I cannot formulate the words to adequately express my anger about this. I consider Bitcoin to be revolutionary. It could completely free people from the failing fiat system. It could completely free the people from the restrictions of credit card payments. It combines the best qualities of cash and plastic, AND it's impossible to steal (assuming the proper precautions are taken). And now, as with everything great that's happened since 1920, the US government and some multinational corporations have to find some way to stomp it to the ground for a few kickbacks and maybe a few years in office.
If I could find a person who knowingly allowed this to happen, and I were in the same room as him with a gun in my hand, I would have a very difficult time not pulling the trigger.
Some people might argue that "compromise is the only way to keep Bitcoin legal". If Bitcoin becomes popular enough, this may be true. I say, why gives a fuck? I believe morality overrides legality 100% of the time. I believe that in the modern world, which revolves around the Internet, free software (especially free software infrastructures such as Bitcoin) is the greatest tool we have against authoritarianism. I believe that freedom from governmental and corporate control is a human right. Therefore, I believe that as long as Bitcoin has even a small number of users, it is my moral duty to do my best to keep the Bitcoin ecosystem alive, regardless of the consequences. If everyone shared this same philosophy, Bitcoin would be literally unstoppable.
1. Reject all closed source Bitcoin software, including web wallets, and, God forbid it comes to this, the official client.
2. Reject all Bitcoin software that contradicts Satoshi's paper. This paper is the Constitution of Bitcoin. This includes any software which blacklists addresses, reverses transactions, or has ANY central point of failure, especially a central authority. The difference between Bitcoin and Paypal is that Bitcion is decentralized.
3. Governments exist to catch proverbial murderers. They do not exist to prevent the purchase of proverbial weapons. No matter what governments say, control of currency (Bitcoin or otherwise) does nothing but control innocent people.
4. Corporations exist to serve customers. They do not exist to control customers. Boycott companies that place any restrictions other than the price of their goods or services.
Interesting points but it's not really quite so simple to combat these problems.
Things like web wallets do contributee to the centalization aspect, making it far easier for large banks to come in and start capitalizing- just build a feature that has some price advantage, but uses centralized technologies, and suddenly everyone is back on the old program again.
One problem we face is tolerating technologies that abuse the underlying network. In my view Color Coins and Mastercoin are an example of this. The notion of having some kind of for-profit Color Coin system that exploits the assumptions of the network participants is just flat out intolerable if you ask me.
This issue of government charter in the realm of finance has been going on for quite some time. J. Orlin Grabbe identitied these conflicts some time ago. http://orlingrabbe.com/money2.htm
There's a specter haunting the international financial markets: the specter of crime by nomenclature, by theological semantics. To be sure, the faceless piece of transaction information that makes money "money"--a useful medium of exchange, whereby we exchange everything for it, and avoid the direct bartering of wheelbarrows for oranges--has been under attack before. The 60s brought us "euro"-dollars, and the 70s "petro"-dollars. Now we have "narco"-dollars, "terror"-dollars, and (who knows?) maybe "kiddie-porn"-dollars. For some of the data bits stored in banks' computers comprise "clean" money and others "dirty" money, the latter legalistically smitten with original sin.
As Yoga Berra might say, it's digital voodoo, all over again.
As we know in post-Bailout America, there is an 'insider group' and these people are working for money interests while telling us that they want to keep up safe from terror, kiddie porn, and irreversible transactions. Do we still believe these people?
The solution though is to stay vigilant with our values and continue to forge ahead despite the 'knowns' being now salaried employees of various banking interests. Have a look at my Confidence Chains project, it came out of some of the conclusions I came to regarding these issues and the drawbacks of other similar platforms.
