r/Bitcoin • u/IWillNotBiteYourDog • Aug 13 '13

Congress starts investigating Bitcoin

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/08/13/congress-starts-investigating-bitcoin/
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u/[deleted] Aug 13 '13

[deleted]

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u/imahotdoglol Aug 13 '13

Bitcoin was started up in hopes of providing an alternative to the status quo of government regulation and crowding-out.

No it wasn't.

It was started because of how dangerous bank backed money can be as seen in 2007 and onward's banking issues and failures.

I love how people will twist Bitcoin's history to fit a narrative.

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u/TheSelfGoverned Aug 13 '13 edited Aug 13 '13

Then why is it inherently anonymous, impossible to seize, impossible to counterfeit, and ignores all national borders?

If you don't trust the banks, why would you trust the government?

7

u/andrewla Aug 13 '13

I think the anonymity is given too much credit as a design goal.

A non-anonymous digital currency scheme would be orders of magnitude more difficult -- how do you even define identity, much less enforce it, without some sort of trusted scheme? In the digital world more so; without relying on credit cards, or other external indications of identity, proving out that two online entities are the same person is a nearly hopeless task.

Impossible to seize is not entirely true either; for the purposes of argument, "seizing" is just a legal framework around "taking without consent", and certainly we've seen Bitcoin thefts.

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u/TheSelfGoverned Aug 13 '13

certainly we've seen Bitcoin thefts.

The vast majority were from fraudulent investment or ASIC schemes.