Topic: This could be a major milestone for Bitcoin.. (Read 1767 times)

This is great ... the free market in action. It harkens back to the renaissance days when the first stocks were traded in coffee houses and hot chocolate shops of London and Amsterdam ...

... coffee shop combined internet cafe combined bitcoin market .. could be a nice little growth business model...

I agree Alyssa. Bitcoin is a multi-headed machine, it cannot be stopped. They can destroy it, but there will always be Alt-Coin.

What if they illegalize it? move it to where it isn't illegal

What if they ban it from all the banks? People will make their own banks.

What if they scour and censor it from the internet? TOR and heavy encryption will rise

What if they ban businesses that use it? People will form massive physical encryption networks, 3D printing hubs dolling out encrypted schematics for their favourite products. It's only a matter of time before you can grow your own food at home from vats.

Even if they have the power to monitor vast networks of human distribution hubs, they'll have to contend with an ever increasing tide of human ingenuity solving solutions to problems they have not even thought of yet. Power in numbers, two people are better than one, double the thinking power, double the reaction time, double the understanding, everything gets multiplied in numbers and you never know how a group will react.

I don't see how they could. Bitcoin is a global currency. So if the US Federal government says it's illegal for any US business to accept bitcoin they may as well say that it's illegal for any US business to accept euros, yen, pounds and so on - and bang goes the export industry. Because when someone abroad buys your stuff they are paying you in their currency, and then you exchange it at your bank or keep it in that currency for hedging purposes. So Google accepts money in euros when someone in euroland buys an ad for example, and they keep much of that money in euros rather than repatriating it to the US. Someone paying in Bitcoin is doing the exact same thing. And then there's all the other token items such as frequent flyer miles, reward points and so on which are all tokens businesses accept instead of money. They'd have to ban all of those too.

They can't do anything, not just because it's decentralized but because it's global. The more countries that participate in Bitcoin the better.

P.S. I should have added - the government will never have to bail out bitcoin because there is no lending based on it. So from the taxpayer point of view it is risk free as long as they can still collect taxes on people's capital gains from trading or people's profits from selling pizzas in bitcoins etc. If Bitcoin had existed in fully fledged form in 2008, would the govt have needed to bail out the banks? They did it because the banking system was the only financial system in place, but if there was a working alternative in place, would they have just let the banks fail?

Bitcoin is bad for banks because it cuts out banking's middleman function, but it could be good for govts if it reduces their need to conduct bailouts (which they didn't enjoy doing because they caught so much flack from voters for it). The biggest threat to bitcoin is actually banks unilaterally closing accounts of exchanges and merchants they think are using bitcoin. In which case we'll need the govt on our side to force the banks not to close accounts on the grounds that it is anti-competitive behavior. Banking and governments are separate institutions and they have different agendas. At the moment the govts agenda is the same as the banks - but it's up to us to persuade govt that it's in their interest for them to line up with us against the banks.

although a meet up of 20 people may not actually be a mile stone. due to the fact that there have been a few of these events before. It should however be used as a lesson for how to do things in the future, organising a regular event at a central point for people living in YOUR area, should be something each of you should be looking to do. It may not have to be limited to just selling and buying coins. but also legal products for bitcoins too.

the future of bitcoins is not the forex market, but the hand-in-hand trading of coins and products, that's the way forward that moves away from mtgox uber control

Totally gonna trip down there and check this out!

Agreed!

So what happens if the US Federal government determines that it is illegal for any US business to accept bitcoin?  Could the currency still survive?  Would there be a use for it?  Since it would only be illegal to conduct business transactions with bitcoin, could it be used a currency between individuals?

Could the US Federal government merely make it illegal to trade bitcoins for USD? If so, how would it be enforced? Could a tax audit reveal a bank transaction to or from an exchange?  How would this effect the value of bitcoins? 

This is great news and only makes sense. BTC can become a "community" type currency. These "meet ups" are social events as well. Would love to see more of them develop but we need an easier way for the masses to take part. There isn't even an App for the Iphone (thanks Apple). But I imagine there will be a ton for Android and that will really help adoption.

At this stage it is easy to get lost in the price rise - understandable as we live in a capitalistic world, but as we continue the idea is of exchange and not so much profit (outside of slight deflation).

Anyway, things are moving VERY VERY fast right now. The BTC landscape in 6 or 12 months (only) will probably be quite a bit further along and more different than we can imagine.

Remember bitcoin is both a Black Swan and an Anti-Fragile technology (see my sig below).

It's About Sharing

Why wait for Ripple to be decentralized eh?
Forum post trading! Open Air markets! e-mail money transfer trading! Classified listings! Networking p2p trades! who need someones to write up software?

I agree, BTC has potential to be used as it was intended, a currency.  We are still tied very closely to the value of BTC to the dollar.  But it has the ability to be used as a currency with no regards to what the Fed thinks or anyone else.  As long as I can sell something for bitcoins and then use that "money" to buy something else that I need. 

Public, open-air exchange? If this lasts, I think this is indicative of the swelling, natural, momentum behind the real world bitcoin economy and is a major milestone... The more people working fulltime in the btc world, the more people working to solve any spontaneous issues. The more real world activity, the more exposure the public has to btc utility.. How many people will walk past this daily and say "What are they doing?" How many hotdog vendors might think about taking btc as payment? etc...

I also think this story perfectly encapsulates what is so great about BTC, it didn't have to suck anyone off to get where it is... If JPMorgan doesn't want to trade it, who the fuck cares? We'll trade it in the streets! This is what a free market looks like, and there is no stopping it...


http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/05/06/a-push-for-a-bitcoin-buttonwood/