No bitcoiner with half a brain gives a shit about what the authorities say about BTC. Speculators are just selling to buy back lower.
Bitcoin was *designed* to be illegal, and to be resilient to authorities actions.
Keep 'em coming
Bitcoin was *designed* to be illegal, and to be resilient to authorities actions.
Keep 'em coming
For someone as informed as you (and you usually are), that's a pretty shallow statement. Bitcoin is in many way not "designed to be illegal".
Sure, it gives you (more or less) complete freedom to transfer wealth *to whoemever you want to, whenever you want to* (which includes illegal activity), but it also gives government agencies the ability to track you down and punish you (e.g. through the fiat/BTC link via exchanges).
Just to see how hard it is to stay fully anonymous, look at the sheepmarket thief/ves being chased through half the ecosystem's tumblers
(but you know all of this).So in summary: you can do illegal stuff with BTC, sure. But it's far from certain you will *get away with it*, which dampens the freedom part quite a bit.
Its clear in Satoshi's early work that the final purpose of this experiment is to replace "dishonest" fiat money. He already knew that if BTC was to replace government-issued currency, banning and harsh fight would happen - this is why he created a system resilient to any kind of banning, and that's why he chose to be anonymous (and he "chickened out" hard when Wikileaks accepted BTC donations, he thought BTC was not ready yet for that kind of attention - he was mistaken).
Summing up: Bitcoin was never intended to be an "investment" or a "virtual commodity" - it was meant to be an potentially world-changing experiment that could disrupt the world current power balances.
Real bitcoiners know this. Real bitcoiners know that the final purpose is not to exchange BTC->fiat, but BTC->goods+services.
Real bitcoiners know that a "bitcoin ban" is not only *expected*, but it is also *needed*. Firstly and foremost, because BTC has YET to prove it is resilient, and that's a final proof. Secondly, because it will just mean that Bitcoin is going in the direction it was designed to go.
This "scare tactics" just shake out weak hands that see in BTC just a way of making a quick (fiat) buck. I know that most of the old timers wouldn't dump their coins if there is a global ban - would you?
