Topic: Surviving government crackdown - page 2. (Read 6432 times)

You really think other countries are not going to follow suit with the US? Look at drug laws and copyright laws. The banks are worth far, far more money than the RIAA/MPAA/DEA. To think that the US is going to be the only country outlawing Bitcoins is further proof you have no idea about politics.

I think that some of what i said is being lost in the paradigm of others minds (TheVirus).
Let me eloborate to help you adjust your thinking.

IN THE FUTURE <-- Please note

Bitcoin outlawed in the US.
Bitcoin Not outlawed in the rest of the world.  <-- Please note
rest of world accepts bitcoin as payment. <-- Please note
I would spend my bit coins where it were not illegal. <-- Please note


I leave the states paying for flight in FRN's or what ever is legal in the US at that time.
I have a great time in Europe spending bitcoins, Hell i might just have to stay in europe. Got relations in Germany and Finland.

Is BitCoin a tangible? I guess it could be argued either way. Basically a bunch of 1 and 0's arranged in a fashion that create ascii readable strings that when printed out via a chain printer may look like art. So I'm going with tangible.

so i'm going with the outlawing of gold/alcohol analogy here.

If  it's an intangible or an idea or belief, It's like outlawing, Jesus , the Falun Dafa , the Dali Lama or String theory, Dilbert, gravity or the notion that the earth revolves around the sun.  Good luck outlawing that. It gonna be as hard to stop as a the Mississippi river during flood season.

This is just an opportunity for the government to make it look like it's doing something when it's really not.
maybe 200 million USD worth of Bitcoins at present.
Maybe a few thousand spent at silk road total (if it really happened, does anyone know the actual players or is this just someone boasting or a folk lore in the making) allegedly on illicit drugs.

How much is siezed each year in US FRN in drug raids? 10's of millions, How much is assumed just between US and Mexico in the cartels that are not siezed? Billions.
I think it's time we outlaw FRN's because they are a much larger problem.  

This pareto chart is outta whack.  I thought when solving a problem you tackled the largest issue first and worked you way down.  

Do you want in on the beta?

Banks are not only challenged.

They could store bitcoins saftly, give interest on bitcoins and bitcoin loans.
So they could operate as they have allways done.

Awesome!!!  I can't wait for it to be ready.  I'll donate then.

Funny you should say that, I've been working on one for about a month: https://github.com/macourtney/Dark-Exchange

I'm pretty close to a beta.

It's fully open source and no fees. It uses the I2P network to connect p2p, which means all connections are encrypted end to end.

If the government outlaws Bitcoins, how are you going to buy goods? You can't go grocery shopping with them. You can't buy a house or car. You can't pay the bills as utility companies won't accept them. The only thing you can buy is whatever is sold on a personal/private level. If Bitcoins are outlawed then their only use would be for the black market of the Internet. It's true that you can't stop people from trading them or accepting them on a private level, but you can stop/prevent companies from accepting them or turning them into a national currency.

You guys need to remember that Bitcoins haven't replaced the dollar, pound, dinar, yen, etc yet. Just because there's a market value for them today does not mean there will be a value tomorrow if the exchanges are shut down. If I had thousands of coins, I'd be selling the majority of them as fast as possible, but I only have 2, so I'm just bidding my time and keeping my eyes on the news. I'm not trying to cause a panic, I just want to enlighten people on what can, and possibly will, happen.

The comparison to Jesus is absurd at best. People aren't buying/selling goods for religion. The difference between outlawing Bitcoins and outlawing gold, alcohol or another good is that those goods are tangible and are already accepted as goods. They have value in the real world. You want to use your Bitcoins for a vacation? Sure, go ahead. What travel company is going to accept Bitcoins if they can't turn around and sell them for a national currency or gold. All they are left with is a bunch of virtual data that they can't use. It's like trying to buy a car with money from your World of Warcraft account after the government has made WoW illegal.

Good luck with that.

Awesome FTW association of bitcoin with Jesus!

So let's say the US gov't successfully outlaws bitcoin. What are they outlawing? An idea.
A thought and a believe that this 'coin' represents value.
Well hell, they might as well outlaw Jesus because to some he is real others just an idea.

so let them outlaw bitcoins. It will be just like the laws agains holding gold, or production of alcohol. Not going to work.

So what says i have to use it here in the states? If as I suspect, BitCoin is going to grow in acceptance, would this make a nice way for me to fund a European Vacation for the family?  I just have to use dollars or what ever fiat they declare as legal to buy tickets out of the states and use my bitcoins stored out of the US for the rest of the vacation.

just my .00066BTC

How are you, as a company, going to pay the bills with BTC if you cannot convert them to a national currency? I don't think utility companies will be accepting BTC anytime soon. His logic is flawed.

A. Freeman is spot on here:

Here's an article I saw today about the upcoming government crackdown:

http://economicsandliberty.wordpress.com/2011/06/07/the-coming-attack-on-bitcoin-and-how-to-survive-it/

His logic seems sound to me.

Sorry, but a few hundred people writing to their representatives will do nothing. The US is run by people with money and if the big banks fear that they are being challenged, then they will use their deep pockets to lobby against Bitcoins. Unless you are someone with deep pockets or political power, you can do nothing. The only way to protect Bitcoins in the US is to bring more positive attention to it and get more people on board. Sadly, Bitcoins are not for the average user and probably never will be and that is one of the biggest downsides to it.

Furthermore, the US holds a lot of power across the globe. All it will take is for the US to tell the UK/Canada 'Shutdown "Joe's Bitcoin Exchange" or we will not export/import to/from you.' The majority of people in power are not technologically savvy and therefore have no real grasp of Bitcoins or their potential. People in power fear losing their power. People with money fear losing their money. The government doesn't give a crap about the constitution or your personal property. They've already shat all over us with the TSA and unconstitutional searches.

I'm in the US and I'll continue to mine Bitcoins because while they may not have value outside of the net, they can still be used to buy goods privately. The public exchanges will get shut down, it's only a matter of time. People that think the prices will skyrocket to >$100 are dreaming. We'll be lucky if the price hits $50 before the shit hits the fan.

If Mt. Gox are shutdown, there's the new TradeHill exchange, and others are on their way…

Cheers,

Lol. I guess the proof is left to the reader. 


No.  Bitcoin is different from paypal and other currencies in that it is untraceable (if done right), thus it facilitates illegal activities such as money laundering, drug trade, tax evasion, assassination markets, etc.  The politicians are right now trying to get rid of cash transactions as it is, so you can bet that they will not be welcoming to bitcoin.  They are broke, and they need their tax revenue from any way possible, from any transaction between two humans.  And MtGox is not a perfectly legal institution, if you look at all the relevant laws and regulations regarding currency transactions.  PayPal is different, since it is centralized and, after being taken over by ebay, has had to succumb to all the tax reporting and other nonsense of the US govt.  PayPal has been captured.  But the great thing about bitcoin, is that it can't be captured.


Facepalm.  Yeah, sure...


I doubt that Ron Paul will have the intellectual capacity to understand bitcoin (no insult to his political career), and when his aids discovers that it is not back by silver or gold, he will ignore it.

A nice preliminary step, but again I'd be very surprised if any sort of anti-bitcoin bill gets drafted, let alone gets out of committee. You can bet Ron Paul will be yammering about it forever.

To all US citizens that support Bitcoins. Although Senator Schumer and Friends are helping the publicity of Bitcoins we still need to take action. Some of you just say "Whatever I doesn't matter they can't hurt Bitcoin exchanges will always be replaced" but the core issue is that it SHOULDN'T have to be replaced. MtGox is a perfectly legal institution, Schumer is just fear mongering people and blowing things out of proportion by trying associate "Bitcoins directly with Drugs" even though Bitcoin is used for a lot more things. Although some of you don't agree with the illegality of drugs at least bare with me. Bitcoin =/= Illegal Drugs. Don't let them push some baloney bill to ban/limit the use of Bitcoins in the US. It is just a regrettable side effect of money; if PayPal just happened to be used to buy drugs and the government didn't bother to work with them to stop it, but instead just decided to stomp PayPal out we would think that is ridiculous. I don't know what lobbyist pay Schumer and Friends but this is obviously just some strong arming against Bitcoin.

Send emails to your local Senators and Representatives to Schumer and to the Attorney General explaining to them the ridiculousness of what they are doing right now. It violates the fundamental values of capitalism and democracy.

You don't need to worry about governments destroying bitcoins. You need to worry about the users of bitcoins. The users of bitcoins will destroy the bitcoin system.

To launder money, you take cash, and convert it somehow into regular money in the banking system, called "settled funds".  Usually to do this, you have to pay a fee to someone to launder it (someone who owns a cash business for example, like a laundromat), and also you have to pay taxes on the money.  Essentially enough of the people running the world need to get their cut, before illegal money can become legal. 

When you try to buy a house, you better already have your downpayment in the bank, because if it is under your mattress, the bank doesn't know whether you earned that money legally, or from selling drugs, or whatever.  They sort of freak out about that.  It's a pretty recent change because of 9/11 and the PATRIOT act.  The banks have to do a lot of stuff now that they never had to do regarding verifying source of funds, identities, etc.

In the current issue of Digital Gold Currency Magazine, on page 40, there is the South Carolina senate bill to allow gold/silver as legal tender. I read before that it's in the works in other states also...