Topic: Silk Road: anonymous marketplace. Feedback requested :) - page 18. (Read 152817 times)

As for the userbase statement, I'll bet you 5 BTC that if a poll were made in the general bitcoin forums about the motives driving individual interest in the bitcoin movement, the individuals interested in Bitcoins for black transactions would be outnumbered by the users interested in Bitcoins for either personal profit or ideological reasons by at least 3 to 1.  This thread sees a tremendous disparity of idealogy in favor of the black market simply because it is a thread about the black market Bitcoin economy, which uninterested parties aren't even going to take the time to read, much less post in.

What exactly would the benefits of a regulated bitcoin currency be?

I would argue not only on one practical issue (who's gonna do the regulating as mentioned) but on another as well -- grey/black markets would provide much more early influx into the currency that getting other vendors to, who really don't have a REASON to swtich (or at least not one that they are convinced of yet).

Right now, the people motivated for BTC to suceed other than ideologically driven early adopters are people facilitating quasi-legal or illegal market transactions. You may not like that. You make think it looks bad. But it actually has the potential to be a very strong "force for good" within the bitcoin economy -- both in terms of encouraging stronger security and actively seeking out potential flaws and by providing lots of cash flowing in that is being used for actual transactions

Tell me, which authority decides which transactions are allowable and which are not? In what method do they have this control?

All I am saying is that if anyone has this authority, Bitcoin has been reduced from a free currency (the original intent) to yet another somewhat novel payment mechanism for fiat money.

That's an easy one.  The true value of bitcoins to a person who wants to make illegal purchases is the ability of bitcoins to be used for any transaction, however shady, with total safety.  There are a lot of people in this thread who want the goods on Silkroad and consider Bitcoins a means to that end - that is, they consider the Bitcoins only virtue to be unrestricted transactions for any good or service, however the legality.

Hans - have you read the material on senator Charles Schumer?  I apologize if you already are in the know, but if you are not, please google Charles Schumer Bitcoin.  It becomes extremely clear that this PR war is already underway in precisely the method you fear.

EDIT: spelling

Hey was just wondering If u can deliver some morrocon black with some transformers and orange budhas? DO u deliver in UK?? I know stuff is available here but y go out and waste time in searching if u can get it online?

I don't understand why Silk Road is so important to Bitcoin?  Please elaborate.

This is a false choice. Silk Road(s) cannot exist without Bitcoin. Bitcoin cannot exist while also prohibiting Silk Road(s).

Hey was just wondering If u can deliver some morrocon black with some transformers and orange budhas? DO u deliver in UK?? I know stuff is available here but y go out and waste time in searching if u can get it online?

This is a false choice. Silk Road(s) cannot exist without Bitcoin. Bitcoin cannot exist while also prohibiting Silk Road(s).

Oh, jesus.  This is bad.

Oh, jesus.  This is bad.

If you had to choose one service to survive, dooming the other one to failure, would it be Bitcoin, or Silkroad?

@LulzSec just took a $7k BTC donation and announced it was using it to buy servers to pwn the FBI lol

Now, IF the government associates Silk Road with Bitcoins and attemps to do something about Bitcoins, then that could be a problem. But then the problem is not Silk Road, but rather the government officials. If they are moronic enough to try and take Bitcoins down because of Silk Road, then that shows our government is full of idiots (though I consider this to be readily apparent) that can't make logical connections and conclusions. Don't blame Silk Road for idiots that run this country. If we keep letting the idiots have their way (which, in your case, would be by blaming Silk Road and trying to get rid of it), then we will continue to be stuck in this idiotic mess.

they would find other excuses to demonize Bitcoin.  

I am a single, small and un-influential voice in this community, and I want you gone, Silkroad.  This has nothing to do with my personal views on unrestricted trade among consenting adults, and everything to do with the fact that the united states government in its totality has every motive to discredit, damage and disable Bitcoin by any means necessary, and that if Senator Charles Schumer's current actions have any weight to them, the machinery for this has already been set into motion, using you.

You, Silkroad, are a tremendous liability to Bitcoin, and while the users here who are interested in Bitcoin purely for black transactions will disagree vocally with my opinion, your assocation with us is extremely damaging.  You can and will be used against us, and I for one want you gone.  I do not wish to purchase illegal substances with Bitcoins.  I want Bitcoins to be the image of moral progress to the people in my country, and as public opinions stand, this cannot come to be for as long as puppets like Schumer can gleefully call Bitcoins "the black market currency". I want you to drop Bitcoins as an accepted currency and terminate all association with Bitcoin.

You are, collectively, a huge threat to the Bitcoin movement, for purely political reasons, and I have no doubt in my mind that the cause Bitcoins represents is socially and economically many orders of magnitude more important for mankind's well being than you, Silkroad. I only wish more Bitcoin users here would recognize the danger of your association with us.

Silk Road is not the end of Bitcoin. Bitcoin itself is evil enough in the eyes of the excited states, remember what happened to E-Gold? EBullion? All the arrested LR and Pecunix traders in the US? yeah

Then we are doomed to lose.  They will ban the possession and usage of bitcoins, they will subpoena ISPs (successfully), they will devise methods of tracking who is likely to use them, and the same machinery that makes search and seizure of narcotics from individuals so profitable will, with a slight change of its gears, shift to grind miners and traders in their teeth instead of growers.

This is true, and valid, and as unfortunate for the health of Bitcoin in the US as it is fortunate for Silkroad's well being everywhere.