Topic: Is bitcoin legal? Not according to U.S. government (Read 7294 times)

If a revolution ain't illegal it ain't a revolution.

Sure you can trace every transaction, but it isn't between Person A and Person B, it is between BTC address A and BTC address B.  And if the users of Bitcoin are smart about it, there will be nothing tying them to the account.

Honestly the developers are being smart about this by giving the impression of cooperation with the gov't - or maybe they think they are really cooperating.  Either way, an intelligent userbase can all-but deny oversight into their private transactions.

Watch this interview with Gavin Anderson bit coin programmer/administrator. It's eye opening, especially what he says about working with the government,  using bitcoin is not anonymous, the exchanges are registered with the government and complying with all laws.  This guy also gave a talk to the CIA this week. You can find the link for that yourself.

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7368784n

it really doesn't matter.
The government is pretty much powerless in tackling a P2P network with no centralized location.
They can try and tackle institutions like Mt Gox but it'll be a cat and mouse game.

You are talking about a tool they use. A symptom of the problem.

They own the presses and can print all the money they want.

Its about power and control.

To create a propagandized world where everyone thinks they are happy. Enslaved by debt and obligation, doing their patriotic duty as outlined by indoctination and manipulation. A control grid.

Money gives them that power and control to influence dupes and minions. Put them into office. Using change agents to indoctrinate and manipulate the public into seeing things how they do. Establishment controlled media, establishment controlled schooling, establishment controlled social programs, establishment controlled society. Pressuring people to think in mainstream ways even if deep inside they disagree or question it, they dont want to be different. This is how they steal our wealth and our rights by enacting legislation under public support by that very indoctrination and manipulation that takes more rights and freedom. Using more oppressive and tyrannical leaders and laws.

Why do you think the governemnts frown upon militia, patriots, and constitutionalists and have used media to try and change public perception of them ?

Its all about a few controlling the many. A return to serfdom. So they live like kings with anything they want, while everyone else serves them and gets as little as possible, jsut enough so they wont revolt and kill the king. Its simply rolling back time to the age of Pharohs and Kings whos word was law and no one had any rights.

They biggest tools are war and the money.  If they can kill our resolve and disenfranchise us enough, we may be willing to accept world government as the only saving grace.

The ecnonomy, global warming, the ozone threat, world wars, police actions, the enviromental movement, and many more are all tools used to change the hearts and minds of the people.

they are slamming us from 100 different directions with just as many tools.

they want all land, all wealth, and all resources for themselves.

the manipulation and indoctrination are working for them.

They change agents are gradually changing the hearts and minds of the people.

the divide and conquer strategy is working.

The main problem is the people for our apathy and disinterests in what truly makes us free. Very few citizens feel they ahve the ability and responsibility to protect their own freedom, while many do not even recognise that there is a problem, let along knowing the cause and what they can do to fix it even if they recognised it.

if a few billion armed world citizens stood up to them in unison with an ultimatum, they would run like cowards.

You are not speaking about the US.

You are speaking about the insidious influence who puts dupes and minions into power throughout world governments.

Those bastardizing what this country and the rest of the free world were built upon are the ones you should direct your vitriol towards. Not any nation nor its people.

The rest of the world is all bought up with WB/IMF loans they cant even pay the interests on. Europe already fell to the globalists geopolitical and financial power. The asian union and african union are not far off. All it would take is for america to fall completely to start a chain reaction steamrolling to world towards a global police state with centralized executive, legislature, judiciary, and military.

Go read some realy history books, not the ones they give you in school not the information in the media. They are dividing and conquering us by splitting us apart. We are brothers and sisters fighting the same battle in the same war.

There is still time while we have freedom left.

If freedom and liberty were truly gone, we would be arrested for having this discussion and put in re-education camps.

It's not to late... for now.

All right, I concede that maybe "to care" wasn't the right verb to use. In the proper sense I do care because I strive to do all that's legitimate for a non-US national to do to change this (IMHO) for the better (with the obvious boundary of preserving US nationals' freedoms).
Beside that, I don't care.

According to the very insightful movie posted above US HAD already fallen - as long ago as 1913 (FRS/IRS creation)

The problem is to bring the original principles US was founded on back. By now, the WHOLE WORLD is ready to REVOLT against the RULE OF BANKSTERS (call them Rotshilds if you wish). It's very sad to see the US being perceived as the Banksters, but it is so - US is totally occupied by them.

I'm into Bitcoin for this reason, as well as because it's a great technology and social phenomena. Are people of the US ready to do their share in establishing of the Fare New World Order? Forget about capitalizm/communism - I want to have MY MONEY BACK. Money is a social phenomana. They belong to the people, not to the Govt, not to any social class (if we use Marxist discourse), not to any nation, not to any corporation.

I don't like Banksterism, I don't like Socializm or Communism. I just want the normal free market back. With taxes on monetary gains ONLY. In other words, nobody should be able to hoard MONEY. If you can spend what you've earned - no taxes. So - majority of people will not pay any taxes. But those - like these Banks now, that have TRILLIONS in reserves, shall pay, and Govt. SHALL put these money back into the economy. Seems simple.

Maybe with Bitcoin and no ability to issue more money when somebody is hoarding them we can demonstrate that it's simple to run the economy and w/o Banksters and corrupt Govt. the Free Market will do what it does - grouth, prosperity and happiness to the people.

Yes I do. The thing "the US" doesn't get IMHO is that a person's freedom ends where another's begins. It's too easy building your citizens' freedom at the expense of other peoples'.
Mind you: I'd be equally critic if this were to be the position of the EU or whatever else. It's just that these kind of things generally come always from the US (ACTA, SWIFT, etc.) - so I get started up pretty easily when somebody links "freedom" and "US".

And BTW, I disagree with the primadonna view of the US: no, you're not strictly needed. Simlarly, the EU is not strictly needed, Japan is not strictly needed, China isn't either and so is India. Nobody's strictly needed.

Supporters of Bitcoin and moving toward a decentralized society in general, should "give a damn about the US" and all other countries because global politics and power and economics is a very unstable system, ready to collapse into World War 3 much faster than you think, and we should all try to make sure LOCAL CHANGES ARE AVOIDED and GLOBAL CHANGES HAPPEN SMOOTHLY. We should not try to overthrow any government or escalate conflicts, and such governments will feel less need to attack the idea of a decentralized society, giving us flexibility to implement it the right way. Instead we should use things like Bitcoin and Wikileaks to make such changes smoothly and quickly. Anyone who knows calculus knows you can be smooth and fast at the same time. That's why you should give a damn about US and every other country, and less importantly, every Human life is valuable which is something most people say with their mouth but not their actions. If you can't look at the bigger picture, then please let someone else think for you who does think about those things.

Fucking feds.

I care because I have to live in the same house with the bully.  You should care because he is also known to leave his own house and beat the kids on the next block whenever he starts feeling insecure about himself.  And he carries a damn big stick.

Your and everyone else in the world should care if you care about freedom and liberty.

If the US falls, the rest of the world is not far behind.

We citizens of the world are brothers and sisters. We need to unite under freedom and liberty, for that is our true common bond.

With all due respect, but... who gives a damn about the US?

Unfortunately, this doesn't take into account who actually has the money and their agenda.  It doesn't matter if the US gov't is bankrupt - that will simply justify further liquidation of assets stolen from US citizens.  If the banksters want the police state, they'll have it.  The only way this will change is if enough 'services' provided by the US gov't are available at higher quality and lower cost on the open market. 

BTC is a great step forward because it breaks their stranglehold on money.  Arbitration companies now settle twice as many cases in a year as gov't courts in the US - this is beginning to weaking the gov'ts strangehold on law and disputes.  The only domino yet to fall is the gov'ts strangehold on military power.  Without an effective means of collective defense outside of the traditional means of gov't armies and militias, we can never move in the direction of real freedom.   

As I see it, step 1 is bring BTC and similar fiat-money-replacements mainstream.  Step 2 is use it as a means of financing goods and services that the gov't currently has a legal monopoly on and would shut down if it could regulate, trace and manipulate financial transactions.  Step 3 is bringing those alternatives mainstream, until the average 'man on the street' begins to wonder why he's paying taxes when everything the government supposedly 'provides' him is available more cheaply and at vastly higher quality on the open market.

Why would the man on the street pay for stuff when he already gets that service through taxation?  For the same reason people pay for DSL and Cable internet when dial up is provided nearly free in certain geographies.

BTC is the beginning of the future.  We can make it happen together.

I hope bitcoin does not get banned! That would suck.

If they would do their job, which is to figure out what their citizens want and make it happen, then they would have people who wanted them to continue running things instead of shrink to a smaller government, but instead "all they've got is their money".

They wont let the dollar hyper inflate. At least not for long.

They will kill the dollar and either create another US currency or push in the Amero if we ever get near hyper-inflation.

Without going into a big huge diatribe on the terrible state the US has fallen into lets just say this..

The bitcoin is just another example of people flight from the dollar.

Bitcoins,
Gold,
Silver,
Euro's,
Commodities,
Little toys from vending machines outside the supermarket...

ANYTHING TO GET AWAY FROM THE USD

The whole systems coming down, and its finger is going to be pointed in one direction. I think we all know where.

So when the dollar collapses, or hyper inflates, or whatever it does, do to QE3 under another name, or QE15, it doesn't matter, bitcoins and other currencies will be the benefit.

Bottom line, i wouldn't worry about the US government for much longer. A few years from now and they wont be able to support the police state we've all grown to know and "love"

I agree this is entirely likely, in fact it will almost certainly happen. There's no way Bitcoins will become as successful as speculators are hoping without some hostility from the fed. It will be interesting to see which countries attack it and how quickly. Hidden transactions make taxation difficult, but as long as Bitcoin is competing as a virtual currency it's fine, next it will be traded like physical currency when there is some fixed value attached to it (1 Bigmac will ALWAYS cost 1 BTC), finally it will be traded like the semi-virtual currencies of the exchanges, credit cards, etc.

Until the last point it's of laughable threat to established currencies.