Topic: The future of Bitcoin is illegal - page 3. (Read 20070 times)

To me it's an expensive hassle to obtain BTC and through most paths I have to deal with entities who I don't trust (potentially including the likes of Dwolla, the various Bitcoin exchanges, my banks, and my government who is almost certainly logging all of my financial activity.)  To top it off, I am concerned that it will become even more difficult to obtain BTC going forward so the supply I hold currently exceeds the 'face value' in my mind.  That is why I have little or no interest in spending BTC when there are options.

Am I a bad person for failing to support the nascent economy?  Probably.  OTOH, I've not yet been ripped off either.  I consider the USD<->BTC hassles which currently exist to be something of a blessing insofar as it gives the solution an excuse to fail at the exchange level.  Perhaps the solution would not be so rife with bad apples absent the roadblocks to use which are currently in place.  I actually don't really believe that in a major way because the roadblocks are not that significant and the failures have been mostly associated with user error (aka, ignorance, greed, false mapping, etc) in my opinion.  But it makes a good story at least.

I doubt that...

Maybe the sorts of people that buy your products just haven't heard of bitcoin yet.

I tried to sell some products for bitcoins and guess what, nobody buys! This may be due to the prices which are a little bit higher than the price in dollars, but it may also show that bitcoin is not preffered for buying goods. So perhaps it will remain only an economical tool for the darkest corners of internet and a speculation area. Therefore, the bitcoin could not have a very bright future.

Gold was indeed made illegal under Franklin Roosevelt in the United States in 1933. Holding physical gold could land you in jail. Check out Executive Order 6102. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102

Absolutely. Remember when Pirate's Ponzi crashed?

Bitcoin will gain with illegal activity. I wouldn't be surprised of there's human trafficking in exchange for btc.

I don't see any reason why government will claim a potential investment target illegal, is gold or silver illegal? Some even more close example are Linden dollar or WOW gold, are they illegal?

Oh, they are believe me! Red lights are flashing and alarm bells are ringing at many government agencies. People that helped start bitcoin project intended to create a substitute to physical gold. But they are wrong. Bitcoin and gold are perfect additions to each other.

Bitcoin and every kind of bond that have face value in bitcoin and are traded in bitcoin, will not be legal in near term future. Bitcoin is changing the status quo while financial laws and regulations are crafted to preserve this status quo. Learn from history!

Before the printing press was invented only the Holy Church has the right to sanction the writing of books. People should read only true stuff and someone should take care about that - they say. The printing press was invented by the German Johannes Gutenberg around 1440. And guess what, it was declared illegal and all the books printed were outlawed by the Church. Many people were sentenced to death and burned to death. The printing press changed the status quo and challenged the POWER of gatekeepers of human knowledge through controlling horizontal communication between people! As early as 1620, the English statesman and philosopher Francis Bacon could write that typographical printing has "changed the whole face and state of things throughout the world". Same repeats now with bitcoin. Just this same theater has modern decors.

The bitcoin system is ahead of its time, it's unclear if the society will be able to adopt its model in a short time. Investing time and money other than in a speculative way could be not a win situation at this time. Selling products for bitcoins is very risky for those who need an immediate profit.

I totally agree with that and this is what makes the most sense indeed. This is the most efficient way to legitimate Bitcoin like it has been for PayPal for example. If this payment option is given, people (most of which have never heard or seen a bitcoin name and logo) will be curious. Combined with some free advertisement/endorsement (e.g. Max Keiser and the like) it will slowly get traction.

At present it is a very small volume currency. To date with ~10 million bitcoin mined at $12 per coin this is only a $120 million market, a drop in the ocean of paper currency (that can be printed ex nihilo) really. Value will have to increase significatively.

As always, time will tell.

The laws are set up to "raise the bar" for "competing" financial infrastructures such as bitcoin from arising.

For example merely setting up experimental "exchanges" for exchanging the experimental currency "bitcoin" ran into quite a bit of hassle due to legal concerns, and setting up an experimental "stock exchange" seems to have, or to have been about to have, run into more.

Preventing the experiment from actually being run long term is problematic, maybe we should also have set up an experimental "school" where people would create "student" usernames who would perform these experiments, or something.

I have been taking the approach from the start that no one is going to participate in such experiments day in and day out year in and year out with play money they consider worthless, thus that at the very least we need our experimental institutions to be set in an experimental world/universe in which the experimental currency / currencies are valued, much like EVE online's currency is valued and World of Warcraft gold is valued and so on.

If the experiment is a success, that is, if it succeeds in developing robust, reliable institutions, solving the "rampant scams" problem players attempting to participate in investment and finance in EVE Oinline constantly encounter and so on, then we can consider the experiment a success and start looking into what would be involved in expanding an experimental, aka game or "not real just a simulation so far" currency and its institutions into the "real world".

Unfortunately the scammers seem dead set on convincing people not only that their scams are legitimate experimental uses of this experimental software, legitimate instriturions of its experimental world/game/universe, but also that the whole thing is not in fact an experiment but an actual deployment of an actual currency.

That last part is probably a huge part of the problem. The whole thing has been massively misrepresented by people seeking "a quick buck", bringing bad rep to the entire experiment and the experimental settings and institutions in which and means of which the experiment is conducted.

-MarkM-

Yeah, but those are the only (or at least the primary) kind of companies that would seem to fit a reasonable definition of "Bitcoin business."  If you deliberately set out to start a "Bitcoin business," it will probably have something to do with exchanges or moving money. If it doesn't, you're almost certainly setting yourself up for failure.  

"Bitcoin is so cool! I want to start a Bitcoin business! Hmm... I know, I'll make custom hats with my Bedazzler(TM) and sell them online for bitcoins!"

Well ok, great, but you're forgetting something.  Bitcoin is a currency and a payment system. It's not a business plan. It doesn't magically make the goods and services you intend to provide valuable. Now it's true that in SOME cases, the revolutionary properties of Bitcoin might enable a completely new business model (e.g., Silk Road), but that will be the exception.  For the most part, what you'll see are existing businesses adding Bitcoin as an additional payment option.  Making it the exclusive payment option is (in almost all cases) like opening a fireworks store that only sells snakes and sparklers -- it probably won't do great things for your sales numbers.  And things will likely stay that way for quite some time as Bitcoin becomes more widely known and used.  But remember - the fact that a hat seller allows you to buy their hats using bitcoins doesn't make them a "Bitcoin business" any more than their acceptance of dollars makes them a "dollar business."  So if you want to start a business that leverages one or more of Bitcoin's unique properties (e.g., ability to send micro-payments), then that's great.  And if you just want to sell Bedazzled hats, that's great too.  But in either case, understand what you're getting into.

There is nothing virtual about bit coin, it is an electronic currency, not monopoly money!

I believe that if BTC ever becomes mainstream, it needs to be legal, so help it to get more positive view and cooperate with certain regulations are necessary

If most of people find this thing insecure and illegal, they will not bother

Or, let it just be a currency in the virtual world, anyway the virtual economy is going to be as large as real economy in the future, and there are far less regulation in the virtual world

the sad thing is that some here will not even perceive your masterful use of irony

YEAH! ACTAUL MONEY. The kind made of paper! Not that unbacked stuff. That's what I'M talkin' 'bout!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zG8wp82bsQ


Replace 'auxiliary' with 'monetary'. I don't agree with the premise either but that's unimportant.

My succinct response to your posts is:

• Good call on the 2011 bubble.
• Replace 'Bitcoin' with 'gold' in your examples and see how they read. Bitcoin's suitability as a currency vis-a-vis dollars and its suitability as money relative to fiat are separate issues. The former is highly contingent; the latter less so.
• Check out Gresham's Law/Exter's Pyramid.

It is.

Was sending an email easier than mailing a letter in 1995 if you didn't have a computer, an internet connection, or an email account? Well, no, probably not. But the new technology was so superior to the old that it's hardly a surprise that over the next decade and a half millions of people acquired those things and learned to use them. Nor is it a surprise that people designed systems that worked with the underlying technology and made it much, much easier to use.

No, but I certainly don't expect to wait for a whole week.  IMHO a long series of made up 9s expresses the same as the same number of exclamation marks.  Your argument doesn't get better by yelling it, but people would take it more seriously if you wrote it like this instead:
Or you could make it look even better, and make people notice your point, like this:
If you read this thread closely, I answered that.  It's a feature.  People who don't have money can't pretend to pay.  That is very important if you sell things, and the main reason why many stores are reluctant to take credit cards.

I tried to buy stuff in the U.S. and have it mailed to a friend there to avoid VAT.  (Sending it via my home address would mean 25% VAT and much higher shipping costs.)  It turned out to be impossible, because no store would send to another address than the one registered with my cards.  I wish I could pay with bitcoins then.  It takes maximum one business day to buy coins if you don't have any, unless you live in some third world country.

So I use my bitcoin credit-card instead of bitcoin, so what, I don't see that invalidating bitcoin or making it "niche", and I expect I have a better chance of actually being able to get a bitcoin credit card than to get a fiat credit card though that would just be an artifact of which credit-rating agencies are consulted by the card-issuers I would think.

-MarkM-