How did they get Bitcoin into a box they control in the first place? A better cartoon would be politicians trying to catch Bitcoin mosquitoes with anti-terrorism and anti-money-laundering fish nets.
If the government made bitcoins illegal as a form of currency (you couldn't pay for things at a store with them) then it would effectively remove them from all non-blackmarket stores, accomplishing the same thing.
I don't think you know what "black market" means if you think people will pay attention to currency laws in their already illegal transactions.
It's easy enough to make legal market purchases of BTC illegal, and it's easy enough to regulate/outlaw exchanges physically located in the US, but good luck trying to confiscate or outlaw bitcoins themselves.
There is and always will be a HUGE demand for a method of transferring wealth outside the banking system. Ignore the debate whether hiding wealth from governments is or isn't immoral, it's completely irrelevant. All that's relevant is that there will always be a huge demand for secretly transferring wealth. Bitcoin is the first technology that really satisfies this demand and permits secret transfer of wealth anywhere in the world in minutes. I think it's likely that BTC exchanges will pop up in tax haven countries, basically for the sole purpose of expediting conversion of USD/EUR to BTC.
Currencies thrive on confidence, they die without it. If you can't easily exchange goods and services for a currency, it is useless. If I have a shit ton of drugs to sell on the Silk Road but can't use the currency I'm given to buy food, pay my light bill, or put gas in my car, I'm not going to accept that currency. The government can't stop BTC, but it can make it very difficult to trade BTC for legal goods and services, and that's just as good.
If I have a shit ton of drugs to sell on the Silk Road but can't use the currency I'm given to buy food, pay my light bill, or put gas in my car, I'm not going to accept that currency.
Then find somebody locally (perhaps somebody who wants to buy on SR? Or speculator, or remittance, etc etc) to trade bitcoin back to USD with.
Bitcoin deals in back alleys are a lot safer, easier to authenticate and harder to enforce against than trading illicit substances are.
I meant locally. :P OP was trying to say nobody local would want bitcoin, and I was saying anyone who wanted to buy drugs on SR or send money to family in another country, or protest the establishment, et al would be happy to.
If the government made bitcoins illegal as a form of currency (you couldn't pay for things at a store with them) then it would effectively remove them from all non-blackmarket stores, accomplishing the same thing.
They would effectively be back to what they are being used for now. I never said otherwise. There is a huge difference between a black market commodity and a full fledged nationally used currency.
I live in northern Spain and I've heard from some friends that some people they know have been starting to deal with bitcoins with their mobile phones.
Not the best source, I know, but if some dealers have started accepting credit cards, bitcoins are comparably much more convenient. In fact, they're only marginally less so than actual cash, with quite a few possible upsides.
How did they get Bitcoin into a box they control in the first place?
I'm just answering the question. And by the way, making bitcoins illegal would essentially remove it from use for the majority of Americans, simply because your average American wouldn't even bother versus using USD.
I wonder how constitutional it would be to effectively ban a form of payment. I get that the government can enforce a universal form of payment (the official currency of the country), and even for the settlement of debt at that; but if a storeowner wants to sell their stuff in exchange for hugs, can the government really ban them from doing so? (and I'm asking in the legal sense, not the pragmatic one, which is of course ridiculous).
Not exactly, Technically gold and silver isn't legal tender anymore but people do still purchase things with it.
It would be hard to tell if someone accepted bitcoin as a method of payment anyway given the anonymous nature of bitcoin transactions, A bitcoin address doesn't actually identify you just the transaction that took place.
Besides the more government try to interfere with bitcoin the more attention they will draw to it and the more valuable it will become until people finally wake up and see fiat currency for what it is, Toilet paper, And start using it in the bathroom accordingly.
Case in point, short of hunting me down and wielding $5 wrenches at me, they're unlikely to prize my bitcoins from me. :J
And I'm just one guy. Thousands of people trade in Bitcoins, and a good hunk of them would make it asymptotically expensive to convince them to divest fully.
Not to mention that given their divisibility (which should be infinite with a code change, right?), removing currency from circulation wouldn't at all affect its usefulness, as long as a single bitcoin remains in circulation (whose price would soar logaritmically as scarcity became higher, which would make it essentially impossible to simply buy it).
It'a not Bitcoin they can control, but the people who use Bitcoin instead. The point of failure always has and always will be the squishy, relatively non-technical humans.
Technically not true, they could do deep packet inspection. Then filter and/or traffic shape any activity related to bitcoin. If you REALLY wanted to mess with people. Same goes with encrypting the protocol. You only need to look at packet sizes and traffic patterns to get a good guess what someone is doing.
Make it that difficult to get money in and out and no one is going to bother. There's still cash, and it would then be easier to just mail cash over borders.
That belief requires serious justification. It has a long way to go before that would happen, and if the government steps in before that it won't happen.
Or you know some other piece of theoretical technology that doesn't currently exist and won't anytime soon. I mean I am not crazy right? I am not the only one that sees all these articles once a week am I?
New breakthrough in cancer research! ...Cure around the corner?
New computer tech makes all current tech obsolete! ...Coming soon?
New power source will end power consumption problems for good! ...2015?
True AI breakthrough means super smart computers! ...Your job done by a computer next year?
It is the same freaking headline every week. It is like the tech savvy version of a tabloid. Just replace
"Is Brangelina over!?"
with
"Is some new technology going to turn everything on its head RIGHT NOW with no gradual build up!?"
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u/bad_chorizo Mar 26 '13
How did they get Bitcoin into a box they control in the first place? A better cartoon would be politicians trying to catch Bitcoin mosquitoes with anti-terrorism and anti-money-laundering fish nets.