Posted on 10/24/2015 8:00:19 PM PDT by Another Post-American
Mainstream outlets from across the world reported the sentencing of rogue Drug Enforcement Agent Carl Mark Force to 78 months in prison this week, and in so doing brought bitcoin's association with illicit activity and the darknet back to the fore.
More positive coverage came in the form of the European Court of Justice's bitcoin VAT exemption, with some outlets exploring its effect on the digital currency's rising price.
Elsewhere, the creation of a discussion forum by a group of digital currency companies and US law enforcement agencies caused a ripple of excitement among the mainstream press.
What else has been said and by whom? Let's take a look this week's top bitcoin and blockchain headlines.
(Excerpt) Read more at coindesk.com ...
If anyone is interested in a ping-list for bitcoin/cryptocurrency, let me know and I’ll start one.
If you start one please add me. I’m a casual observer.
Add me also should you start one.
Please add me..?
Sounds like there is interest. I’ll start one! BTW, if anyone is on bitcointalk, I’m there under the handle ‘ebliever’. It’s generally got the atmosphere of a giant food fight going on in that bar on Tatooine in the movie Star Wars, but for some reason I like it there. ;-)
We had some bitcoin cheerleader here a while back. He insisted that it would be worth soooo much more by now. Naturally, he was wrong.
Look, if you think the dollar is fiat currency (which it is), I’ve got news for you: bitcoin is fiat currency ON STEROIDS. At least the dollar is backed by law - all debts public and private, right? And if dollars are printed out of thin air by the government, bitcoins are created out of something worse: waste. Wasted computing cycles, doing nothing more than crunching a worthless algorithm and wasting electricity.
Bitcoin is worse than a fiat currency - it’s a scam. Why not just start conducting business in Everquest platinum? Oh yeah - because it, like cryptocurrencies are all vapor.
I’ll take the fiat currency that is at least backed by force of law.
And lots of guns.
Added!
bolobaby, bitcoin is not a “scam” in any meaninful sense of that word, though scams can be perpetrated with it the same as with dollars, gold or anything else.
Bitcoin has been established as a form of currency that is idenpendent of the control of governments or other bodies such as the Federal Reserve. The power to adjust it lies with developers and the mining community, which makes it an interesting experiment in democratization of a money supply. So far this approach has yielded a currency that is much more resistant to manipulation of its fundamentals than with “actively managed” currencies like the dollar.
Changes in the software protocol underlying bitcoin, such as the current block size debate, do occur. But suggestions to change the quantity of bitcoin available are anathema and I never even see such a thing suggested. Contrast that with the inflationary approach of central banks and the way they dilute your savings in fiat to invisibly tax you.
The government has guns. But that won’t save fiat if people simply abandon fiat and go to something else for day-to-day transactions. I can send money anywhere in the world in moments for less than 3 pennies with bitcoin. (Last time I paid a major contractor for some work, it took 11 days and over $120 in fees.)
Credit cards rip merchants off with every transaction, chargebacks occur months after purchase, Western Union charges insanely high fees to move money across national boundaries, checks take days to clear, and merchants are continually beset with counterfeit bills, forged checks and stolen credit card info. (I’ve had 5 credit card #’s for the same account due to security lapses, only one of which had anything to do with me; the whole CC model is collapsing. Anyone else noticing this?)
Bitcoin isn’t perfect, and it is still clumsy to use in certain situations. But it is head and shoulders above fiat in many respects already, with thousands of developers building the infrastructure to make it a major player in international finance. If you want to stick your head in the sand about that, I can’t stop you. But don’t say I didn’t give you a chance.
Blah blah blah - I’ve heard it all before. Bitcoin is vapor, created from waste, with LESS backing than the dollar, which at least has the backing of law. It’s the king of fiat currencies. Somehow, though, people come on here time and time again and claim that these ridiculous, useless bits of nothing represent a better form of currency that sovereign currencies.
Newsflash: all it takes is one law from Congress to make transacting in cryptocurrencies illegal and your whole argument falls apart. DO you realize that under ARTICLE I, SECTION 8, CLAUSE 5 of the Constitution, bitcoin is *unconstitutional*??? So if you think that a law isn’t coming, just wait.
For a bunch of strict Constitutional conservatives, some people on FreeRepublic are easily fooled.
If the government wanted to ban bitcoin it would have done so long ago. Instead it has accepted it, sold it in auctions, and the European Union just declared it a form of currency on par with your almighty Dollar. (Besides, banning bitcoin would no more stop it than banning filesharing stopped computer piracy. The government can’t stop people from choosing to value something.)
The notion that bitcoin needs government backing to have value is laughable. I hear this over and over, and it’s pretty sad to realize that the best argument for the U.S. Dollar is that lots of people with guns will threaten you if you challenge it.
What rising price? It was at $979 exactly 2 years ago and now it's at $284.
That’s ancient history in crypto. For those of us paying more attention than once every few years, the price has been rising for weeks since things came to a head over the blocksize debate in August.
Bullcrap. The government has not banned bitcoin because it is laughably insignificant right now. If it ever became a threat to sovereign currency, it would banned in a heartbeat.
Also, your argument about guns is just plain ignorant. Public commerce is what matters, not some shady underground anarchist ‘ s wet dream of cryptocurrencies that you are espousing.
The bottom line is I don’t have to accept your stupid bitcoins for any debt. And if the government makes it illegal to convert to a Form which I will accept, you are shit out of luck.
Sorry you are having a hard time understanding this, but try conducting arbitrage on a currency under sanctions. Good luck running the number one economy in the world on your Occupy Wall Street funny money.
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