Topic: What if receiving payments in bitcoins is made illegal? (Read 8925 times)

The use of non-national currencies is not illegal in the United States. Legal tender means that if you owee someone for a good or service and they bring you to court, the court will force you to pay in federal reserve notes, even if you have a contract specifying payment in another currency.

why would they need to ban it if every country in the world has already given its central bank the monopoly on issuing currency and made all other currencies illegal? in the "spirit of the law" bitcoin is already illegal everywhere. some of the laws might technically not include digital-/crypto-currencies but they will likely change that swiftly once they wake up.


they wouldn't (need to) do that, or only in some extreme cases. if bitcoin grows over critical mass to wake them up they will make exchanges between bitcoin and fiat currencies illegal, they'll threaten any financial institution that engages in such exchanges, and they will generally make all bitcoin transactions illegal. they might go after the users or they might not. the exchanges are the critical point (at least until all fiat currencies disappear) - that's why i believe bitcoin needs a working underground peer-to-peer exchange system asap to survive in the long run (was proposed in another thread somewhere). they wouldn't be able to control that or enforce their laws once that exists. but reaching mainstream adoption will be very difficult this way, eg the majority of online poker players wouldn't wanna go through these hoops.

not trying to burst your bubble but to inject some realism! bitcoin has the power to severely disrupt the core of the current capitalist empire. you might be too naive if you think the empire will not strike back. it will with full force, better to be prepared for it and find solutions to overcome it than to keep dreaming imho

Right on. Why, if they didn't make laws against using heroin, I'd be a junkie within hours.

Wait a minute... do they have a law against suicide where I live? Shoot! I'd better find out. And if they don't I'll be moving to a state where they do, otherwise I'm liable to chug some bleach because nobody told me not to.

Haha, yes, you are in the clear.

 
Made you look!

Tell me you aren't serious.

I'm going to read your other posts now to find out.

If bitcoin is made illegal, I will immediately delete my wallet. Because to me, the law is more than an opinion backed by violence .. It's my moral compass. If it wasn't for the the law, god know's what I'd get up to.

"When they outlaw freedom, only outlaws will be free."

This is where I think how bitcoin will survive many legal attacks.   The exchange of bitcoins is the exchange of information, and as I understand it this is protected by the first amendment.  Does anyone see a way around this by the government?  Sure, there may be some specifics cases where the use of bitcoins for committing crimes will be blocked, but just the simple use of bitcoin can't be made illegal in the US without a Constitutional Amendment.

@moa

"we'll agree to disagree"

from a heretic and unbeliever (not just in this particular religion), I'd like to say:

Amen to that

Without even knowing how the technology of bitcoin works I struggle to understand why you think you are qualified to comment on legality of bitcoin. Everyone is entitled to an opinion though, so carry on.

We'll agree to disagree and leave it that.

As usual you prejudice leads you down a blind alley. I've been an advocate of gold for 7 years, ever since I started educating myself about the ballooning debt problem and failing financial system. Two years after the gold market bottom maybe, but better than being 6 years early like yourself and the other superhumans.

I have not been dissing bitcoin. Merely asking legitimate questions about how it might work in the real world. It's a pity you think that's negative. This kind of intolerance to the unbelievers is typical of a religious dogma. It makes me more certain that bitcoin is more a philosophy or ideal than a workable solution for the economy.

I don't know much about technology. More than that I don't want to know much about technology. Everyone has their areas of expertise, and that isn't mine. But the vast majority of people don't understand technology. So for bitcoin to become viable it has to gain our trust and understanding. It will need level headed advocates in other words.

What I do know a lot about are finance, business and investing. The sort of things that bitcoin would be used in if it was successful. Perhaps YOU are out of your depth once you get beyond the technical side. Indeed your responses (or rather lack of constructive responses) confirm that.

I didn't expect that kind of blind dogma in this kind of forum, but then, as the folks at Monty Python said, no one expects the Spanish Inquisition.

Oh this gets better, a finance write who's an advocate for gold. Well i've been reading about gold for over 15 years and there used to be very few who actually wrote anything sensible about gold and less than 1 in 200 who actually advocate for hard money ... so there's a high probability you must be one of those johhny-come-lately gold writers, who spent the best of their life scaring people away from hard money and in the last few years just found religion.

The way you are dissing bitcoin tells me you are definitely not a programmer and probably haven't much of a clue how bitcoin works, for instance tell me how does the public-private key pair encryption schema work in your own words and why it is important for bitcoin?

Then maybe we can have an informed conversation about "What if receiving payments in bitcoins is made illegal?"

You'd better get up to speed or you'll just look like an ignorant troll hard money gold finance writer. Bitcoin is a monetary technology that solves problems of pricing information distributions and optimal resource allocations, it is in essence an information technology. Perhaps you are out of your depth here to be commenting on technologies.

This is true. It happened in the US in 1789.

I'm asking the Yale Law student a similar question about Bitcoin regulation in this thread: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.106095

Yes you might be right about room for an internet currency. But if that was an important part of the economy then governments would get involved. Maybe a transaction tax. Maybe a ban. Maybe something else. In the end the people running those businesses have to live somewhere. Maybe we get new bitcoin tax havens. Who knows. But it still points to niche uses.

You say: "But the old guard has one fatal flaw: they die."

I say: "But the new guard has one fatal flaw: they overestimate their abilities."

I think that is overstating it a tad. It is sufficient for Bitcoin to have marginal utility for it to establish itself as a valid currency. It does not need to take over the world in one fell swoop, or even at all. If it becomes the major internet currency, used for micro-transactions, MMO money, pay-to-read newspapers and so on, that will be fine.

In the future when a new generation grows up with it they might start wondering why these old fashioned paper monies are so hard to use, lose their value so fast and are so bloody expensive to transact with. They will never be convinced of their utility and eventually shed today's currencies like an inherited dank smelling old coat.

All truly new innovation is resisted by the old guard, entrenched and made wealthy by the status quo. But the old guard has one fatal flaw: they die.

Well we're getting a bit off topic here (my fault), but history suggests that if you overthrow one bunch of tyrants that a new bunch pretty soon spring up. Usually the same freedom fighting revolutionaries that were supposed to deliver the lumpen masses from serfdom.

Bitcoin can work because it has rules. I just don't think it would even be allowed to work in a big way, because it threatens the whole Western democratic political system. Namely being able to buy votes with borrowed or printed money. And I don't suppose autocrats in China and elsewhere would be super keen either.

It's just looks too easy to control in other words, despite what many of you might think. Plus any large system has massive inertia. Even if bitcoin did get off the ground and into the real economy in a big way, you're probably talking about decades to get real traction. Who knows what can happen over such a long period of time.

Bitcoin is just a product like any other. It is seeking to replace the most widely used products in the world. Achieving that is going to be like inventing a new artificial food with health benefits, but then trying to get everyone in the world to stop eating everything else. Might happen. Probably won't.

But I'm still open to suggestions on how these issues can be overcome.

They don't need to stop it, they just need to scare a lot of people from using it.

To be honest I think it's only a matter of time. You will know that it started when you will see "PEDOPHILES USE BITCOIN CURRENCY" headlines in mainstream media. Politicians and bankers will not give away their power over money just like that. But I don't think they are able to destroy Bitcoin, just like they can't get rid of other P2P networks.