Topic: help me refute this article "bitcoin: don't" (Read 2175 times)

you guys all rock for serious

bitcoin community is way ahead of their time, its like the google concentrate generation.  totally honored

i didn't write the article.  some wallstreet grinch did.  some random dude on facebook sent it to me saying DON'T DO BIT coiN MAYAHn  ... and I read it and had a rash reaction, and called him a troll, but said I would look into it...  so i posted it on here for you fine folks to help me understand it.  and I thank you. 

but no i didn't write this some famous grinch libertarian did

We're not living in a dystopian society yet. So for right now both you and her are totally fine.

The point the article was making is that it's likely that in some point in the future, maybe the near future maybe the far future, there will be some sort of crackdown on Bitcoin. I tend to agree with this. Whether this crackdown will be successful or not is very much up in the air. Assuming it is successful, just for the sake of argument, if you were to then continue to use Bitcoin you'd be a criminal. And if at that point in the future you're caught, they're going to try and dig into your background, and if they'll find this transaction, and depending on how far off the deep-end our society has gone, your girlfriend could be in trouble too.

But that's all highly theoretical. If you're that worried about it then simply stop using Bitcoin as soon as the government declares it illegal. Until then you should be fine.

to have spend a good time writing this article shows you have some emotion involved. i dont want to own.. um... ants so id never write a 3 page article about ants. so theres probably a hidden agenda why you wrote such a article highlighting only the bad and not considering the potential.

bitcoin is still new, entrepreneurs have a new economy to start fresh business, to start fresh projects, idea's where those that like regulation can create, manage or just use xyz exchange that is fully regulated. or others that don't like regulation can use abc exchange. side by side with no fighting, no wars because bitcoin is the true freedom of currency.

if you dont like the 10minute confirms then set up a service like mtgox deposit and codes..(ignoring the live trades side of mtgox for now) where people put in 1BTC while taking a shower in the morning. by the time they get to starbucks that coin is pre-confirmed. and starbucks asks for a MTGOX like code to shift the balance from the database column of customer A to starbucks balance column for digital payments, or starbucks can accept casascius coins.

now starbucks can withdraw or convert the coin at their leisure, reassured that without waiting the coin is genuine.

for every scenario in the article there is a solution. so remember this.

ITS NEW, its growing, its YOURS. so if you dont like something, your free to make a solution to the problem. if others like your solution they will use it too.

its economic freedom at its best, and the other freedom you also have is to not touch it and have no emotion towards it.

No worries.  She's fine.  There are not any laws yet in the U.S. against depositing cash into a bank account.

NICE.  the reason this article put fear into me....

quick story..
since I wasn't anywhere close to a bank of america I had a loved one of mine deposit money into my bitfloor account(bank of america acount) and I traded with that money to buy bitcoins maybe a month ago.  

is it at all possible that she would get in any trouble for this?  if they do crack down?  it was before I even realized there was a possible risk, and I just asked her to do it and I'd pay her the money, so she did.

that's the only thing I worry about in all this.  she's one of my best friends.  real sweet girl, if I got her in trouble in any way I couldn't handle it

I can handle being persecuted for being a revolutionary and for being apart of the revolution, I can even be crucified, but innocent bystanders I have involved being persecuted... is on my conscience.  

is there any way they could somehow track her as the depositer of my money 5 states away?  or is depositing into an exchange account perfectly legal, and always will be?  I need some comfort here

and thank you all for your great responses

And with a Ferrari

Perfect counter-argument: your loss.  And then you'd drive away in your Ferrari.

It works better in person.

The truth usually requires few words unless you are trying to explain technical details. This article concocts a bizarre set of arguments that are pretty much summed up by BigJohn. This article belongs in the FUD Hall of Shame.

Karl is a well established internet presence.  Some might use the term "crank" but, he is entitled to his opinions.

You can see more of his "wisdom", including his book sales links, radio show etc at market-ticker.org.  He clearly has no love for what's going on and I'm amused that he seems to be taking the side of the establishment in spite of that.

And with that, I'm keeping out of it.

The guy has some convoluted idea of what his ideal currency would be which is different than any other definition of currency, then he goes on to explain why Bitcoin does not match his definition.

Webster's dictionary
currency: something (as coins, treasury notes, and banknotes) that is in circulation as a medium of exchange, a common article for bartering

I do believe he's right about the government eventually using force to stop Bitcoin if it ever gets to that. If we're saying that Bitcoin is awesome, then we're also saying that it's a threat, and I don't believe the government will just let it go.

They're putting people in prison for tax evasions, for downloading some MP3s, for possessing weed, etc, all to defend someone's profit. So it's silly to believe that with something as massive as this they'll just sit quiet.

My rebuttal:

tl;dr

The blackmailing guy was reportedly caught because there was 2 old pictures on the thumbdrives he used for the ransom demands with pics of his cats on them, and metadata info.

Has there been a recent change to your forum profile status?

That may be true, but they sure did find the anonymous guy blackmailing a congressman pretty quick. Thanks for the tip, moni3z!

As for Bitcoin being able to replace all currencies, I think it's niche are two-fold: Western Union and SWIFT markets, and well as Forex trading. I still don't yet feel Bitcoin will have any major affect on a single national economy as some here do. Maybe I'm just too young.

He understands quite well what Bitcoin means and how it works. Despite his claims to being a libertarian he opposes the very idea of free-market currency, any free-market currency.

Straw man arguments used to prop up the big huge straw man. I esp laughed at "Bitcoin and other digital currencies are different -- they're just a string of bits.  To validate a coin, therefore, I must know that the one you are presenting to me is unique, that it wasn't just made up by you at random but in fact is a valid coin".

Tell him to read the bitcoin whitepaper I can't fake bitcoins and send them to you

So he's arguing that Bitcoin is bad because drug dealers will leave traces (transactions in the blockchain) and because you can't instantly confirm a transaction for things such as buying gasoline? Firstly, it is hard to associate a person with a bitcoin address. Secondly, a drug dealer can just be payed with a private key, creating no transaction. Point-of-sale transactions can be used with 0-confirmations as long as they are not a lot of money. Basically, it takes a lot of mining power to double spend, and thus a lot of money, so it is not worth it for small transactions. Who would pay $1000 of electricity and $100,000 of equipment to double spend $40 of gasoline? And as long as the merchant is a well-connected node they dont have to worry about a Finney attack (sending same transaction to two different nodes hoping that both accept). For large transactions, just wait for 6 confirmations (~1 hour).

He talkes about the "difficulty" validating a bitcoin compared to a dollar, as if running some software or pasting in a bitcoin address on blockchain.info is more difficult than holding up a flashlight to a dollar. Plus, validating a bitcoin is mathematically guaranteed, wheres examining a dollar bill is not guaranteed to eliminate the possibility of using a counterfeit bill.

There was something about taxes and bitcoin when the value changes. How is this different from gold or any other commodity?

Then he goes on about bitcoin and entropy. I didn't really know what he is getting at, but perhaps he doesnt understand that "lost" bitcoins don't matter, because we could lose all bitcoins except for 1, but still have an entire economy use small divisions of that 1 BTC.  Where the decimal place is doesn't matter.

This seem nothing more than a poorly researched and disorganized rant. If he wants anyone to take him seriously, he should organize his points such that each point with supports stand out on their own and research counter arguments to what he is saying on these very forums, because they have been argued many times already.

He's basically saying that he's afraid of the government cracking down on Bitcoin, and take down it and everyone associated with it. That's a valid reason to not get into Bitcoin. The state pretty much is pure evil and the more an alternative to it becomes popular, the more likely they are to use physical violence to crush it. Can't argue with that.

But!...
This is like saying that horses should never replace unicorns, cause you know, unicorns are fucking awesome. True, you might think they're awesome, but they also don't exist. So good luck with that.

He's saying here that an idealized utopian-dream is theoretically better than Bitcoin, so instead of using Bitcoin he's going to use the bastard child of that Utopian dream, and use something he admits is much worse for him than Bitcoin is. It's mind-boggling really.

It's like saying I won't ever drive a car because a private jet is better. That's true, a jet is better, but if I waited until the moment that everyone had their own private jet to go anywhere, I'd never leave the house.