Bitcoin and Digital Currencies

What I can say with absolute certainty is that the biggest problem with "screw the Man" is that there are an awful lot of folks who are out to screw you in any way possible, and the lack of regulation inherent to crypto-currencies draws them like sharks to blood.

Reminds me of Second Life and it's absolute lassez faire economy. Then the largest bank turned out to be a ponzi scheme.

^ Well I don't know for sure, but one major obstacle is that international cooperation is very poor. Some countries don't even care about hackers as long as the hackers are only attacking foreigners. Also, it's hard to get even corporations and the local government to work together.

Seriously, delicious schadenfreude.

edited 25th Feb '14 8:43:00 AM by Mars444

I'm a bit ashamed to admit that I absolutely love watching what happens to libertarians and anarchists when their tiny government plans end up backfiring.

True. While I lost thousands of bucks (I'm still waiting to see how bitcoin or cryptocurrencies as a whole pan out and if the way they work changes), you all make good points. And I'm getting more and more annoyed with libertarianism as an overall package. Not that I don't agree with individual libertarian points on individual issues, but I think the whole package combined can't work.

@Mars 444: That line is now my forum signature.

@Bonsai Forest: Agreed. Libertarianism sounds great on paper but when you try to apply its principles to the real world, you rapidly run into... issues.

edited 25th Feb '14 8:45:16 AM by Fighteer

No joke. It's the ultimate example of a political and economic theory that has been shown to be wrong again and again. It flies in the face of sheer logic and is mostly kept alive by those with privilege being unwilling to face reality.

I want to second that but I don't wanna sound so mean about it

When I deal with a system that champions the right of private businesses over the rights of minorities to be treated with basic courtesy and believes government dollars shouldn't be spent on any form of social Services or public aid, and whose official stance to disaster victims and the uninsured is "screw 'em" then I don't mind sounding a bit mean to the philosophy itself

Essentially, libertarians justify the "right to be racist" with the understood fact that businesses that aren't racist will prosper over businesses that are in the vast majority of cases (the gas station i recently moved to would lose half of its business if it went "Whites Only" for whatever reason). Essentially, the market will enforce diversity.

Which is a valid point, but only in a society that has already achieved a measure of diversity through grassroots and top-down government action. "We don't need negro money" was a rallying cry for Southern Chambers of Commerce in the 60s in a lot of cases.

To tie this in to the topic, a lot of what libertarians "see" as society's functions that would not need the government to prop them up only exist because government, in some form or other, forced these concepts into being. The current money system is the product of decades of analysis of the gold standard and the Bretton Woods standard.

edited 25th Feb '14 12:53:16 PM by Ogodei

Indeed. Fiat currency was popularized because of the repeated failures of the gold standard in maintaining fiscal stability. That's why the Eurozone was widely considered a step backwards by Keynesian economists; it, like the global gold standard, had no facility to cope with asymmetric demand shocks.

The basic failure of the gold standard can be summed up thusly: when one entity has a lot more gold than another entity, there is no way for the smaller entity to redress the imbalance other than by digging more gold out of the ground or taking it from someone else (i.e., war).

Fiat currency allows the less wealthy entity to simply create the amount it needs to even the scales (or, rarely, vice versa).

edited 25th Feb '14 1:13:36 PM by Fighteer

Ron Paul: Feds shouldn't 'interfere' with bitcoin.

I'd love to see someone do a "Roncoin" and watch his standards suddenly evaporate

You normally have to watch MTV to observe this kind of hilarious ignorance.

edited 25th Feb '14 2:25:14 PM by Fighteer

Ron Paul, Bitcoin is not a currency. It is a speculative commodity. And it's funny how the only thing giving Bitcoin any value is its price relative to, wait for it, a fiat currency.

Hell, at least gold and silver have some value in jewelry, consumer electonics, or as shiny paperweights.

Doesn't that depend on where you live?

The Alabama Securities Commission issued what it is calling an "early warning," advising Alabamians against the use of Bitcoins.

Man crypto currenciescommodities are just taking a beating left and right lately. Not exactly the sort of action inspires faith in investors and holders of the item.

Wired article on Mount Gox

It shouldn't. That's the thing; these currencies were always vulnerable to this kind of instability by their very nature.

edited 25th Feb '14 4:55:55 PM by Fighteer

Oh Paul Krugman you naughty bastard:

Japanese authorities looking into Mt. Gox. I'm sure the anarcho-capitalists will be furious at this unwarranted gub'mint intrusion into the private sector.

According to r/bitcoin via the WSJ, Federal Prosecutors in NYC have subpoenaed Mt. Gox as well, probably to do with the Silk Road investigations.

edited 26th Feb '14 2:47:13 AM by Achaemenid

I was going to link Krugman's piece but it didn't add anything new to the conversation, so it would have felt self-indulgent. He's had his say on bitcoin previously.

edited 26th Feb '14 6:59:39 AM by Fighteer

Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) demands complete U.S. ban on Bitcoin.

But my freedumb!

This'll go down well with the true believers. Still a stupid idea, since I'm not sure how it could be enforced and it would seem to require extremely invasive cyber-surveillance for a minimal reward.

Yeah, it strikes me as unnecessary too. The only thing calling for a ban would accomplish is given legitimacy to whatever conspiracy theories bitcoin fans are dreaming up. A ban shouldn't be needed for something that's losing steam fast.

edited 26th Feb '14 12:47:24 PM by Alichains

I can see banning banks and other regulated financial institutions from trading in bitcoin as a form of currency. That's just common sense to protect people from fraud and other forms of stupidity. But banning use of it entirely is both impossible and counterproductive. If it's going to fail, let it fail on its own.

edited 26th Feb '14 1:38:55 PM by Fighteer

Sounds like a classic case of "politicians trying to write laws about stuff they don't understand"

Reminds me of the French politicians who tried to ban caching when they found out that some pirate servers used caching.