Ron Paul Doesn’t Believe Bitcoin is “True Money”

Have you heard? Ron Paul is now on Quora — a popular question-and-answer website.

The 78-year-old politico has been answering questions, and revealed on Wednesday his true feelings on the emerging digital currency we know as bitcoin.

“Bitcoin is a very interesting subject because for many years in Congress I was a champion of legalizing competition in currencies,” he wrote in the opening line in his response to the question: Bitcoin: Why does Ron Paul think Bitcoin does not fit the definition of money?

Paul has made no secret that he feels today’s monetary system isn’t quite what it should be:

We have a terrible monetary system today. We have a government that purposely counterfeits and debases the currencies and I believe that the alternative would be a competition. That means that anything that wants to substitute for the American dollar should be permitted. There should be no prohibitions; there should not be a monopoly and a cartel running our monetary system because it so often benefits the privileged few. We certainly saw this in the bailing out of the financial system where the wealthy bankers got bailed out it in this recent and severe recession. I am a strong believer in competition. Bitcoin is an introduction to that.

Despite in early December stating that Bitcoin could potentially “destroy the dollar“, Paul says he feels bitcoin isn’t “true money”:

Though I don’t personally believe that Bitcoin is true money, it should be perfectly legal and there should be no restrictions on it, there should be no taxes on it. The people who operate Bitcoin would, of course, be prohibited from committing fraud but the people should be able to have competition whether it is a basket of commodities or crypto-currencies – it should be perfectly legal. For this to operate, we need to have freedom from government intervention when it comes to the Internet. I am concerned that the government ultimately wants to curtail the Internet and there have been attempts to do so.

An interesting point of view, certainly. And while many in the crypto-community would disagree with Paul’s comment as to whether or not bitcoin is true money, his views on the use of the digital currency are very much in-line with community sentiments.

“The internet is the salvation for those of us who believe in liberty because it is an alternative way of getting around the system not only in the spreading of our ideas in this instance but in in terms of getting around the monetary system on the whole if they do permit crypto-currencies and other forms of transactions,” he said. “So, this is something that we should all be concerned about whether we endorse it or not.”