
And we won't have the violence we've funded used against us.

I don't see what microsoft and open source and linux have to do with anything.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I know there are people out there in government who think they're doing good. Maybe all of them are convinced of it. The fact is, it's violent. And I will point out that violence for the court of public opinion to see.

I'm not interested in using BitCoin to violate anyones rights, or for anything immoral. I'm interested in using BitCoin to provide and trade in goods and services on a voluntary basis. And I will.

[kiba]

This is why kitty activism is so important.

The way people use bitcoin gottach be so innocuous that it would be political suicide to attack bitcoin.

[CryptikEnigma]

Nice try.

But let's wait and see what happens when BitCoin takes off. Do you really think government will welcome it with open arms?

Depends on the rhetoric swirling around in the bitcoin community at the time. It's possible that we could sell governments on the idea if we undertook to do so. Though bitcoins are a cash analogue, they are ultimately more trackable due to the existence of the blockchain. If a government were to get ahold of a mapping of addresses to identities, calculating tax owed by an individual from bitcoin activity would be as simple as mining the blockchain for data. If a country moved to using bitcoins exclusively as legal tender, they could feasibly replace most of their tax departments with a computer program.

At that point I would stop using bitcoin and I'm sure many others would too.

[marcus_of_augustus]

They're just plain underestimating it, and later they'll be fighting it like Microsoft fights open source--sneakily and underhandedly, provided we don't give them the ammunition to do it effectively in the court of public opinion.  Don't use bitcoin to trade in illegal arms, fund terrorism, and advertise tax evasion, and we'll all do just fine.

... I think you forget paedophilia and drugs. Yout analogy with open-source arguments haven't considered that the current monetary system is broken and thrashing about in its death throes and destroying large parts of civilised society as it goes. Puts a different slant on the whole ... "we can work with the current power-brokers" line of thinking I'd say. If they resist bitcoin as fervently as they have resisted the move back towards gold and silver there maybe more than just a few dirty tricks.

The subject title for this thread should have been "Government versus Bitcoin".

[eMansipater]

Don't use bitcoin to trade in illegal arms, fund terrorism, and advertise tax evasion, and we'll all do just fine.

To me this translates to:

Don't trade is arms unless they conform to a violently imposed criteria.
Don't fund violence for the purpose of advancing a political ideology.
Don't advertise avoiding funding violence for the purpose of advancing a political ideology.
And we won't have the violence we've funded used against us.

To each their own language--that's the beauty of a diverse society.  But I'm content to raise my kids with those three things as ironclad rules, and I don't consider myself a monster for doing so.

... I think you forget paedophilia and drugs.

You're right, we can include those two as well.  Guess I'm just not a very imaginative lawbreaker--I was thinking more about the "being labelled domestic terrorists" angle.  And again, two things I'm going to advise anyone I care about to stay the hell away from.

Is it really a violent conspiracy against all that is good and holy for an individual who is a BitCoin advocate to propose people steer clear of gun-running, terrorism-funding, paedophilia, drugs, and tax evasion as a simple way to help bitcoin succeed?  It's not a philosophical treatise, it's just an opportunity--seizing it can't be too much to ask from such a highly intelligent community.  If it were, I would think I'd seriously misunderstood the potential scope of BitCoin technology.

At the end of the day, people need to realise there's a pretty big difference between keyboard philosophy and real-world change.  If there's anyone here who aspires to Waco, they need to be slapped upside the head.  And if there's a single reply here about either the specifics of that situation or the completely flawed government response, you have missed the whole point.  Even from a "Davidian Branch Davidian" standpoint, the people in that scenario were fundamentally lacking the ability for civil interaction with the world at large; had they possessed it they would still be alive.  Anyone who thinks different has never seen a man die.

To take this back out of the esoteric, what I'm saying is people can and should believe whatever their conviction tells them.  But real-world actions have consequences.  So is BitCoin going to be a philosophical exercise, or a real-world technology?  It's up to us.

[marcus_of_augustus]

So is BitCoin going to be a philosophical exercise, or a real-world technology?  It's up to us.

I think the point was that your real-world is not the same as anyone elses real-world, and why should it be?

If you mean mainstream, well that changes, gold coin and slavery were once mainstream. Placing the current norms of one nation, or some might say failing state, as strictures on the success of bitcoins seems a little naive. The black economy is huge, even legitimate govt.s jealously vie for a share of the money that goes through it, why should bitcoin shun it?

[ryepdx]

At the end of the day, people need to realise there's a pretty big difference between keyboard philosophy and real-world change.  If there's anyone here who aspires to Waco, they need to be slapped upside the head.  And if there's a single reply here about either the specifics of that situation or the completely flawed government response, you have missed the whole point.  Even from a "Davidian Branch Davidian" standpoint, the people in that scenario were fundamentally lacking the ability for civil interaction with the world at large; had they possessed it they would still be alive.  Anyone who thinks different has never seen a man die.

To take this back out of the esoteric, what I'm saying is people can and should believe whatever their conviction tells them.  But real-world actions have consequences.  So is BitCoin going to be a philosophical exercise, or a real-world technology?  It's up to us.

+1

I think the point was that your real-world is not the same as anyone elses real-world, and why should it be?

If you mean mainstream, well that changes, gold coin and slavery were once mainstream. Placing the current norms of one nation, or some might say failing state, as strictures on the success of bitcoins seems a little naive. The black economy is huge, even legitimate govt.s jealously vie for a share of the money that goes through it, why should bitcoin shun it?

You speak as though the Bitcoin Community were monolithic. We're not. We're obviously a group of people united by nothing more than a desire to see bitcoins succeed. What each of us thinks that means will differ, by necessity. Nobody can tell you what to do with your bitcoins.

That said, I think a lot of political ideology has gotten tied up with bitcoins and I think that may end up hurting our common cause in the long run. It would be best for us all if all our apologists advocated were bitcoins. It's harder to sell bitcoins and a fringe political ideology. Let them be separate. I for one will do my part to make sure it's known that you don't need to be an agorist to like bitcoins.

[marcus_of_augustus]

Yeah, yeah, we've all heard this "go along to get along" BS all our life, it's not like it is anything new.

The next thing you know you'll be advocating for a new gubmint agency to have oversight powers of the bitcoin OSS development standards, wouldn't that just be boon for all you mainstreamists, it would be the ultimate stamp of approval for those that need "official" affirmation before taking a pee ... then what?, back to square one, vested interests co-opting the agency that has the reins of power, you could make your bitcoin agency a branch of fed. res., is that 'official' enough for ya?

At some point you've got to show some spine and say which side you are on. If you go along to get along you are putting your stamp of approval on everything the State does in your name, the blood is on your hands. The crimes are too great and obvious now, you can no longer just pay your taxes and close your eyes, their sins are your sins once you have knowledge and acquiesce. Politics and money are intertwined, no third way sorry ... free money or socialist crimes against humanity?

[Anonymous]

Nice try.

But let's wait and see what happens when BitCoin takes off. Do you really think government will welcome it with open arms?

Depends on the rhetoric swirling around in the bitcoin community at the time. It's possible that we could sell governments on the idea if we undertook to do so. Though bitcoins are a cash analogue, they are ultimately more trackable due to the existence of the blockchain. If a government were to get ahold of a mapping of addresses to identities, calculating tax owed by an individual from bitcoin activity would be as simple as mining the blockchain for data. If a country moved to using bitcoins exclusively as legal tender, they could feasibly replace most of their tax departments with a computer program.

At that point I would stop using bitcoin and I'm sure many others would too.

Correct answer. Either that or fire up an anarchist block chain

[eMansipater]

It's possible that we could sell governments on the idea if we undertook to do so. Though bitcoins are a cash analogue, they are ultimately more trackable due to the existence of the blockchain. If a government were to get ahold of a mapping of addresses to identities, calculating tax owed by an individual from bitcoin activity would be as simple as mining the blockchain for data. If a country moved to using bitcoins exclusively as legal tender, they could feasibly replace most of their tax departments with a computer program.

BitCoin doesn't need to be sold to government entities as a tool in their toolkit, any more than HTML needed to be.  It just needs to succeed on its own merits, at which point they can use it for technical applications in the same way that there exist government websites--alongside everyone else.  The point is rather that governments had no need to fight HTML.  Also, to suggest that tracking identities through bitcoin will be a bonus of the system is to misunderstand the underlying technology.  Used carefully, BitCoin is almost exactly like cash.  And just like cash, those who report and identify their cash incomes are taxed, while those who do not are not.  BitCoin does not change this.

However, it does enable more practical applications of this scenario, such as accounting programs which do your taxes automatically through the magic of perfect digital receipting.  If I were a particularly forethinking government analyst (yes I mean you reading this thread ) I would be devising a standardised method of digital receipting to be accepted officially for tax purposes alongside the digital cash, saving both companies and individuals an immense amount of the wasted time that goes into the keeping of paper records; not to mention drastically simplifying the job of government revenue agents and auditors.  I've been wanting to do my taxes automatically for years, and the lack of a practical digital receipting standard is the primary reason I can't!  It would be a big winner at the polls, which means a big promotion for you-know-who.  Hint, hint.

Keeping BitCoin above politics means not trying to slant it in the other direction either.  Bitcoin is what bitcoin is, and it is ingenious.  All we have to do is not ruin it through either technical distortion or socio-idealogical hobbling.  Bitcoin isn't a philosophy like statism or anarchism, it's a technology like HTML or BitTorrent.  Don't mess with the core protocol, don't scare off future enthusiasts, and we're good to go whatever your reason for wanting it to succeed.

[em3rgentOrdr]

The government just labeled anyone who supports competing currencies a special kind of domestic terrorist. Maybe its time to stop defending them and get on board with the Libertarians

Ditto...yup: http://stossel.blogs.foxbusiness.com/2011/03/22/starting-a-new-currency-is-%E2%80%9Cdomestic-terrorism%E2%80%9D/ has a quote from the U.S. Attorney who prosecuted Bernard von NotHaus for coining a competing gold dollar currency:

“It is a violation of federal law … to create private coin or currency systems to compete with the official coinage and currency of the United States.  Attempts to undermine the legitimate currency of this country are simply a unique form of domestic terrorism. While these forms of anti-government activities do not involve violence, they are every bit as insidious and represent a clear and present danger to the economic stability of this country."

I think it's time for you, eMansipater, to reluctantly accept the fact that your efforts to promote bitcoin make you into a domestic terrorist, as far as the US Government is concerned, whether you like it or not.  Admittedly, it took me a while to embrace the fact that I'm an "enemy of the state".

Not everyone thinks the government here is evil. I genuinely believe there's many individuals who believe they can do/are doing good for people. However the entire system has evolved into a corrupted organism. It's not an evil conspiracy but a 'stand alone complex'.

Stand Alone Complex eventually came to represent a phenomenon where unrelated, yet very similar actions of individuals create a seemingly concerted effort.

Thanks for introducing me to concept Stand Alone Complex.  Yes, there is no conspiracy, but rather The State is an ecosystem/organism that, through natural processes of the self-interested individuals making it up, evolves it into a parasite living off of its subjects.

Bitcoin should be above politics.

Exactly.  BTW, please stop implying that anarchism is a political ideology.  Anarchism is a lack of political beliefs, just like Atheism is a lack of religious beliefs.

I was speaking specifically to anarchists who fault the state on its use of force.

I think you are conflating anarchism with pacifism.  Anarchists of the market-anarchist variety are not necessarily pacifists, but rather simply believe that voluntarily-funded competing providers of law, security, and any other good are preferable to a coercive monopoly.

Nice try.

But let's wait and see what happens when BitCoin takes off. Do you really think government will welcome it with open arms?

Depends on the rhetoric swirling around in the bitcoin community at the time. It's possible that we could sell governments on the idea if we undertook to do so. Though bitcoins are a cash analogue, they are ultimately more trackable due to the existence of the blockchain. If a government were to get ahold of a mapping of addresses to identities, calculating tax owed by an individual from bitcoin activity would be as simple as mining the blockchain for data. If a country moved to using bitcoins exclusively as legal tender, they could feasibly replace most of their tax departments with a computer program.

Wait a minute...can't people simply use a new address for every transaction?  But yeah, anyway, I sometimes wonder how long it will take for some government somewhere to reluctantly start accepting bitcoin as legitimate payment of taxes...  Just like how some 3rd world countries have ended up pegging their currency to the dollar or simply just declared the US dollar as their main currency.

Yeah, yeah, we've all heard this "go along to get along" BS all our life, it's not like it is anything new.

The next thing you know you'll be advocating for a new gubmint agency to have oversight powers of the bitcoin OSS development standards, wouldn't that just be boon for all you mainstreamists, it would be the ultimate stamp of approval for those that need "official" affirmation before taking a pee ... then what?, back to square one, vested interests co-opting the agency that has the reins of power, you could make your bitcoin agency a branch of fed. res., is that 'official' enough for ya?

At some point you've got to show some spine and say which side you are on. If you go along to get along you are putting your stamp of approval on everything the State does in your name, the blood is on your hands. The crimes are too great and obvious now, you can no longer just pay your taxes and close your eyes, their sins are your sins once you have knowledge and acquiesce. Politics and money are intertwined, no third way sorry ... free money or socialist crimes against humanity?

+1.  I'm tired of all this "go along to get along" harmonious BS too.  I wasted so much time in Libertarian Party and Ron Paul politics where they would always tell me to shut up whenever I tried to point out the gun in the room.

Anyway, another great thing about bitcoin is that it introduces a lot of statists (def: staism is the advocacy of the state to solve social problems) like eMansipater who are intrigued by the secure, distributed, p2p nature of bitcoin to the wonderful world of secure, distributed, p2p law/security of market-anarchism, even though they really didn't want to be! 

[sortedmush]

Question for eMansipator.

Do you advocate the use of violence against me, for refusing to fund violence against you?

[kiba]

When disruptive technologies...things tend to be...disruptive.

[ryepdx]

Nice try.

But let's wait and see what happens when BitCoin takes off. Do you really think government will welcome it with open arms?

Depends on the rhetoric swirling around in the bitcoin community at the time. It's possible that we could sell governments on the idea if we undertook to do so. Though bitcoins are a cash analogue, they are ultimately more trackable due to the existence of the blockchain. If a government were to get ahold of a mapping of addresses to identities, calculating tax owed by an individual from bitcoin activity would be as simple as mining the blockchain for data. If a country moved to using bitcoins exclusively as legal tender, they could feasibly replace most of their tax departments with a computer program.

At that point I would stop using bitcoin and I'm sure many others would too.

The beauty of bitcoins is that a comprehensive mapping could never be had. Just as I could open a foreign account and hide my riches, or else deal only in cash, I could also keep myself off the mapping by starting a new bitcoin address, or several bitcoin addresses, or even simply never reporting in for the mapping. Or else simply associating my identity with an address I never intend to use.

The beauty of bitcoins is that any such mapping would have to be voluntary. It could be a useful tool for those who want to pay their taxes in a much simpler way than can presently be had. But the government would have a hell of a time forcing anyone into the map who doesn't want to be there.

[nster]

auto-tax per transaction + tax when receiving payment from employer + tax to buy from an approved retailer seems quite easy

[ryepdx]

Yeah, yeah, we've all heard this "go along to get along" BS all our life, it's not like it is anything new.

The next thing you know you'll be advocating for a new gubmint agency to have oversight powers of the bitcoin OSS development standards, wouldn't that just be boon for all you mainstreamists, it would be the ultimate stamp of approval for those that need "official" affirmation before taking a pee ... then what?, back to square one, vested interests co-opting the agency that has the reins of power, you could make your bitcoin agency a branch of fed. res., is that 'official' enough for ya?

At some point you've got to show some spine and say which side you are on. If you go along to get along you are putting your stamp of approval on everything the State does in your name, the blood is on your hands. The crimes are too great and obvious now, you can no longer just pay your taxes and close your eyes, their sins are your sins once you have knowledge and acquiesce. Politics and money are intertwined, no third way sorry ... free money or socialist crimes against humanity?

All I'm saying is that it's a lot easier to sell people an idea bit by bit than it is to try cramming it down their throats wholesale. Most progress is made inch by inch and step by step, not in some "great leap forward."

Edit:

Keeping BitCoin above politics means not trying to slant it in the other direction either.  Bitcoin is what bitcoin is, and it is ingenious.  All we have to do is not ruin it through either technical distortion or socio-idealogical hobbling.  Bitcoin isn't a philosophy like statism or anarchism, it's a technology like HTML or BitTorrent.  Don't mess with the core protocol, don't scare off future enthusiasts, and we're good to go whatever your reason for wanting it to succeed.

Once again, eMansipater takes the words right out of my mouth.

[Anonymous]

Paying tax is a self incriminating process. Bitcoin makes that choice obvious since the government will have no choice but to believe you. How about instead of us begging the government the government begs us for a change ?

They might actually listen then the way the propaganda tells us they do.


Tread your own path.

[deadlizard]

Paying tax is a self incriminating process.

most people have never paid tax, it's gone before you get your hands on it.

[marcus_of_augustus]

Most progress is made inch by inch and step by step, not in some "great leap forward."

Wrong.

Most progress IS made by great leaps forward ... the inch by inch stuff is just a story for the masses that there is "progress". More mainstream, socialist pablum. But that's fine, stick to your fairy tales and let the individualist, free thinkers sort our your money problems, but there will be a fee involved.

[eMansipater]

I'm afraid all this anarchy vs non-anarchy stuff is way off topic.  My original post is essentially saying that if an alien scientist peers down onto our planet it's going to mark in its notebook

Code:

diverse community --> bitcoin technology proliferates within earthian intertubes
community restricted to anarchists and libertarians --> bitcoin technology fails to proliferate
people in bitcoin community rant on and on about being at war with the state --> state calls them domestic terrorists

all while making little yoda sounds under its breath.  It's not a philosophical treatise.  It's just an experienced attempt to estimate which events lead to other events, including which events do or do not lead to government opposition, pointing out that it's not inherent.  If you want to argue that all non-anarchists are violent repressors you can do it in off-topic and I might even reply to you.  But this really has shit to do with the bitcoin protocol.  I'm sorry to put it that bluntly.  Start a new thread there, copy-paste your posts, and I'll be happy to elaborate.

Keeping the bitcoin protocol different than whether or not we all agree philosophically is kinda my whole point here.  There's no "go along to get along" because I'm not telling you what to do.  I'm just talking tangible consequences here.  You can not care about them, but to pretend they don't exist is just plain naive and I'm telling you straight up that techie, intelligent people who want to use bitcoin will not use it if it's this whole packaged worldview rather than just tech.  Count myself among them.  Convincing me to use BitCoin and convincing me to be an anarchist are two very different battles.  And I'm not alone.

[ryepdx]

Most progress is made inch by inch and step by step, not in some "great leap forward."

Wrong.

Most progress IS made by great leaps forward ... the inch by inch stuff is just a story for the masses that there is "progress". More mainstream, socialist pablum. But that's fine, stick to your fairy tales and let the individualist, free thinkers sort our your money problems, but there will be a fee involved.

I guess I should define "inch by inch" v.s. "great leap forward." Electing a black man President of the United States in the 1950s would have been a "great leap forward." There was still a lot of ground to be covered by the civil rights movement before that happened. All of it, from desegregation to campaigns against racism, had to happen before there could be a black President of the United States.

[kiba]

Disruptive technologies are the kind of technologies that can't be stopped by simple idealogy and simple crushing. Sooner or later, the effect of such technologies will realized and all those Luddites will have to face reality.

[ryepdx]

Disruptive technologies are the kind of technologies that can't be stopped by simple idealogy and simple crushing. Sooner or later, the effect of such technologies will realized and all those Luddites will have to face reality.

+1

[marcus_of_augustus]

But one thing's for certain--if we turn bitcoin (or even the community surrounding it) into a destroy-all-governments, end-of-all-fiat-money, never-pay-taxes-again conspiracy, it will end up on the terrorist watch list before the first report even hits the desk.

We can't "turn" bitcoin into anything, you may spin it as you wish. But you do not seem to understand the nature of money, fiat money, historic gold standard politics, hard money versus an out-of-control government (your friends).

When hard money comes back they will cease to exist in the most part because they no longer have to the power to expand uncontrollably without tax-payer say-so. They will hate bitcoin inherently no matter how you spin it. If you can convince them that bitcoin is good for govt., go ahead, it will be the greatest trojan horse attack in history.

Communism learnt the hard way that the free market for capital will not be denied, so will the soft-commie socialists currently infesting western mainstream politics. It will destroy them, whether you like it or not. Do you think all the turmoil in the West with the massive deficits, debts, political unrest is unrelated to the financial crises in capital markets? The great fiat money experiment is unravelling. I think the best favour you can do for your friends in govt. is to tell them to brush up on their skill-sets so they can find real jobs that produce stuff after the collapse of the fiat-money driven socialist orgy we are living through.

I wish you well, work bitcoin into govt. thinking but it is like asking turkeys to vote for thanksgiving.

[river]

I agree with moa for the most part.

Besides, most people in Common Law Rule nations are to stupid (brain washed) to know or WANT to know that paying tax is a CRIME by constitutional rule (ie: common law rule).  Every person has the right, not privilege, but RIGHT to earn a living (ie: business) without interference from the Government.

This only reason ANYONE has EVERY paid taxes threw out recorded (or unrecorded) history is because some tyranical, warlord, murdering psycho with a gun tells them to 'pay or their family dies with them' ... these are the same people that tell you "give up ALL your rights and privileges and means of SECURITY and we will protect you .. but if you keep any of your rights, privileges and means of SECURITY we will kill you .... seeeee, we care!"  ... there has never been a worse crime against ALL humanity than taxes or the central banks that criminally created them.

You don't have to be a hater, lover, or Pizza eater to know that bitcoin and other p2p systems ie: p2pdns are designed to give people back power over their own lives.

Heck, if you don't want control over yourself, give it up, the choice  is always yours and I will support your choice ... but don't try to take mine .. or I will take yours .. and you won't like it either!

[JA37]

This only reason ANYONE has EVERY paid taxes threw out recorded (or unrecorded) history is because some tyranical, warlord, murdering psycho with a gun tells them to 'pay or their family dies with them' ... these are the same people that tell you "give up ALL your rights and privileges and means of SECURITY and we will protect you .. but if you keep any of your rights, privileges and means of SECURITY we will kill you .... seeeee, we care!"  ... there has never been a worse crime against ALL humanity than taxes or the central banks that criminally created them.

Dear lord, you really lay it on thick don't you?

[fetokun]

Besides, most people in Common Law Rule nations are to stupid (brain washed) to know or WANT to know that paying tax is a CRIME by constitutional rule (ie: common law rule).  Every person has the right, not privilege, but RIGHT to earn a living (ie: business) without interference from the Government.

That's the kind of exaggeration that the author of this topic was referring to!
I agree that governments all over the world are incredibly oversized.

But if you live in one of these nations and you benefit from the tax-payed services provided by the greedy government (even if they are crappy), it's not right just refusing to pay your share saying everything is unconstitutional or a crime.

[river]

perhaps thick .. but thousands of years of history shows that central "authorities" can never be trusted. (and I use the term "authorities" loosely since we are the ones that put them there and we are supposed to be their bosses .. hence we are the authorities)

They have always taken what they want at gun point .. this is a historical fact .. so yes .. maybe thick .. but maybe not thick enough

Take Canada for example .. the Supreme Corrupt Courts of Canada recently ruled that Canadian citizens do NOT have the right to bear arms for security.  This is of course being enforced by Canadian citizens (COPS) with GUNS???  Do we see a corrupt conflict of tyrannical interest here?

So the people with the GUNS are telling everyone else that they are not allow to have guns !!??  Now, whether you believe in firearms or not is not the point, but the RIGHT to security is a fundamental right of every citizen.  I have had a home invasion before and the "central authorities" did everything they could to arrest and imprison ME for the crime.

You call the cops when you and your family get attacked, and assuming they don't arrest YOU to get arrest count up, they will generally show up just in time to draw the chalk lines.

Do we see tyrannical, corrupt, central authorities here .. I think soooo !!!

Peer-to-peer systems that both, cannot be monitored by the "central authorities", and take the power away from "central authorities" and put it back in the hands of the people where it belongs .. are the only way to go.

Did you know for example .. that in the U.S.A. 100% of  INCOME TAX (that mean all of it) goes ONLY to the interest on the loans from the global central banks ... not one penny of it goes the Nation itself.    Their war budget just happens to be EXACTLY the same as the corporate tax they generate .. and local communities STILL pay for ALL their community functions (like schools) from LOCAL taxes on the services used ... road are maintained from costs at the pump ... and so on ...

So NO ... there is NO exaggeration here .. this is all technical facts from history and government records.

[marcus_of_augustus]

But if you live in one of these nations and you benefit from the tax-payed services provided by the greedy government (even if they are crappy), it's not right just refusing to pay your share saying everything is unconstitutional or a crime.

What if you don't benefit? What if it is always a net loss in your dealings with the state? You are only ever paying into the system and getting screwed by big guys and never getting anything tangible out of it except contributing to a net harming of humanity?

What are your options then? If you don't pay they put you in jail, is that not a threat of violence?

What if it really is a crime what they are doing? What is 'right' at that point?

[em3rgentOrdr]

I suggest eMansipater and friends fork the bitcoin client code to automatically send a percentage of each transaction to the government.

Disruptive technologies are the kind of technologies that can't be stopped by simple idealogy and simple crushing. Sooner or later, the effect of such technologies will realized and all those Luddites will have to face reality.

+1. 

Yes.  Indeed, I have come to realize that market-anarchism is inevitable.  Thanks to disruptive technologies such as the internet, cryptography, and bitcoin, it is only a matter of time.  The seeds have been sown.  The next evolution of human society has begun.

[fetokun]

But if you live in one of these nations and you benefit from the tax-payed services provided by the greedy government (even if they are crappy), it's not right just refusing to pay your share saying everything is unconstitutional or a crime.

What if you don't benefit? What if it is always a net loss in your dealings with the state? You are only ever paying into the system and getting screwed by big guys and never getting anything tangible out of it except contributing to a net harming of humanity?

What are your options then? If you don't pay they put you in jail, is that not a threat of violence?

What if it really is a crime what they are doing? What is 'right' at that point?

I really don't know.
In anyway I look at these questions I get to the same question: what could you do when the main public just doesn't care enough? I have no answer.

[river]

I suggest eMansipater and friends fork the bitcoin client code to automatically send a percentage of each transaction to the government.

so what .. are you a Nazi spy or something that works for the government ... are you serious .... this is why they made it open source .. so douche bags like you can't take hard earned food off someone else plate.

It's not bad enough that the government {BEEPS} everyone and makes you idiots believe that all their criminal activities are lawful, but now you want to {BEEP} a perfectly working system ...

What was the point of having anonymous addresses, encryption, and peer-to-peer untraceable features, if dumb {BEEPS} like you want to make it all traceable to GIVE IT ALL TO THEM ... and put your asses in jail for NOT OBEYING YOUR {BEEPING} TAX GOD!   BEEP DUH!

I REALLY don't like to curse .. but fucking think people ... you dumb asses have obviously NEVER looked at the Magna Carta or Common Law Rules, you've obviously NEVER even attempted to seek out your rights or liberties, and you obviously don't want them, your too {BEEPING} scared of another MORTAL to grow a set.   SO BE IT .. but do NOT attempt to {BEEP} the rest of the planet just because your a retarded {BEEP}.

"I suggest eMansipater and friends fork the bitcoin client code to automatically send a percentage of each transaction to the government."   OK .. let say you idiots do this ... first off .. NO ONE will use the system anymore ... cause it would suck then just like FIAT.
Also ... which government .. there are hundreds of them ... are you going to make people in Australia pay Taxes to the U.S. or maybe Britian ... dumb shits ... it's a stupid and NON-feasible idea.

People that keep on about "ooohh ..all these CRIMINALS not wanting to pay THEIR SHARE of TAXES" .. {BEEP} you .. there's something on your shoulders you've never used before .. and REALLY need to start ... it's called a BRAIN.

It only take 1 BILLIONTH of a Volt to have a simply thought ... try not to electrocute yourselves.

[Anonymous]

I agree with that last post.  ^^^

[em3rgentOrdr]

Lol!  I hope you guys realize I'm being sarcastic!  Anyway, I doubt that very many people would choose to use the client that skims of part of every transaction for the government.

[deadlizard]

Anyone who wants to change the operation of the bitcoin network can just FORK OFF.

[eMansipater]

Do you advocate the use of violence against me, for refusing to fund violence against you?

Nope--I'm only looking for voluntary participants.  That's why I'm in favour of free movement across borders so that people can live under whichever jurisdiction they want.  I also think that having a good variety of jurisdictions is beneficial, provided that none of them prevent people from exiting should they so desire.  But people have to commit to jurisdictions--no living in one and keeping all your money offshore to avoid its laws.  I'm not inherently opposed to meta-jurisdictions but they not to be worked out carefully and typically will result in overlaps by design.  It's still not a perfect system because some issues addressing societies automatically transcend any boundaries, such as epidemiology.  But at this point in history I believe it's a good balance.

Paying tax is a self incriminating process.

most people have never paid tax, it's gone before you get your hands on it.

Not sure how it is where you live, but where I live those of us running businesses pay tax ourselves after we calculate our profits.

When hard money comes back they will cease to exist in the most part because they no longer have to the power to expand uncontrollably without tax-payer say-so. They will hate bitcoin inherently no matter how you spin it. If you can convince them that bitcoin is good for govt., go ahead, it will be the greatest trojan horse attack in history.

First of all, it's very hard to interact with any of this because you consistently fail to differentiate between the american government and other governments.  But it's quite naive to believe that either will be "ceasing to exist" presently.  If I draw on my limited knowledge of american history, the great depression was a big deal, but it didn't cause the government to blink out of existence.  Actions have consequences, and there has been some massive financial mismanagement, particularly in america, but these sorts of things lead to changes in administrations and shifts in voting sentiment, not to elimination of governments.  Just like at Iceland for a prime example.  If you believe otherwise, put your money where your mouth is.  I and probably a lot of other people would be happy to take your money over the idea that government will cease to exist in any major country within the next 20 years.  If this isn't what you meant, then it's probably time to tone down the rhetoric because the thermostat is set too high.

Whatever else you believe you must realise that most people today are not anarchists, and therefore participate willingly in modern democracies despite their flaws.

So NO ... there is NO exaggeration here .. this is all technical facts from history and government records.

If there's no current internet rule about the correlation between all-caps and exaggeration, I hereby claim it!

COLEMAN'S RULE:  ALL claims containing ALL CAPS exaggerate, INCLUDING THIS ONE

I suggest eMansipater and friends fork the bitcoin client code to automatically send a percentage of each transaction to the government.

Sorry em3rgentOrder, we're too busy trying to do this with banknotes

Anyone who wants to change the operation of the bitcoin network can just FORK OFF.

lol, nice.

[sortedmush]

Do you advocate the use of violence against me, for refusing to fund violence against you?

Nope--I'm only looking for voluntary participants ..  But people have to commit to jurisdictions

Doublethink much?

[eMansipater]

Do you advocate the use of violence against me, for refusing to fund violence against you?

Nope--I'm only looking for voluntary participants ..  But people have to commit to jurisdictions

Doublethink much?

Wrong bolding.  People have to commit to jurisdictions.  You're either in or out, but you can change your status without coercion (at some limited rate).  Otherwise this is just ridiculous--live in a country but then pop out if you're ever charged with a crime, etc.  Keep in mind some jurisdictions could be anarchist zones.

[sortedmush]

Wrong bolding.  People have to commit to jurisdictions.  You're either in or out, but you can change your status without coercion (at some limited rate).  Otherwise this is just ridiculous--live in a country but then pop out if you're ever charged with a crime, etc.  Keep in mind some jurisdictions could be anarchist zones.

Ok, now we're getting somewhere. Correct me if I'm wrong, but are you advocating the validity of the social contract?

[eMansipater]

@sortedmush discussion continued in Off-topic.  Any other questions about my own approach to anarchism and governments ought to be quoted and continued there.

[em3rgentOrdr]

Ahh, the social contract...it's not very social, and it's not really a contract.

[river]

Anyone who wants to change the operation of the bitcoin network can just FORK OFF.

In my previous post I said do not screw with bitcoin ... I never said do not fork a new project .. but that NEW project that is forked would NOT be bitcoin would it.. it would be something else that does not interact with bitcoin ...  but to alter the operation of bitcoin would be to fundamentally change it's nature .. no more anonymity, no more individual control, just once again .. a central "controlling" authority at gun point, most people, if not everyone .. would simply scrap it.

so I don't care about a fork per say .. I care about when people talk about a FORK that is not a fork .. it's an alteration of the existing bitcoin itself ... if you want another project  great .. go for it, start something new and unrelated with different rules .. but don't screw the existing one is all I'm saying, you can improve the functionality, or ease of use or whatever, but not it's basic nature.

[eMansipater]

don't screw the existing one is all I'm saying, you can improve the functionality, or ease of use or whatever, but not it's basic nature.

I agree with you completely, my friend.

[karik1987]

The taxpayer must declare the income associated with the crypto currency in the tax year in which it is received or accrued. Failure to comply with this requirement may result in penalties and fines

[yuukireit]

Sometimes goverment are overreacting and aware if people cant controled by them. And many goverment think that we the people are stupid to doing something. And accused for what we did (the right thing) to getting freedom like that and making like we are doing bad thing
Thats stupid logic

[jack8989]

Lol!  I hope you guys realize I'm being sarcastic!  Anyway, I doubt that very many people would choose to use the client that skims of part of every transaction for the government.

Yeah, they just didn't realize that they already lost so much customers for their economy when they made the prohibitions on Bitcoin. Many people use Bitcoin and you could increase the limits of customer into global but they chose not to do it .

[freesia_pnp888]

their feud will never end i guess hahaha

[Urtaev]

Fortunately, not all governments are disapproving of bitcoins. There are those who understand its economic value and the prospect of using it for the needs of the country.

[THATBTC]

I realise that there are many anarchist-inclined bitcoin enthusiasts excited about the fact that bitcoin isn't government-run; obviously however we're not all anarchists so just thought I'd try and flesh out the topic of governments and bitcoin from the other angle.  Yay textwall!

It's one thing to be opposed to governments in principle, but especially for people who don't know anyone working in government there's a bit of a tendency to go all crazy around here about what "the government agenda" is or how "the government" will try and automatically repress any new idea.  The truth is that governments are just made up of people.  Forming any kind of cohesive idea amongst government members is a massive job in and of itself, as I well know from my own experience in politics--it's simply not true that there's one big organised conspiracy called "The Government" in any country.  Even flat-out dictatorships have a wider array of differing opinions "within the ranks" than you might think.

Governments and technology have an interesting relationship.  On the one hand members of governments tend to be well-connected, established people with an investment in the status quo.  It also takes a lot of time to succeed in politics at any significant level, which means that many policymakers aren't exactly on the cutting edge of technology.  I won't be so unkind as to call them flat-out dinosaur luddites (or maybe I just did ) but they don't tend to grasp the value and significance of new, disruptive technologies quickly.

On the other hand, I actually know many individuals who work at high levels of government, and a significant portion of them are genuinely trying to improve society's function through their work.  Don't forget that, as amazing as it sounds, a government invented the internet (the american government no less!).  Governments sent humans to space.  Governments even created the first computers!!  The american government created Tor!!!!!!!   -my head just exploded.

Governments are not mindless anti-tech zombies.  When something is really different they often have trouble understanding it.  Like p2p filesharing--they've completely dropped the ball on that one!  And vested interests generally tend to distort and mess things up.  But if the regular actual people who work in governments see a true opportunity for something to benefit everyone, they tend to get just as excited about it as "us" (intended in the most fully ironic sense as if there is some fundamental divide between anyone-who-can-use-bitcoin and anyone-who-works-for-a-government).  At the end of the day, if bitcoin can present a good case for providing real value to interests across the board in an area where other solutions have been sorely lacking, I think a lot of people-in-governments can get on board with that.

But one thing's for certain--if we turn bitcoin (or even the community surrounding it) into a destroy-all-governments, end-of-all-fiat-money, never-pay-taxes-again conspiracy, it will end up on the terrorist watch list before the first report even hits the desk.

tl;dr:Bitcoin is what bitcoin is.  Like the internet, it enables both traditional enterprises and disruptive possibilities.  There's nothing wrong with loving bitcoin because of the latter, but it's worth it to differentiate between your reasons for loving bitcoin and bitcoin itself.  Get excited about the fact that bitcoin could be the first successful non-government-initiated currency!  But don't fall into this trap of thinking that there's some fundamental reason that governments and bitcoin are in a conflict to the death.  I can tell you that any dinosaur worth his salt goes completely glazed over when any such topic comes up.  It's too psychologically complicated at that point in life to actually parry and dissect really different ideas--it's a lot simpler to just shut them out and bitcoin with them.

For any anarchist who faults the state on its use of force, the only fair response is to out-compete it fair and square.  If anarchism is truly better, bitcoin will probably be an important milestone in the path to getting there.  Work hard on it!  Help make it succeed!  But remember that bitcoin is about all of us, not just about those who believe that.  Don't worry though, I still love you even if I think the world isn't ready for anarchism yet .

And for anyone else out there who thinks anarchism leaves something to be desired--stick around!  You're not the only one.  We need you because the way bitcoin actually succeeds is not as some fringe project of the libertarian community (no offense to the hundreds of toes I just stepped on there ) but as a truly world-changing technology that encompasses people from many different points of view.  Bitcoin won't succeed unless non-anarchists accept it and that's pretty much that.

/steps down from soapbox, however briefly

I agree with all of this.

I'm tired of whining about libertarians, and I'm sure libertarians are tired of hearing it too, so I've been trying not to do that anymore. But I think the forum is so focused on people that hate government or are paranoid of evil banking cabals that... that I for one have found it off-putting. I'm way more interested in bitcoins and the possibilities of them than I am about the ideological tone of the forum. I think a lot of people would find it off putting. Bitcoin should be above politics.

People can agree or disagree about whether it's a good idea to have an agency that is (in principal) democratically empowered to do things like build hospitals, schools and roads etc. People can agree or disagree as to whether bankers are the most evil force in the world, or just a corrupt oligopoly that needs to be replaced by something better, and people can agree or disagree about whether inflation is part of an elaborate scheme to steal wealth from people or just one of the poorly controlled forces that are a flaw of the money system we have now. But bitcoin itself can be used quite happily by anyone regardless of their political/economic point of view.

I think this should be recognized, this should be a Big-World technology, not just a political niche affair for people of a certain political mindset. Bitcoin has something to offer everyone, heh, even state-socialists, fascists and Islamic theocracies probably.

Having said all that, I did start a thread about bitcoin on an anarchist forum, and on a forum that's quite left-wing. Maybe the bitcoin forum itself though should be more politically neutral, for the good of bitcoin itself.

Just my two satoshi.

I'm agree x2

[yasong]

I realise that there are many anarchist-inclined bitcoin enthusiasts excited about the fact that bitcoin isn't government-run; obviously however we're not all anarchists so just thought I'd try and flesh out the topic of governments and bitcoin from the other angle.  Yay textwall!

It's one thing to be opposed to governments in principle, but especially for people who don't know anyone working in government there's a bit of a tendency to go all crazy around here about what "the government agenda" is or how "the government" will try and automatically repress any new idea.  The truth is that governments are just made up of people.  Forming any kind of cohesive idea amongst government members is a massive job in and of itself, as I well know from my own experience in politics--it's simply not true that there's one big organised conspiracy called "The Government" in any country.  Even flat-out dictatorships have a wider array of differing opinions "within the ranks" than you might think.

Governments and technology have an interesting relationship.  On the one hand members of governments tend to be well-connected, established people with an investment in the status quo.  It also takes a lot of time to succeed in politics at any significant level, which means that many policymakers aren't exactly on the cutting edge of technology.  I won't be so unkind as to call them flat-out dinosaur luddites (or maybe I just did ) but they don't tend to grasp the value and significance of new, disruptive technologies quickly.

On the other hand, I actually know many individuals who work at high levels of government, and a significant portion of them are genuinely trying to improve society's function through their work.  Don't forget that, as amazing as it sounds, a government invented the internet (the american government no less!).  Governments sent humans to space.  Governments even created the first computers!!  The american government created Tor!!!!!!!  -my head just exploded.

Governments are not mindless anti-tech zombies.  When something is really different they often have trouble understanding it.  Like p2p filesharing--they've completely dropped the ball on that one!  And vested interests generally tend to distort and mess things up.  But if the regular actual people who work in governments see a true opportunity for something to benefit everyone, they tend to get just as excited about it as "us" (intended in the most fully ironic sense as if there is some fundamental divide between anyone-who-can-use-bitcoin and anyone-who-works-for-a-government).  At the end of the day, if bitcoin can present a good case for providing real value to interests across the board in an area where other solutions have been sorely lacking, I think a lot of people-in-governments can get on board with that.

But one thing's for certain--if we turn bitcoin (or even the community surrounding it) into a destroy-all-governments, end-of-all-fiat-money, never-pay-taxes-again conspiracy, it will end up on the terrorist watch list before the first report even hits the desk.

tl;dr:Bitcoin is what bitcoin is.  Like the internet, it enables both traditional enterprises and disruptive possibilities.  There's nothing wrong with loving bitcoin because of the latter, but it's worth it to differentiate between your reasons for loving bitcoin and bitcoin itself.  Get excited about the fact that bitcoin could be the first successful non-government-initiated currency!  But don't fall into this trap of thinking that there's some fundamental reason that governments and bitcoin are in a conflict to the death.  I can tell you that any dinosaur worth his salt goes completely glazed over when any such topic comes up.  It's too psychologically complicated at that point in life to actually parry and dissect really different ideas--it's a lot simpler to just shut them out and bitcoin with them.

For any anarchist who faults the state on its use of force, the only fair response is to out-compete it fair and square.  If anarchism is truly better, bitcoin will probably be an important milestone in the path to getting there.  Work hard on it!  Help make it succeed!  But remember that bitcoin is about all of us, not just about those who believe that.  Don't worry though, I still love you even if I think the world isn't ready for anarchism yet .

And for anyone else out there who thinks anarchism leaves something to be desired--stick around!  You're not the only one.  We need you because the way bitcoin actually succeeds is not as some fringe project of the libertarian community (no offense to the hundreds of toes I just stepped on there ) but as a truly world-changing technology that encompasses people from many different points of view.  Bitcoin won't succeed unless non-anarchists accept it and that's pretty much that.

/steps down from soapbox, however briefly

There are hundreds of billions of yuan worth of Bitcoin in China, and this part of the money cannot be regulated by the government. The government can't control the people how to spend this part of the money. For example, it has exceeded the purchase limit of 50,000 US dollars in foreign exchange. This is what the government is panicking.

[Andrews193]

I think the government will not accept Bitcoin in my country for many years, so now many people want to join Bitcoin to get back their profits and economic gains, but there are too many risks. They feel no match for the way to engage in virtual coins.

[mrbamboo]

Whether the government accepts or does not accept Bitcoin, there is hardly a consensus between Government and Bitcoin. The problem is that Bitcoin is a real need of users due to the fast and secure transactions. But it makes it difficult for the government to manage the use of Bitcoin and to levy taxes on the use of Bitcoins. So, the government will always find ways to monitor Bitcoin users closely, though very difficult.

[mrbamboo]

their feud will never end i guess hahaha

Humor is hate. But indeed, between the government and Bitcoin it was almost impossible to satisfy each other. Like two wives married a husband. Maybe they live in harmony with each other. But everyone wants to take the right, love from his husband. And that conflict will be most evident in the evening. The kind of relationship between Bitcoin and the government is like that.

[coinxwife]

I'm an anarchist

Im an antichrist. Pleased to meet you.

Don't know what I want but I know how to get it 

Some says that much better if the government accepts the bitcoin, but its hard to be implemented due to some different reasons, first the government establish only what the central bank process they dont accept cryptocurrency so its hard that this two will merge.

[bitcoinrunners001]

Many countries have taken the drastic step of banning Bitcoins and its use as an alternate currency. The list of countries that have banned Bitcoin is growing daily. Many politician in the United States wants the countries treasure to follow suit. Marchin, a sanator from west Virginias, recently wrote a letter to the treasure department and congress asking for a complete ban on Bitcoin use in the country. He, sanator marchin is not alone. Another high level politician from New York has also demand a Bitcoin ban in the US. This strong opposition to Bitcoin Started after the virtual currency’s most popular exchange company Mt.Gox claimed hackers hacked into the system and made away with $600 million worth of Bitcoins leaving investors and customers dry. Mt.Gox filed for bankruptcy seeking legal protection both in Japan where the company was for and in the united stated where 100s of 1000s of customers saw their Bitcoins disappeared over night. Another Bitcoin exchange also file for bankruptcy last week claiming hacker theft.

[caseback]

The government just labeled anyone who supports competing currencies a special kind of domestic terrorist. Maybe its time to stop defending them and get on board with the Libertarians

There are countrys accepting bitcoin, but i dont think our country philippines would accept it because there are some news of scam recently involving the bitcoin, many scammers are using bitcoin by investing to put up some moneys on their organization, so the government hesitant to accept the bitcoin.

[stayeduptolate]

I realise that there are many anarchist-inclined bitcoin enthusiasts excited about the fact that bitcoin isn't government-run; obviously however we're not all anarchists so just thought I'd try and flesh out the topic of governments and bitcoin from the other angle.  Yay textwall!

It's one thing to be opposed to governments in principle, but especially for people who don't know anyone working in government there's a bit of a tendency to go all crazy around here about what "the government agenda" is or how "the government" will try and automatically repress any new idea.  The truth is that governments are just made up of people.  Forming any kind of cohesive idea amongst government members is a massive job in and of itself, as I well know from my own experience in politics--it's simply not true that there's one big organised conspiracy called "The Government" in any country.  Even flat-out dictatorships have a wider array of differing opinions "within the ranks" than you might think.

Governments and technology have an interesting relationship.  On the one hand members of governments tend to be well-connected, established people with an investment in the status quo.  It also takes a lot of time to succeed in politics at any significant level, which means that many policymakers aren't exactly on the cutting edge of technology.  I won't be so unkind as to call them flat-out dinosaur luddites (or maybe I just did ) but they don't tend to grasp the value and significance of new, disruptive technologies quickly.

On the other hand, I actually know many individuals who work at high levels of government, and a significant portion of them are genuinely trying to improve society's function through their work.  Don't forget that, as amazing as it sounds, a government invented the internet (the american government no less!).  Governments sent humans to space.  Governments even created the first computers!!  The american government created Tor!!!!!!!   -my head just exploded.

Governments are not mindless anti-tech zombies.  When something is really different they often have trouble understanding it.  Like p2p filesharing--they've completely dropped the ball on that one!  And vested interests generally tend to distort and mess things up.  But if the regular actual people who work in governments see a true opportunity for something to benefit everyone, they tend to get just as excited about it as "us" (intended in the most fully ironic sense as if there is some fundamental divide between anyone-who-can-use-bitcoin and anyone-who-works-for-a-government).  At the end of the day, if bitcoin can present a good case for providing real value to interests across the board in an area where other solutions have been sorely lacking, I think a lot of people-in-governments can get on board with that.

But one thing's for certain--if we turn bitcoin (or even the community surrounding it) into a destroy-all-governments, end-of-all-fiat-money, never-pay-taxes-again conspiracy, it will end up on the terrorist watch list before the first report even hits the desk.

tl;dr:Bitcoin is what bitcoin is.  Like the internet, it enables both traditional enterprises and disruptive possibilities.  There's nothing wrong with loving bitcoin because of the latter, but it's worth it to differentiate between your reasons for loving bitcoin and bitcoin itself.  Get excited about the fact that bitcoin could be the first successful non-government-initiated currency!  But don't fall into this trap of thinking that there's some fundamental reason that governments and bitcoin are in a conflict to the death.  I can tell you that any dinosaur worth his salt goes completely glazed over when any such topic comes up.  It's too psychologically complicated at that point in life to actually parry and dissect really different ideas--it's a lot simpler to just shut them out and bitcoin with them.

For any anarchist who faults the state on its use of force, the only fair response is to out-compete it fair and square.  If anarchism is truly better, bitcoin will probably be an important milestone in the path to getting there.  Work hard on it!  Help make it succeed!  But remember that bitcoin is about all of us, not just about those who believe that.  Don't worry though, I still love you even if I think the world isn't ready for anarchism yet .

And for anyone else out there who thinks anarchism leaves something to be desired--stick around!  You're not the only one.  We need you because the way bitcoin actually succeeds is not as some fringe project of the libertarian community (no offense to the hundreds of toes I just stepped on there ) but as a truly world-changing technology that encompasses people from many different points of view.  Bitcoin won't succeed unless non-anarchists accept it and that's pretty much that.

/steps down from soapbox, however briefly

in the present scenerio, the government and the bitcoins are two opposite poles because government doesn't find bitcoin trust worthy and moreover government believes that bitcoin being decentralized could be use in illegal activities and can put their national security at risk that is why they keep on demotivating people for not using bitcoin ,but the time will come when they will understand the real potential of bitcoin. The only thing that government needs to understand is that the introduction of bitcoin can help them to increase their GDP.

[a_t_e_e_b]

governments and crypto don't go very well together there have always been problems when people support any other form of currency
it is more problematic for the governments as they cannot actually control it

[pasti kaya]

government and bitcoin are currently out of line and some also accept bitcoin, because in government it has a reason about bitcoin activity. that's what I know.

[pidonkmo]

Governments will try to restrict and regulate cryptocurrencies in a variety of ways. I bet they trust it, they just don't want to endorse or tell to the people that bitcoin and other crypto is good. why? because they are the one who will be blame if the system didn't go as what it is planned. Besides there a lot of ICO that ended in negative feedback than those who got it right. So If you are one who want to invest in crypto, better trust mb8coin. It partnered in different famous hotel and travel agency which process all those rewards points given to customer who reach a certain level of commitment in the service of those company.

[Pasadoble]

Some governments are against cryoto some of them are loyal, and it is very difficult to understand logic in some cases, some governments are making statements that crypto is harmful for their economics, but there are some countries with not very good economics, which are still very loyal. So, maybe all those things are also part of the global politics.

Here most crypto friendly countries in Europe, take a look: https://icoguide.com/en/blog/5-most-crypto-friendly-countries-in-europe

[xuzukami]

The government is very shy about talking about bitcoin because they fear bitcoin goes beyond their control, the government does not grasp the bitcoin's financial situation as well as the amount of assets that investors have grasped By buying bitcoin

[Hold good]

At present, governments in many countries have imposed heavy management regulations on Bitcoin for the reason that it and other electronic currencies could be used for illegal activities. But that is just a phobia for the fact that Bitcoin is an intermediary exchange that is out of their control.

[Brightcrypto]

Base in my country Nigeria, government has not solve any problems or even to create jobs to youths is absolutely zero. Therefore bitcoin has no business with government, including government officials, as long central bank are making profit from bitcoin to convert to real cash deposit.

[Ilia5225]

The truth lies somewhere in between. New currency requires new political and social behavior... our behavior

[nakamitu]

The governments of the world bed as they have not yet ratified for Bitcoin, it is still illegal in countries, but I expect someday it will change.

[JerryJam]

In my country, bitcoin has no legal status. But there is no ban on it either. People are more likely to trust bitcoin.My country's government invests in bitcoin and keeps its savings in cryptocurrency.

[Mazda17]

In my country, bitcoin has no legal status. But there is no ban on it either. People are more likely to trust bitcoin.My country's government invests in bitcoin and keeps its savings in cryptocurrency.

A good opinion and I like your opinion.
It is true what is said that bitcoin has no legal status but there is no prohibition to use bitcoin in any country because I know if bitcoin is inaugurated in all countries then bitcoin can be used for both payment and transfers between countries.

[zhengqiurong2@163.com]

I don't think it will take two years. Each government bank accepts cryptocurrencies. No one can counter the trend. And these governments are secretly conducting their own currency. Ready to release.

[Tigorss]

@FreeMoney we'll have to see   @ryepdx Thx netizen!  @CryptikEnigma Don't you mean someone within a particular government did?  No one who sets policy I live under has, to my knowledge.  But I'm not really here to defend anyone or anything, except BitCoin.

And for anyone else out there who thinks anarchism leaves something to be desired--stick around!  You're not the only one.  We need you because the way bitcoin actually succeeds is not as some fringe project of the libertarian community (no offense to the hundreds of toes I just stepped on there ) but as a truly world-changing technology that encompasses people from many different points of view.  Bitcoin won't succeed unless non-anarchists accept it and that's pretty much that.

You were doing fine until you conflated anarchism and libertarianism.

It's true, the text does sort of lump them in together despite their clear differences.  But combined what percentage of the planet's political spectrum do they represent?  What I mean to say is that bitcoin as a technology needs to be bigger than either or both.  The community needs to be whoever cares about the technology, whether they match the world's spectrum perfectly or not--but it's good for newcomers to clearly understand they are welcome in it even if neither term is homebase.

Regarding imaginary lines on a map--that I can get behind.  Bitcoin and other borderless realities are the way of the future!

after reading it all I conclude that it has to do with the political form of every country whether it's economic or otherwise because every country has different thoughts and also different rights we can not demand every country should be the same but which one wants to legalize or not it depends on the policies of each country because the risk of all is borne by those who give policy.

[Dava.Dina]

Many countries have taken a drastic step to ban Bitcoin and its use as an alternative currency.

Because if Bitcoin is inaugurated in all countries then Bitcoin can be used for payment and transfer between countries.

But which one wants to legalize or not depends on the policies of each country because of all the risks borne by those who give the policy.

[jayanath123]

The government have a major role in BTC, When the policy making law and regulating with there central bank, so link with those institute.

[biskitop]

I am very excited to read the articles you write. sya assuju that bitcoin is a sophisticated technology as a means of payment and not a container for terrorists to make transactions. because many people are making use of bitcoin as a profit they get, and the government can not take all of it from them.

[Usafstar]

As i have studies about bitcoin and the governments interference in the crypto market and many governments are very against of bitcoin and other crypto and many of them are friendly to bitcoin and crypto but the idea changes with time may the country is ban bitcoin they may allow bitcoin later on.

[Shreek]

the majority of governments are too dependent on Conventional Banks, where in my opinion the existence of bitcoin is not so getting a positive response from conventional banks
Bitcoin threatens the existence of banks with various projects arising, so that conventional banks and governments begin to give negative doctrine to their people

[eashikde]

Some say that a complete transfer of finance to the digital world would mean an end to Bitcoin, but a non-governmental decentralized crypto currency has a lot of advantages at this time over everything that the government can create. Therefore, the transition to a digital currency can become a reality

[Giftedcrypt]

Bitcoin and government used to be on parallel lines not until recently that most government of different nations are embracing the technology bitcoin Carrie's.. And they are both aligning..

[thepers0n]

Of  course there is a big problem of government control. Every country have very strict rules. But cryptocurrency can become  an alternative to real money, what will be suitable for lots of people all around the world

[shadowduck]

I think that the state plays a decisive role in the state of crypto currency! Yes, it's given to the anonymity of people so that states can not interfere in the personal life of citizens. But at the legislative level, the state can prohibit the use of crypto-currencies, which will greatly affect the course of the crypto-currency and may lead to death (

[1van__]

I think the vaccination in the past will introduce a tax on crypto-currencies, since bitkin is the currency of the future and they will not bypass this issue by the side

[Epimetheus]

Different government have different opinions on Bitcoin. Some government work with Bitcoin where as some government ban bitcoin in their country. Chinese government ban bitcoin in their country because bitcoin is a decentralised currency which affects their country own currency, and this thing ultimately affects their country economy. Isreal and Bangladesh government ban bitcoin in their country because many anti social people using Bitcoin for their criminal activity. Japanese government show positive attitude towards Bitcoin and wotk with Bitcoin. Many central Africa developing country government work with Bitcoin to improve their country economy growth. 

[vladaziya4]

There is always a chance to buy in order to make a profit, I think it's worth buying and waiting for time. He will let himself know about himself in 1-2 months.

[digroske]

 The problem is that Bitcoin is a real need of users due to the fast and secure transactions. But it makes it difficult for the government to manage the use of Bitcoin and to levy taxes on the use of Bitcoins. So, the government will always find ways to monitor Bitcoin users closely, though very difficult.

[Falmera]

The government just labeled anyone who supports competing currencies a special kind of domestic terrorist. Maybe its time to stop defending them and get on board with the Libertarians

I agree on this, for bitcoin and the decentralization system  has a good goal. Only then, other people may use this for their selfish goals. Hopefully they bitcoin will be used for the common good.

[dominional]

Government law  and regulation has not been good friend to bitcoin because bitcoin has nothing to do with government and government is not making any income from bit coin therefore this has been a problem to governments

[Rkss4]

Government a prime factor for developing bitcoin... It A government wish to develop bitcoin rules and regulations, it could possible. Bitcoin validity, development, security, service completely depend on government issues...

[maikala]

You share useful information about government and Bitcoin, and I fully agree with you, all rules can be applied to the whole society.

[Jamescur]

Bitcoin is an unregulated currency, and bitcoin is a stab in the eyes of the world's governments!
The government panicked that BTC was used for money laundering and illegal transfer of assets.

[Alan Carey]

India is yet to come out with a mandate deciding the future of Bitcoins in India. This information of bitcoin ban in India is nothing more than FUD. The final stand of Indian govt on Bitcoin transaction is not yet out. However, in the recent news, SEBI chief, Mr. Ajay Tyagi stated that Crypto regulations in India should be out soon and the role various regulators are being finalized. So it’s clear that they are planning to experiment with it and has taken a wait and watch approach.

[Samuel Fields]

Government has the power to ban bitcoin in their country. But The only way to ban bitcoin is to ban the Internet in the entire country (north Korea style).

There are already countries who banned bitcoin other than china, so this is just a normal event on the cryptocurrency world. If you guys are afraid that bitcoin will die because China banned it, don't be bother by this. Bitcoin could exist without this Chinese Government, there is some countries already who trusted bitcoin and make it one of their currency, and one of them is Japan, so rest assured, bitcoin will still live and will keeping booming as always and will sooner lead to revolutionary period throughout the world industry.

As of China, government has only closed exchanges. But soon they'll be launching their own cryptocurrency through which people can easily buy Bitcoin. But all the funds coming and going from bank would be under government scrutiny through their cryptocurrency. This is what they wanted to achieve. They never wanted to ban Bitcoin.

Other factors which I think is they can prohibit mining or regulate it so hard that everybody stops mining all together. China did this and banned mining and trading bitcoins recently that's why it is possible that bitcoins can be banned. If the government however does intervene, they will most likely stop mining operations and the bitcoins harvest will not join the circulation, reducing the supply further making it more expensive thus preventing investors to buy more because it's expensive.

[Donald Johnston]

Does Bitcoin present a threat to sovereignty, control of the domestic money supply, borrowing, inflation, foreign exchange or fiduciary institutions? Yes and No…

Gradually, lawmakers in some countries are beginning to perceive Bitcoin as more of an opportunity than a threat. There may be no need to dissuade citizens from adopting Bitcoin, even if the populace saves or spends it as actual stored-value cash and not just as a payment instrument.

[Ronald Lane]

Government can ban bitcoins in a particular country but it can’t stop bitcoin. It is a decentralised currency and can’t be controlled with anyone’s presence. It has been accepted by many countries in a legit way so if a particular country bans bitcoins then also they are chances and options to use Bitcoins in world.

[Lester Atkins]

Probably they can, hopefully they won’t. Even if they do ban bitcoin exchanges and criminalize the possession of bitcoins, they will give time to cash out because there are plenty of people invested in it. Most probably the government won’t ban bitcoins.

[Mazda17]

Government can ban bitcoins in a particular country but it can’t stop bitcoin. It is a decentralised currency and can’t be controlled with anyone’s presence. It has been accepted by many countries in a legit way so if a particular country bans bitcoins then also they are chances and options to use Bitcoins in world.

A very good opinion and I like your opinion.
Yes it is true that bitcoin can not be controlled by the presence of anyone who is a high official or a government and sometimes bitcoin becomes the choice of people to invest, although sometimes the government can ban bitcoin in certain countries but can not stop bitcoin because bitcoin can not be controlled by anyone.

[Adrin]

There is too many counties accept bitcoin as like USA, Canada, Austria, Sweden and some county not support bitcoin as like Bangladesh. Bangladesh Government don’t support bitcoin but government can’t control bitcoin transaction but some bank thinking how to start blockchain system because most of the educated person know about blockchain system and they always support new technology. Some government doesn’t have any idea in blockchain system so they always prevent new system for accepting.

[Gufeng]

Anyone who wants to change the operation of the bitcoin network can just FORK OFF.

Agree with you for 100%. Why so many people want to have control for the cryptocurrency and price fot it. It is an independent structure that helps people to earn money for yourself.

[Babycuteless]

spread the news about bitcoin governments do not deal it i know you know what is bitcoin.

[Jhet09]

Govemments and bitcoin are enemy i think because the govermment think that bitcoin it's just a scam  to them but in bitcoin it will help you and i know if you invest in bitcoin i know its risky but you will get a higher investment thanks to bitcoin

[prediction on bush]

I realise that there are many anarchist-inclined bitcoin enthusiasts excited about the fact that bitcoin isn't government-run; obviously however we're not all anarchists so just thought I'd try and flesh out the topic of governments and bitcoin from the other angle.  Yay textwall!

It's one thing to be opposed to governments in principle, but especially for people who don't know anyone working in government there's a bit of a tendency to go all crazy around here about what "the government agenda" is or how "the government" will try and automatically repress any new idea.  The truth is that governments are just made up of people.  Forming any kind of cohesive idea amongst government members is a massive job in and of itself, as I well know from my own experience in politics--it's simply not true that there's one big organised conspiracy called "The Government" in any country.  Even flat-out dictatorships have a wider array of differing opinions "within the ranks" than you might think.

Governments and technology have an interesting relationship.  On the one hand members of governments tend to be well-connected, established people with an investment in the status quo.  It also takes a lot of time to succeed in politics at any significant level, which means that many policymakers aren't exactly on the cutting edge of technology.  I won't be so unkind as to call them flat-out dinosaur luddites (or maybe I just did ) but they don't tend to grasp the value and significance of new, disruptive technologies quickly.

On the other hand, I actually know many individuals who work at high levels of government, and a significant portion of them are genuinely trying to improve society's function through their work.  Don't forget that, as amazing as it sounds, a government invented the internet (the american government no less!).  Governments sent humans to space.  Governments even created the first computers!!  The american government created Tor!!!!!!!  -my head just exploded.

Governments are not mindless anti-tech zombies.  When something is really different they often have trouble understanding it.  Like p2p filesharing--they've completely dropped the ball on that one!  And vested interests generally tend to distort and mess things up.  But if the regular actual people who work in governments see a true opportunity for something to benefit everyone, they tend to get just as excited about it as "us" (intended in the most fully ironic sense as if there is some fundamental divide between anyone-who-can-use-bitcoin and anyone-who-works-for-a-government).  At the end of the day, if bitcoin can present a good case for providing real value to interests across the board in an area where other solutions have been sorely lacking, I think a lot of people-in-governments can get on board with that.

But one thing's for certain--if we turn bitcoin (or even the community surrounding it) into a destroy-all-governments, end-of-all-fiat-money, never-pay-taxes-again conspiracy, it will end up on the terrorist watch list before the first report even hits the desk.

tl;dr:Bitcoin is what bitcoin is.  Like the internet, it enables both traditional enterprises and disruptive possibilities.  There's nothing wrong with loving bitcoin because of the latter, but it's worth it to differentiate between your reasons for loving bitcoin and bitcoin itself.  Get excited about the fact that bitcoin could be the first successful non-government-initiated currency!  But don't fall into this trap of thinking that there's some fundamental reason that governments and bitcoin are in a conflict to the death.  I can tell you that any dinosaur worth his salt goes completely glazed over when any such topic comes up.  It's too psychologically complicated at that point in life to actually parry and dissect really different ideas--it's a lot simpler to just shut them out and bitcoin with them.

For any anarchist who faults the state on its use of force, the only fair response is to out-compete it fair and square.  If anarchism is truly better, bitcoin will probably be an important milestone in the path to getting there.  Work hard on it!  Help make it succeed!  But remember that bitcoin is about all of us, not just about those who believe that.  Don't worry though, I still love you even if I think the world isn't ready for anarchism yet .

And for anyone else out there who thinks anarchism leaves something to be desired--stick around!  You're not the only one.  We need you because the way bitcoin actually succeeds is not as some fringe project of the libertarian community (no offense to the hundreds of toes I just stepped on there ) but as a truly world-changing technology that encompasses people from many different points of view.  Bitcoin won't succeed unless non-anarchists accept it and that's pretty much that.

/steps down from soapbox, however briefly

Government and bitcoin they are mortal enemy because government all want is to control bitcoin and bitcoin is decentralized so it means no one can control.

[PinkCities58]

There always a collision between Govt. and btc. Govt. think that btc is just a scam. This idea need to be changed.

[GoodLife68]

Because of the wrong use of cryptos government won't allow btc simply. But this thinking will change soon. Cause btc has all the legal paper to run their coin in every country.

[LocalZone09]

Agreed. That's a good post indeed. Those information should be apply in the society of cryptos.

[RockLand97]

I am very much willing to say that i am  agree on this, for bitcoin and the decentralization system  has a good pick to reach. I hope that btc will run their policy in this way.

[ExpediteStyle201]

Government and btc have a very good relation. If they co-operate each other both will be benefited.

[EvokeRule21]

Many government around the word won't accepting btc as their currency. They should accept it so they both can consume the beneficiary of each other.

[demoltion]

Many in the government there are those who support some who refuse, they should open wide for this digital currency, if they know what BTC and bitcoin mean I think this is a good thing for the economy in the country

[10c]

The state does not benefit from a crypto currency, because it breaks the financial system, because a large outflow of funds goes to other countries, but many states impose taxes on activities in the crypto currency.

[Shieshie21]

I realise that there are many anarchist-inclined bitcoin enthusiasts excited about the fact that bitcoin isn't government-run; obviously however we're not all anarchists so just thought I'd try and flesh out the topic of governments and bitcoin from the other angle.  Yay textwall!

It's one thing to be opposed to governments in principle, but especially for people who don't know anyone working in government there's a bit of a tendency to go all crazy around here about what "the government agenda" is or how "the government" will try and automatically repress any new idea.  The truth is that governments are just made up of people.  Forming any kind of cohesive idea amongst government members is a massive job in and of itself, as I well know from my own experience in politics--it's simply not true that there's one big organised conspiracy called "The Government" in any country.  Even flat-out dictatorships have a wider array of differing opinions "within the ranks" than you might think.

Governments and technology have an interesting relationship.  On the one hand members of governments tend to be well-connected, established people with an investment in the status quo.  It also takes a lot of time to succeed in politics at any significant level, which means that many policymakers aren't exactly on the cutting edge of technology.  I won't be so unkind as to call them flat-out dinosaur luddites (or maybe I just did ) but they don't tend to grasp the value and significance of new, disruptive technologies quickly.

On the other hand, I actually know many individuals who work at high levels of government, and a significant portion of them are genuinely trying to improve society's function through their work.  Don't forget that, as amazing as it sounds, a government invented the internet (the american government no less!).  Governments sent humans to space.  Governments even created the first computers!!  The american government created Tor!!!!!!!  -my head just exploded.

Governments are not mindless anti-tech zombies.  When something is really different they often have trouble understanding it.  Like p2p filesharing--they've completely dropped the ball on that one!  And vested interests generally tend to distort and mess things up.  But if the regular actual people who work in governments see a true opportunity for something to benefit everyone, they tend to get just as excited about it as "us" (intended in the most fully ironic sense as if there is some fundamental divide between anyone-who-can-use-bitcoin and anyone-who-works-for-a-government).  At the end of the day, if bitcoin can present a good case for providing real value to interests across the board in an area where other solutions have been sorely lacking, I think a lot of people-in-governments can get on board with that.

But one thing's for certain--if we turn bitcoin (or even the community surrounding it) into a destroy-all-governments, end-of-all-fiat-money, never-pay-taxes-again conspiracy, it will end up on the terrorist watch list before the first report even hits the desk.

tl;dr:Bitcoin is what bitcoin is.  Like the internet, it enables both traditional enterprises and disruptive possibilities.  There's nothing wrong with loving bitcoin because of the latter, but it's worth it to differentiate between your reasons for loving bitcoin and bitcoin itself.  Get excited about the fact that bitcoin could be the first successful non-government-initiated currency!  But don't fall into this trap of thinking that there's some fundamental reason that governments and bitcoin are in a conflict to the death.  I can tell you that any dinosaur worth his salt goes completely glazed over when any such topic comes up.  It's too psychologically complicated at that point in life to actually parry and dissect really different ideas--it's a lot simpler to just shut them out and bitcoin with them.

For any anarchist who faults the state on its use of force, the only fair response is to out-compete it fair and square.  If anarchism is truly better, bitcoin will probably be an important milestone in the path to getting there.  Work hard on it!  Help make it succeed!  But remember that bitcoin is about all of us, not just about those who believe that.  Don't worry though, I still love you even if I think the world isn't ready for anarchism yet .

And for anyone else out there who thinks anarchism leaves something to be desired--stick around!  You're not the only one.  We need you because the way bitcoin actually succeeds is not as some fringe project of the libertarian community (no offense to the hundreds of toes I just stepped on there ) but as a truly world-changing technology that encompasses people from many different points of view.  Bitcoin won't succeed unless non-anarchists accept it and that's pretty much that.

/steps down from soapbox, however briefly

I'm definitely agree of this, that government must have relationship with BTC. These information should be implemented in the society of cryptos.  And I hope it will change soon.

[kimhospital]

In recent news, SEBI chief Ajay Tyagi said that the Crypto rules in India will soon be launched and the role of the various regulators is being finalized. The government has the right to prohibit bitcoin in their country. There are other countries banned bitcoin from China, so this is just a normal event in the world of electronic money. Bitcoin can survive without this Chinese government, there are some countries that have trusted bitcoin and make it one of their currencies, and one of them is Japanese, so be quiet. mind, bitcoin will remain and will continue to explode as ever. Revolutionary period all over the world. But soon they will be releasing their own electronic money through which people can easily buy Bitcoin. This is what they want to achieve. Other factors that I think they can ban from exploiting or regulating it are too hard for people to stop exploiting them all together. However, if the government intervenes, it is likely that they will stop harvesting and harvesting bitcoin will not engage in traffic, reducing the supply makes it more expensive thereby preventing investors from buying more because it is expensive. Gradually, lawmakers in some countries are beginning to feel Bitcoin as a chance rather than a threat.

[Rishblitz]

few have accepted blockchain as a technology in their government, they think something new must be prevented.
but different from Switzerland which fully supports

[gokudera]

I realise that there are many anarchist-inclined bitcoin enthusiasts excited about the fact that bitcoin isn't government-run; obviously however we're not all anarchists so just thought I'd try and flesh out the topic of governments and bitcoin from the other angle.  Yay textwall!

It's one thing to be opposed to governments in principle, but especially for people who don't know anyone working in government there's a bit of a tendency to go all crazy around here about what "the government agenda" is or how "the government" will try and automatically repress any new idea.  The truth is that governments are just made up of people.  Forming any kind of cohesive idea amongst government members is a massive job in and of itself, as I well know from my own experience in politics--it's simply not true that there's one big organised conspiracy called "The Government" in any country.  Even flat-out dictatorships have a wider array of differing opinions "within the ranks" than you might think.

Governments and technology have an interesting relationship.  On the one hand members of governments tend to be well-connected, established people with an investment in the status quo.  It also takes a lot of time to succeed in politics at any significant level, which means that many policymakers aren't exactly on the cutting edge of technology.  I won't be so unkind as to call them flat-out dinosaur luddites (or maybe I just did ) but they don't tend to grasp the value and significance of new, disruptive technologies quickly.

On the other hand, I actually know many individuals who work at high levels of government, and a significant portion of them are genuinely trying to improve society's function through their work.  Don't forget that, as amazing as it sounds, a government invented the internet (the american government no less!).  Governments sent humans to space.  Governments even created the first computers!!  The american government created Tor!!!!!!!  -my head just exploded.

Governments are not mindless anti-tech zombies.  When something is really different they often have trouble understanding it.  Like p2p filesharing--they've completely dropped the ball on that one!  And vested interests generally tend to distort and mess things up.  But if the regular actual people who work in governments see a true opportunity for something to benefit everyone, they tend to get just as excited about it as "us" (intended in the most fully ironic sense as if there is some fundamental divide between anyone-who-can-use-bitcoin and anyone-who-works-for-a-government).  At the end of the day, if bitcoin can present a good case for providing real value to interests across the board in an area where other solutions have been sorely lacking, I think a lot of people-in-governments can get on board with that.

But one thing's for certain--if we turn bitcoin (or even the community surrounding it) into a destroy-all-governments, end-of-all-fiat-money, never-pay-taxes-again conspiracy, it will end up on the terrorist watch list before the first report even hits the desk.

tl;dr:Bitcoin is what bitcoin is.  Like the internet, it enables both traditional enterprises and disruptive possibilities.  There's nothing wrong with loving bitcoin because of the latter, but it's worth it to differentiate between your reasons for loving bitcoin and bitcoin itself.  Get excited about the fact that bitcoin could be the first successful non-government-initiated currency!  But don't fall into this trap of thinking that there's some fundamental reason that governments and bitcoin are in a conflict to the death.  I can tell you that any dinosaur worth his salt goes completely glazed over when any such topic comes up.  It's too psychologically complicated at that point in life to actually parry and dissect really different ideas--it's a lot simpler to just shut them out and bitcoin with them.

For any anarchist who faults the state on its use of force, the only fair response is to out-compete it fair and square.  If anarchism is truly better, bitcoin will probably be an important milestone in the path to getting there.  Work hard on it!  Help make it succeed!  But remember that bitcoin is about all of us, not just about those who believe that.  Don't worry though, I still love you even if I think the world isn't ready for anarchism yet .

And for anyone else out there who thinks anarchism leaves something to be desired--stick around!  You're not the only one.  We need you because the way bitcoin actually succeeds is not as some fringe project of the libertarian community (no offense to the hundreds of toes I just stepped on there ) but as a truly world-changing technology that encompasses people from many different points of view.  Bitcoin won't succeed unless non-anarchists accept it and that's pretty much that.

/steps down from soapbox, however briefly

Government treat bitcoin enemy because they don't want that bitcoin will make their bank disappear. There is also a issue or humor that government will only make bitcoin legal if bitcoin put a tax on it.

[CryptoSmile]

If there are too many diction, it will eventually lead to a very conservative and narrow mind. Every individual can do good and can also do bad, every crime occurs because of intentions and opportunities, often we judge things without understanding them thoroughly and always make decisions without learning the source of the problem. I always see something with positive thinking that every government always tries to provide the best for the nation and country, bitcoin is present for a good purpose and gives goodness to everyone, for that when something is not good from bitcoin the government will try to make it more well so that it can be useful for everyone, when there are government regulations that are not right, then the people will fix it. If the government, bitcoin and all of us try to create good and prosperity, then of course we will always spread good and positive news about bitcoin, the state, government and society. It all starts from our mindset and actions first so that positive and good news can manifest in life and make bitcoin always the best.

[OliverDan]

They will spend time drawing money because so many people invest in it. There are too many bitcoin acceptors like the US, Canada, Austria, Sweden and some counties do not support bitcoin like Bangladesh. Some governments do not have any idea in the blockchain system so they always block the new system.

[sinta23]

few have accepted blockchain as a technology in their government, they think something new must be prevented.
but different from Switzerland which fully supports

currently there are still some countries that accept bitcoin, and some of those countries do not approve of bitcoin circulating in their countries, because the government is also wary of the development of bitcoin. karwna until now bitcoin has not increased yet.

[stiffbud]

Because of the wrong use of cryptos government won't allow btc simply. But this thinking will change soon. Cause btc has all the legal paper to run their coin in every country.

Different government have different agenda with bitcoin. Some government like japan, Germany, usa work with various bitcoin projects where as some government like china, Bangladesh, Ecuador are against of bitcoin and ban it in their country for their own reasons. According to Chinese government bitcoin affect their country economy by affecting their country own currency value at international market and also affects their bank profits. And in many country it work as a illegal money transaction tool for various anti social work and because of this many government like Israel ban it in their country

[ChristinBenly]

You must always know that there is always a collision between Govt and btc. This idea needs to be changed. But this thought will soon change. Caution btc has all legal papers to run their coin in every country. That really is a great post. I am happy to say that I agree on this, for bitcoin and decentralized systems there is a good option to achieve.

[KurtEldon]

I realise that there are many anarchist-inclined bitcoin enthusiasts excited about the fact that bitcoin isn't government-run; obviously however we're not all anarchists so just thought I'd try and flesh out the topic of governments and bitcoin from the other angle.  Yay textwall!

It's one thing to be opposed to governments in principle, but especially for people who don't know anyone working in government there's a bit of a tendency to go all crazy around here about what "the government agenda" is or how "the government" will try and automatically repress any new idea.  The truth is that governments are just made up of people.  Forming any kind of cohesive idea amongst government members is a massive job in and of itself, as I well know from my own experience in politics--it's simply not true that there's one big organised conspiracy called "The Government" in any country.  Even flat-out dictatorships have a wider array of differing opinions "within the ranks" than you might think.

Governments and technology have an interesting relationship.  On the one hand members of governments tend to be well-connected, established people with an investment in the status quo.  It also takes a lot of time to succeed in politics at any significant level, which means that many policymakers aren't exactly on the cutting edge of technology.  I won't be so unkind as to call them flat-out dinosaur luddites (or maybe I just did ) but they don't tend to grasp the value and significance of new, disruptive technologies quickly.

On the other hand, I actually know many individuals who work at high levels of government, and a significant portion of them are genuinely trying to improve society's function through their work.  Don't forget that, as amazing as it sounds, a government invented the internet (the american government no less!).  Governments sent humans to space.  Governments even created the first computers!!  The american government created Tor!!!!!!!  -my head just exploded.

Governments are not mindless anti-tech zombies.  When something is really different they often have trouble understanding it.  Like p2p filesharing--they've completely dropped the ball on that one!  And vested interests generally tend to distort and mess things up.  But if the regular actual people who work in governments see a true opportunity for something to benefit everyone, they tend to get just as excited about it as "us" (intended in the most fully ironic sense as if there is some fundamental divide between anyone-who-can-use-bitcoin and anyone-who-works-for-a-government).  At the end of the day, if bitcoin can present a good case for providing real value to interests across the board in an area where other solutions have been sorely lacking, I think a lot of people-in-governments can get on board with that.

But one thing's for certain--if we turn bitcoin (or even the community surrounding it) into a destroy-all-governments, end-of-all-fiat-money, never-pay-taxes-again conspiracy, it will end up on the terrorist watch list before the first report even hits the desk.

tl;dr:Bitcoin is what bitcoin is.  Like the internet, it enables both traditional enterprises and disruptive possibilities.  There's nothing wrong with loving bitcoin because of the latter, but it's worth it to differentiate between your reasons for loving bitcoin and bitcoin itself.  Get excited about the fact that bitcoin could be the first successful non-government-initiated currency!  But don't fall into this trap of thinking that there's some fundamental reason that governments and bitcoin are in a conflict to the death.  I can tell you that any dinosaur worth his salt goes completely glazed over when any such topic comes up.  It's too psychologically complicated at that point in life to actually parry and dissect really different ideas--it's a lot simpler to just shut them out and bitcoin with them.

For any anarchist who faults the state on its use of force, the only fair response is to out-compete it fair and square.  If anarchism is truly better, bitcoin will probably be an important milestone in the path to getting there.  Work hard on it!  Help make it succeed!  But remember that bitcoin is about all of us, not just about those who believe that.  Don't worry though, I still love you even if I think the world isn't ready for anarchism yet .

And for anyone else out there who thinks anarchism leaves something to be desired--stick around!  You're not the only one.  We need you because the way bitcoin actually succeeds is not as some fringe project of the libertarian community (no offense to the hundreds of toes I just stepped on there ) but as a truly world-changing technology that encompasses people from many different points of view.  Bitcoin won't succeed unless non-anarchists accept it and that's pretty much that.

/steps down from soapbox, however briefl

government  think that bitcion is just a scam .its only the work of trading

[rtm125]

The topic of government and bitcoin will always be relevant, because the official state recognition of the cryptocurrency is the biggest problem now. Different countries have different attitudes to the implementation of cryptocurrency on their territory. Many simply do not see a unique convenient currency, but only a potential threat to the economy.

[rindayle]

I think that the government and bitcoin is not cooperating. With mutual work, I think the flow of investment would have increased significantly, since people would have some kind of guarantee. Bitcoin could infiltrate the all vcery large volumes. So we wait.

[Shafiqul Islam]

Governments and bitcoins are opposite term .if governments and bitcoins coordinator then development would be possible.when a government can take a proper step then bitcoins development could possibly otherwise not.

[xbossJ]

Government and Bitcoin! The former is a sworn enemy, the latter ($Bitcoin) has the power to show governments that economies can run without inflation! $Bitcoin has the power to show governments that we can run our accounts transparently without theft and unbalanced account sheets! Trust what the governments think; Because government has remain insincere and corrupt, while impoverishing the people by limiting funds in the hands of a few, in an attempt to keep slaves, Government will never agree with the $Bitcoin ideology. Quite unfortunate. I believe the next economic melt down which I know will happen sooner than expected, will make governments look for a solution! Then $Bitcoin will take its rightful place as an antidote to such problems.

[kirti rana]

I think government and bitcoin is like a two aspects of magnets, The government will never allow it because it is a digital currency and its a higher currency to other currencies.

[joebrook]

I think that the government and bitcoin is not cooperating. With mutual work, I think the flow of investment would have increased significantly, since people would have some kind of guarantee. Bitcoin could infiltrate the all vcery large volumes. So we wait.

It’s a well known fact that governments of any country whether they are a liberal or conservative one, don’t like it when they are not in control of everything that happens in their country but they are also quick to reealize that though they may not be in control of everything if the thing is beneficial to the country they will be willing to okay it for the sake of eveyone and I believe bitcoin falls in this scenario.

[cryptonewsID]

Governments and bitcoins are opposite term .if governments and bitcoins coordinator then development would be possible.when a government can take a proper step then bitcoins development could possibly otherwise not.

indeed very contrary to the government, but if this is very profitable, the government will allow everyone to transact using bitcoin. and the growth of bitcoin will be even greater, because many people use it.

[Gabri]

For any government, bitcoin is a stick in the eye. Money transactions are carried out, huge funds are transferred ( recently there was a transaction for 30,000 bitcoins ) and it can not control it. Therefore, all operations are strictly centralized.

[jobukegoya]

I think government and bitcoin is like a two aspects of magnets, The government will never allow it because it is a digital currency and its a higher currency to other currencies.

Your opinion may be correct, because the government is afraid to allow bitcoin in its country because of several factors such as unpreparedness of regulations for bitcoin, easy to use for money laundering, cannot be intervened so the government does not benefit from taxes.

[Tonnakyray_21]

Governments will accept bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. They are just trying to find their interest because they are influenced by multinational corporations. In addition, the central bank has a reduced power with blockchain technology.

[walemil]

One cannot say that the government is always doing evil against the people because there are times the government means well. But truly, there are times that the government will appear very selfish in order to protect its belief. That is the situation I often see with cryptocurrency. People love decentralization but some governments want to be in control.

[Marcus yoyo]

Governments will accept bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. They are just trying to find their interest because they are influenced by multinational corporations. In addition, the central bank has a reduced power with blockchain technology.

What you say is true that sooner or later the government will definitely accept bitcoin technology and crypto currency. As with globalization, my country first rejected globalization but now as time goes on, globalization is also necessary because it also has a positive impact. As well as the internet and other technologies, indeed at the beginning of its appearance often raises the agreed and disagreed but in reality we need it too. I am sure that the government is actually preparing to welcome this crypto currency. Maybe the government needs more time to organize crypto currencies which will later become technologies that will coexist.

[Lilmon]

Yes of course, that's the good thing about bitcoin, which could benefit everyone regardless of whether you like it or not, personally I wouldn't call myself an anarchist, because I believe in institutionality and I think the government usually does more benefit than harm, but I also think they have too much power lately, so it's good to be able to take some power away from them by the best possible means.

[maianh09]

Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency are growing, but they are backed up by terrorist and illegal groups. Governments are worried that this will make the groups challenging to control and that the use of Bitcoin as a form of payment has made everything out of control. That's why Bitcoin is banned continuously from swimming.

[Amevalentine]

the government and bitcoin don't know the same in my country yet, I think this makes it a hindrance for technology in the present time not to advance because it is not supported by bitcoin unlike Japan who has used bitcoin in their country

[fipper]

in my country direct transactions using crypto currencies are still prohibited in other words the government has not received crypto currency as a legitimate and official currency that can be used as a valid currency

[SnapDown22]

The government just labeled anyone who supports competing currencies a special kind of domestic terrorist. Maybe its time to stop defending them and get on board with the Libertarians

I think the government and bitcoin have not been united and have not agreed if bitcoin is used by his country for my daily needs, I think like that

[tahozor]

Regulation of cryptocurrency circulation Attitude towards cryptocurrencies The first mass reaction of most countries to bitcoin was extremely negative. Practically all representatives of state authorities of countries that spoke about bitcoin equally informed the population about cryptocurrencies - they warned against using bitcoin, mentioned that it does not have a controlling body, and if something happens, nobody will return the money to citizens. Of course, these warnings were not at all aimed at the care and protection of public finances. They were announced for the formation of a negative image of cryptocurrency in the eyes of uninformed citizens.

[DiceChain]

The government just labeled anyone who supports competing currencies a special kind of domestic terrorist. Maybe its time to stop defending them and get on board with the Libertarians

I think the government and bitcoin have not been united and have not agreed if bitcoin is used by his country for my daily needs, I think like that

Yep,I agree with you. Most of the country's governments are against bitcoin.As bitcoin transactions  are annonymous that's why they are concerned if they allowe btc in their country then many occurrence can be happen such as money laundering, kidnapping and then claim btc and so on.

[Msile]

I imagine that many of those anarchists found a safe heaven in bitcoin and that's why they want to promote anarchism from there, but I think good governments make a country stronger, not vice versa, although I think they have a lot of power now and so I support the use of bitcoin to gain a little power in the economy, I also think that with the help of the government we can improve everything much more.

[Ladyga]

Bitcoin was conceived as independent of the state (political power / certain territory) data exchange system - crypto money. And such a system was really independent of the states of the whole world, until bitcoin gained great popularity.
The beginning of a significant increase in popularity can be considered the year 2013 (only in the first 4 months the rate increased from $ 20 to $ 200). Large investors began to notice bitcoin (Brothers Winklevoss, Andreessen Horowitz, who invested $ 25 million in Coinbase). More and more people were involved in the cryptocurrency system. At the end of 2013, the rapid growth in the price of bitcoin attracted much attention from the whole world. The number of network users began to grow at a much more rapid pace. And the rulers of different states could no longer ignore the phenomenon of cryptocurrency.
The US Senate began to hold bitcoin hearings. At the end of 2013, Ben Bernanke, head of the US Federal Reserve, spoke in support of bitcoin and outlined its use of the financial system as a cheaper alternative to the current international money transfer system at such a hearing on the “risks, threats and prospects” of virtual currencies. Perhaps it was the only such good news that raised the price to $ 1000 for 1 bitcoin.
Bitcoin, in comparison with national currencies, has many advantages:
Bitcoin can not replenish the treasury of the state, because transaction fee does not go to any banks, there is no way to tax cryptocurrency capital
The anonymity of cryptocurrency allows citizens to avoid universal control over monetary transactions.
The relative speed of transferring bitcoin from one person to another is within a few minutes. (Some interbank transfers in the Russian Federation may take up to several days)
Only these advantages of cryptocurrency have a negative impact on the national currency (for example, the ruble), through which state authorities control many spheres of society. And with the growing popularity of cryptocurrency, state control is reduced.

[gesdan]

all government in the world still aware of bitcoin. they all think that the bitcoin is not a legal currency, and they think that bitcoin can't be the real currency in the world, I hope that in the future it will change the view of the government about bitcoin and cryptocurrency

[memecoin]

Whatever has Political Correctness to do with the matter?  

Nothing hopefully. That was kind of my point.

Everything is possible and your point of view is wrong, if you think in a different way or in another direction about a problem that is ahead. Think carefully before doing, and try to complete. Do not say can not while you have not done .

[Sihab76]

Government and bitcoin both are very important in cryptocurrency, when a government is friendly with bitcoin then Bitcoin will highly potential, otherwise positive feedback will get if twice are opposite.

[dmcx]

Government and bitcoin both are very important in cryptocurrency, when a government is friendly with bitcoin then Bitcoin will highly potential, otherwise positive feedback will get if twice are opposite.

I believe this, but you know if the government has a bitcoin, the BTC will no longer be the BTC we know. It may make it go in another direction, maybe it destroys the organizers, ... I can not think of anything to come if the government has a bad idea about the bitcoin

[bvg96634]

Bitcoin is something so global after all, that this is no wonder that the govs are trying to deal with it, or at least to control it on their territory.

[Wodomi]

Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency are growing, but they are backed up by terrorist and illegal groups. Governments are worried that this will make the groups challenging to control and that the use of Bitcoin as a form of payment has made everything out of control. That's why Bitcoin is banned continuously from swimming.

Your opinion is not entirely true, because bitcoin is not supported by anyone including terrorists or illegal business players. Bitcoin really grew because of the trust of bitcoin users and the need for digital currencies, in line with the increasingly advanced era, which is all digital. If a country's government prohibits the use of bitcoin, because of security considerations and protecting its citizens from losses caused by high price fluctuations.