
The coming political battle over Bitcoin - zonotope
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/15/the-coming-political-battle-over-bitcoin/?tid=pm_pop
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confluence
> _History doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme._

\- Mark Twain

If your currency isn't a liquid consumable good (like say tide detergent -
look it up) or isn't backed by a nation state, it will get crushed as soon as
it becomes popular enough.

Do you honestly think governments around the world are just going to stand
around while people start ditching their currency systems?

No, they'll shut you down through violent, economic or legal means, and one
way or another every alternative fiat currency goes down. Yes, I went there.
Bitcoin is a fiat currency, it is something without any intrinsic value
(unlike say copper), and is only valuable so long as the people controlling
the computation (computational fiat) say it is, and others demand it.

Some will claim that Bitcoin is decentralized. I'll counter claim that it
appears to be in theory, but in reality it really isn't.

If I were to shut down every bitcoin exchange (either through extreme legal,
violent or economic means), I'd easily kill bitcoin overnight, mostly through
destroying trust and inciting fear in adopters than from actually stopping
exchange.

And if you don't believe governments are capable of this, you seriously have
to read some more history. Governments are extremely dangerous, especially
when it comes to economic control of scarce resources.

Do not underestimate them.

That's not to say that governments are inherently bad, but merely that they
act in their own interests, and that if you are on the wrong side of their
interests, the magnitude of their power, and the size of the prizes that are
at stake, will probably end up with you being dead (most revolutions fail).

At the end of the day the guy with the nuke makes the rules.

Let's just hope he isn't too psychopathic.

~~~
grimtrigger
The fatalism in this comment disgusting. But more importantly, it is wrong.

I haven't been here long, but I remember hearing about the inevitability of
SOPA and PIPA and CISPA and every other misguided attempt at regulation. The
"inevitability" was a lie then, and its a lie now. Its a lie perpetrated by
people would rather believe they are persecuted than accept the burden of
trying to make a difference. They cry "The world is bogus! I give up!" and
retreat because it is easy, because it is safe.

This quote is important:

“Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because
cynics don’t learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a
rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint
us.”

Your cynicism is a giant middle finger to anyone who has ever fought for
anything and won. Read a history textbook and you'll find every page has the
name of someone who took on forces greater than themselves and won. Do you
think they were so different? Do you think they had some divine authority? Do
you think they were successful because they won a lottery?

There were people who fought for things when it meant death, when speaking
your mind meant being killed. But I can go anywhere in the world and say
"Barrack Obama is a piece of shit" and sign my name to it. The most powerful
man on the planet is, in many ways, no more powerful than me.

Your understanding of humanity is fundamentally flawed because it assumes the
past is our destiny. If you believe that, you don't have a single thing to
offer the world.

~~~
confluence
I'll reply to the only part of this comment that barely interested me, and
probably the only part that even deserves a response:

> _Do you think they were successful because they won a lottery?_

Yes.

~~~
supercanuck
It was a fantastic comment, it is a real shame you are not giving it more
credit. Extremely arrogant.

~~~
enraged_camel
Arrogance is understating it. He talks about a single sentence being "barely
interesting" to him. I wonder who the hell he thinks he is.

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betterunix
Like most of Bitcoin, the coming battle will be primarily about hype and
speculation, with only a tiny minority of people actually fighting anything.
The government is not terribly worried about alternative currencies, as long
as the financial institutions that deal in those currencies follow the same
laws as everyone else:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_community_currencies_i...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_community_currencies_in_the_United_States)

~~~
eridius
Arguably, the government should be concerned, because it's hard to tax someone
when you can't track their finances.

~~~
gojomo
There are many ways Bitcoin is easier to track than cash.

~~~
glomph
Everyone says this, and I have repeated the mantra, but I am curious _how_ one
would go about following a trail of bitcoin transactions. Lets say you
intercept a drug deal, know the final bitcoin address that money goes into. So
you have that info.

You can also follow the trail back arbitrarily far getting address after
address. How does this net you anyone more information? How would you 'convert
back' into a human name or address?

~~~
maxerickson
There are lots of systems with address-information associations. Collecting
that information is going to yield lots of human names.

Something like the Coinbase merchant pages contained a surprising amount of
information, and they were intentionally published.

~~~
glomph
Presumably Law Enforcement couldn't compel Coinbase to disclose all the names
they had though? They would need some kind of probable cause?

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plusbryan
> Julian Assange of Wikileaks, which might have benefited from dealing in
> Bitcoins.

Of all the relevant photos they could have headlined this article with, they
choose _this_?

~~~
alan_cx
Yeah, I thought it was a bit of a weak link.

I suppose they had to put a pretty picture of something up, and there aren't
any other faces known related to BC which even most geeks would recognise, let
alone the average reader.

Perhaps it could be said that Assange represents the struggle between freedom
and government. Freedom of information, freedom of money, and government crack
down type stuff. Kinda works, no?

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redthrowaway
Is the author, Timothy B. Lee (email address leet@wp.com), _that_ TBL or is it
an odd coincidence?

