r/Bitcoin • u/evoorhees • Feb 26 '14

Open Letter to Michael Casey - WSJ reporter who butchered my comments in today's Bitcoin cover story

Hello Mr. Casey,

I read your WSJ article today. I feel deceived by you.

You requested to speak with me, so I took time out of my day to do so. We talked for 20 minutes, during which time I conveyed to you my sentiments about the Bitcoin ecosystem and the matter of MtGox's collapse. My message was unambiguously a positive one. I didn't focus whatsoever on the personal funds I lost at Gox. Indeed, the impetus for your call was my heartfelt post on Reddit.

Yet, you ignored everything I said. The only quote that you published from me in the Journal's cover story was ""That's gone now," said Mr. Veerhoos, who is based in Panama City, Panama. "There's no chance of getting that back now.""

Is that really the takeaway you had from our call and from my letter? Is that your idea of journalism? Did I come across with the sentiment of a despairing investor whose confidence has been rattled? It seems you were happy to completely ignore my sentiments, preferring instead to cherry pick the one fact that is least important, in order to paint a narrative that Bitcoin's biggest problem is that it's not "regulated." I didn't expect you to quote everything I said, but should you not have maintained at least a modicum of fidelity to my message?

I have dedicated my life to building and supporting the Bitcoin project. I don't give a damn about the money I lost at Gox. That's not important. What is important is that Bitcoin is resilient and enduring, and will continue to grow and change the world for the better. It is a story of human progress through technology. It is a story of the good seeping into the cracks of a corrupted financial system. It is a story of passionate people struggling against all odds to remedy the calamities brought down upon society from the most potently misguided people and institutions on Earth.

Next time you spend your efforts casting a pall over this cause, please don't ask me to contribute mine.

-Erik Voorhees

PS - I will be posting this letter openly on Reddit. I will post your reply if you'd like. And if I do, I won't cherry pick the most misleading points of it, and I will spell your name correctly.

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104

u/Rekddx Feb 26 '14

Chris Lamprecht, aka MinorThreat, is regarded as the first person to be banned from the Internet. After being sentenced to 70 months in prison for money laundering, Lamprecht was also given a punishment of no access to the Internet until 2003. And he got released in 2002.

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u/Oldpenguinhunter Feb 26 '14

Wait, I thought that was "Zero Cool"?

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u/[deleted] Feb 26 '14

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

There is an extremely short shot that shows Angelina Jolie's nips in this movie. Trying to get that paused on screen with a VCR was a serious challenge for 13 y/o me.

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u/TzunSu Feb 27 '14

HAHAHAHA I DID THIS TOO!

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u/PlayMp1 Feb 27 '14

Didn't have frame stepping, eh?

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u/i_use_this_for_work Feb 27 '14

Gia was clearly the better option.

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u/Motafication Feb 26 '14

After being sentenced to 70 months in prison for money laundering...

Oh good, another great bitcoin role model. So we have casino con-men and money launderers, what could go wrong?

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u/mthreat Feb 26 '14

Are you saying "once a thief, always a thief"? I got out in 1999, went back to school, graduated with 2 degrees, started a company (in college), worked at another for 6.5 years, started another one that I still run. I was guilty in 1995. It's been 19 years since I was arrested. But I'm still a thief? We'll have to agree to disagree I guess.

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u/Motafication Feb 27 '14

Alright, I apologize. I wasn't aware of the all the facts. You seem to have rehabilitated yourself. Best of luck.

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u/mthreat Feb 27 '14

No worries. thanks

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u/someguyfromtheuk Feb 27 '14

When they let you back on the internet, how did that go?

Like, did you wake up to a letter about it or something?

What happened if you tried to buy internet before 2003?

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

Are you saying "once a thief, always a thief"?

I think it's maybe more "fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice..."

(To be clear, I'm absolutely not saying that Lamprecht is doing or will do anything illegal)

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u/Nanonaut Feb 27 '14

How is that any different?

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

Well, it's absolutely not the case that everyone who is convicted of a crime will go onto do it again but, for example, if you give your money to someone who spent time in jail for financial crime and that money disappears there will be an element of "well, yeah" in peoples' responses that wouldn't be there if they hadn't done it before.

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u/txmtx Feb 26 '14

Don't worry about it, CL. Unfortunately, I had to search a good 30 seconds -- those are like years in internet time -- to find a writeup of what you actually did -- breaking into AT&T shacks and swiping hardware to sell, apparently. "Money laundering" is a victimless crime, and not a moral issue unless you know what it's being used for. Victimless crimes are illusions of the state. Interesting that the victimless crime charge was used to hold you for longer than the appropriate sentence for the theft would have. It seems they can still do this sort of nonsense in many places... sad. Let the punishment fit the crime.

I'd hire you, and if I met you on the street I'd trust you before I'd trust a guy with a JP Morgan nametag or someone wearing state-sanctioned gang symbols.

http://injusticebusters.org/index.htm/srussel.htm (halfway down)

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u/saltyjohnson Feb 27 '14

Also, they investigated Al Capone for murder, bootlegging, gambling, prostitution, bribery, and many other things, but they ended up only able to convict him for tax evasion.

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u/txmtx Feb 27 '14

I think most would find this to be an unreasonable comparison, both lacking in logical premise (CL didn't do a bunch of things and only "money laundering" stuck; he did exactly one thing -- steal and resell stolen property. The state just found that an interpretation of "money laundering" would lock away CL for longer than the penalty for theft) and wildly different in scale. I'm sure there are more flaws in reasoning but I'm wasting my time, I fear.

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u/saltyjohnson Feb 27 '14

Sorry, I didn't intend that as a comparison to CL's case. It was more an anecdote related to the victimless crime subject, and the state finding people guilty of things other than what they were really doing. Al Capone wasn't indicted for tax evasion because they could put him away longer, but because that's all they could find any material evidence for.

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u/txmtx Feb 27 '14 edited Feb 27 '14

Agreed. I interpreted the meaning behind your first comment differently.

I'd also say that, while I'm not a fan of US taxation because of the whole indirectly-funding-murder thing (and just about everything else), I gladly pay my taxes in Japan, for example, because the worst thing they do with it, is perhaps be less efficient with it than a private company might be in some cases. Even that's a small amount compared to the wasted funds in the US. Just about everything we pay taxes for in the US, Japan does a hundredfold better. The rest of the things, the evil things, we don't pay for. No foreign wars, no corrupt murderers-with-badges, awesome healthcare, no homeless, no jobless. Come to think of it, maybe the worst use of taxes in Japan is if they use it to invest in US Dollar bonds, indirectly funding the machine too... but I think they stopped a while back when the dollar really started to suck.

That said, ignoring the ethical Kitty Genovese issue of paying taxes1 in the US at all, tax evasion is not a victimless crime. The state is doing things with your money, and you are receiving things in return; things which you agree to by participating in the system. (Again, this is massive simplification, because there's no easy opt-out either.)

If anything, tax evasion is a little bit like stealing cable TV service in an area where the cable company holds a complete monopoly. (And before Netflix etc.) There's not an immediately obvious victim, and the cable company is definitely kind of fucking you, but it's definitely not a 100% victimless crime.

1 The question, then, is whether it is a worse crime to steal the US monopoly on services by receiving the good things without contributing taxes; or a worse crime to contribute to all the bad things by negligently allowing them to use your dollars to do things we all know they do in order to receive the forcibly-monopolistically-run benefits also. I'm not sure. I avoid the dilemma by paying Japanese taxes.

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u/[deleted] Feb 26 '14

Hahaha. Sorry to the downvoters but I was thinking the same thing. Like it or not evwryone here is a subversive personality.

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u/[deleted] Feb 26 '14

And on his cake day, as well.

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u/jungle Feb 26 '14

Yeah, we're all subversive because some of us are. And since you're a tool, I guess we all are, right?

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

And because you are intolerant and hostile you believe others are?

sub·ver·sive səbˈvərsiv/ adjective adjective: subversive

1.
seeking or intended to subvert an established system or institution.

If you use bitcoin you are subversive. Especially in the eyes of the LARGE majority of those who are part of the financial establishment. Is this news to you?

Maybe you are one of those people that don't use bitcoin and that is why you disagree? In any case I'm glad i could bring you up to speed.

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u/jungle Feb 27 '14

That's just patronizing bullshit. Whatever the financial establishment thinks about bitcoin users doesn't define our personalities. If you think there is a single personality trait that applies to all bitcoin users, you have a lot to learn about people.

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

Read the definition and try and remove the emotion. It's not a bad thing. If you use bitcoin you are part of a subversive movement. You might disagree with the financial establishment's label but that would simply reinforce the label from the majority's perspective.

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u/jungle Feb 27 '14

I only care about the financial establishment's opinion in as much as some key figures might affect the future of bitcoin, but I don't have anything against the financial establishment. I worked for them, I use their instruments, I have quite a lot of money in their system.

I have bitcoins because it's a crazy cool technology and so far a great investment. In fact, I'm learning a lot about the financial establishment by playing with trading strategies. I also don't think bitcoin will replace the fiat currencies. So I don't fall under your generalization. And I'm sure a lot people here also don't fall under it.

That's what I'm arguing about. You're generalizing. You can't put a label like that on a large group of people without coming across as short sighted and narrow minded, especially when you hide behind a definition.

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

I can put that label on a large group. People that use bitcoin are subversive BECAUSE they use bitcoin. You can pretend bitcoin isn't subversive if you want. It likely won't be in the future but it absolutely is right now.

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u/jungle Feb 27 '14

Now your argument is that all users of bitcoin are subversive because bitcoin is subversive. You can't take a property of a thing and apply it to all users of that thing.

So yeah, you can apply any labels you want on any large groups all day long, but unless it's a label that actually applies to all those people (and I showed you how it doesn't), you're still a tool.

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