VonRohn

Yes, you're right (for both the UK and Australia), my mistake. The thing is that the definition of "legal tender" varies. In France, Portugal, Germany and Macau, as an example, people can't refuse payment in legal tender (with some exceptions).

Don't worry, my pseudo-insults and my arguments are complete different entities.

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I've got ninety thousand pounds in my pyjamas.
I've got forty thousand French francs in my fridge.
I've got lots of lovely lire.
Now the Deutschmark's getting dearer,
And my dollar bills would buy the Brooklyn Bridge.

lukep

Agreed. That's the crux of this issue, and I believe I've stated my theory on how Currency may allow a new form of commodity now that there is an internet. -Just waiting for someone to prove me wrong.


There are of course hardware solutions to help like keeping your BTC on a flash drive not connected to anything instead of on the PC itself... But true, they aren't fully 100% safe from theft.

Private enterprises will pop-up and fill the void, IMHO. Think insurance. Instead of an FDIC, perhaps a privately-run BTCIC could happen, and you're only covered if you pay into it. (Remember, no banks.)

Of course the problem that any BTCIC would have now is they are an easy target for a CIA to erase. So that can only happen after enough people adopt BTC as it is now and pretty much overthrow our world leaders through using it first.

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guerilla

Isn't that what the government is doing now?

The answer is the same. Competition and the enforcement of contracts/property rights.

An American Experiment in Anarcho- Capitalism: The Not So Wild, Wild West by Terry Anderson and P.J. Hill

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Change Your Life
Twitter ^ YouTube

Thank you for your attentiveness,
the forward thrusters, engage on you busters,
I cut the mustard.

guerilla

1. Assert own position superior.
2. ???
3. Win argument?

I don't think you understand what a commodity is.

Being money has nothing to do with popularity, and everything to do with the nature of the good being used as money. Bitcoins are not goods, because they have no other use, than as money.

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Change Your Life
Twitter ^ YouTube

Thank you for your attentiveness,
the forward thrusters, engage on you busters,
I cut the mustard.

timpane

If the world was full of smart persons who treasured flexibility, they would have increased up contrary to our overlords long ago... And a Bitcoin-like currency would currently have been the worldwide standard.

tacoX

This whole bitcoin thing is obnoxious and dumb. I will never use any of these and I think it's a joke - why would anyone trust currency created by hackers in the first place?

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Fatbat

How's this any different from the currency you're using now?

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BRAD SHAW - GRAPHIC DESIGN [ WEB - PRINT - IDENTITY ] >>>

lukep

Cute. But I have given this a lot of thought (at one point I had all my hardware picked out to buy a rig in fact... Oh so close!) and I can't see how freedom-seekers the world over could allow a future to happen WITHOUT a peer-to-peer, digital, anonymous currency. It's too important.


Because of my respect for you G, I went and looked in 4 different locations today for definitions of that word, to see if I'm overlooking any significant meaning. The majority of the (many) definitions I found are indifferent to this argument. The one meaning that bitcoin cannot meet in order to be a commodity is the requirement of it being tangible.

It appears to be 100% correct that all commodities have always been tangible before. Nowhere can I find evidence to support any argument otherwise.

So allow me to make it here:

Commodities have been around since the stone ages. Beads, shells, gold, all previous commodities were necessarily produced with equality the world over, so they could be traded as equal units everywhere. Tangibility was something we HAD to have in that world. There was no internet yet.

But ever since AD 1991 or so when people started migrating their "lives" online, tangibility has become less important to our lives. More of our time is spent in a new plane of existence where NOTHING is tangible, just a bunch of 1s and 0s, but yet these digital "items" are IMPORTANT to us.

Whereas food {tangible} was important to us enough to trade some gold for before, Information {not tangible} is now important enough for us to do so. And do so we do. Very much so. How much has Clickbank pulled in to date?

Things have simply changed. And it continues changing in the new direction at an increased rate, as witnessed by the fact that people are now regularly leaving their freaking facebook profiles in their wills.

I assert that tangibility is no longer a hard requirement for commodities, at least in an online environment.

If something online, be it a backlink from a PR9 blog, a Bitcoin, or a photograph or other chunk of content has a certain VALUE to people the world over, then that thing should now be officially up for consideration as a commodity!

Of course the other defining factors of commodities should & would still apply. A backlink, even if from a PR9 wordpress blog, will obviously have a different value to different people and would fail the commodity requirements. Content, too, would fail the requirement as one person's trash is another person's treasure. Photos are included in that because they are just a form of content.

So Bitcoin is the first & only thing that I personally have seen that is designed to have the SAME VALUE to everyone online. If you know of another I'm all ears, but short of that we now have our first contender.

A way to facilitate this concept would be to create a new form of tangibility that applies to data, online or off. Instead of defining it by the perception of touch, perhaps this new form of tangibility could revolve around a perception of acquisition.

In this case to claim that an item is 'digitally tangible,' you'd only have to have it in your possession. (Even if just on a floppy disk or twitter stream.) If the fact that data can be reproduced destroys that tangibility in your mind, then perhaps this concept could only apply to digital items that cannot be reproduced.

Bitcoin, again, would obviously be digitally tangible in either case, and in doing so would still fulfill every requirement of being a commodity.


Sometimes we have to think about the reasons for the existing criteria. In this case, tangibility is no longer adequate. The world has simply changed. (Or more accurately, there is now a whole new world with a different set of natural laws!)

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lukep

To think BTC is dumb is to be dumb yourself. Have you read up on how deep and elegant the system is? Can you honestly say you understand everything about it?

Perhaps because:

A. It is open source, &

B. Every single BTC transaction is COMPLETELY KNOWN TO ALL. (Just no identities.)

If only governments released this much info on their currencies...!

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erifdekciw

lol did you even look at that list? 90% of that list is a bunch of nobody vendors. AKA some guys who made e-commerce website AKA people at digital point AKA the people who use bitcoins that think "hey lets open up a e-commerce site for bitcoins in this niche.

I feel embarrassed for you because your actually using this list as if to say "a-ha! Look at all these websites who use bitcoins". guaranteed 90% of these sites don't even make more than a dollar a day. Let alone get more than 100 people to their site every month.

When a website like amazon picks up bitcoins then we can start talking.

lukep

Eric, you and I are clearly not communicating well.

Of course the big list of ppl are all nobodys! If they were somebodys like Amazon, the government would swoop in so fast and throw them all in prison for tax evasion that it's not even funny.

You're totally missing the point here. BTC, being in the position to do great harm to the ruling establishments, HAS TO come from out of nowhere, or like so many people on this forum have said it's going to suffer a quick worldwide campaign of destruction, NATO style.

The fact that tons of small vendors on that list have stepped forward to put their necks out should tell you that there is enough support by INDIVIDUALS to get this thing rolling. Any bigger targets like corporations or anything that would be NEWSWORTHY to flog publicly, will indeed receive that flogging.

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Kstanki2

On a slightly related note, are there any easy to use btc desktop clients/wallets with a good interface? Or any third party ones at all?

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Ar Scion

We got a system in place, while far from failproof or foolproof, ensures the relative security of your money from these kind of vulnerabilities.

If you're arguing that the government is one of such crooks, just move to a place with minimal government.

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You are one matronly-ass mofo.

Ar Scion

Guerilla, would you agree that:

1) The value that currencies represent is not tangible.

2) Large swaths of our economy currently rely on transactions that are decidedly intangible (bank to bank, for example).

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You are one matronly-ass mofo.

lukep

Um, I'm confused... Is Ar Scion on my side??

(No offense, Brah!)

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Fatbat

I'm not some staunch defender of bitcoins so don't get me wrong, but from what I understand they've got systems in place too. The systems you're talking about are only failproof and foolproof so long as you keep your personal data safe and secure and don't get robbed at the ATM machine the next time you're withdrawing money. People get hacked/robbed/scammed/phished/tricked out of all their money ALL THE TIME!

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BRAD SHAW - GRAPHIC DESIGN [ WEB - PRINT - IDENTITY ] >>>

Jeeta

It's a pump and dump scam.

Good luck bros.

lukep

Proof?

Strong Evidence even?

Such opinions make me laugh at how uneducated the masses are.

Why do you say such things when you simply haven't read up on the subject?

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dmnEPC

As much as I love the idea behind BC I would say this is a pretty good argument

lukep

Argument for what?

That people are sheeple?

That the powers that be are winning?

Or is this somehow irrefutable evidence of the "fact" that BTC is a pump & dump scam?

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Jeeta

Good luck bro.

Don't worry I'll buy your bit coins when they're $0.01 each so I can take control of the bitcoin market, send it through another pump cycle.

dmnEPC

Def a pump and dump scheme but who cares now that everyone has dumped it would be an excellent time to buy buy and buy some more for the next upswing.

lukep

Ahh. I had no idea that pump & dump was just a term of technical indication... Especially when you added the word "Scam" to it, I just assumed you meant that there was someone doing the scamming, or at least a group of people in control nefariously guiding this investment into its' demise on purpose.

Since all pump & dump means, according to your own source, is that experienced investors got out at the top then yes, I agree with you.

...But that doesn't mean it will die off for good; there are other motives than money keeping bitcoin afloat:

1. Anonymous trading. -Peeps gotta get their shady merch. They'll keep buying because it's far safer than cash.

2. Libertarians wanting liberty. You can include me in this bunch, even though I haven't bought anything yet.


Thank you! Looking forward to it. Anything you (inconsequential) investors do to help our cause will be very useful to us in the long run!

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Jeeta

Bitcoin will die off because it has no economic back bone, the currency has no value since bitcoins aren't priced into anything. Like most publicly traded companies have petrodollars priced into their valuation for example.

A currencies valuation comes from the economy that, that currency is traded in. Bitcoins aren't legal tender, they're accepted almost no where. Their valuation is built on the fact that just maybe you can convert them into a currency that does have real economic value.

A currency is measured on it's ability to be traded for goods and services in the market place, bitcoins aren't widely accepted in your local shop. If people do want bitcoins they're thinking about its underlying USD/GBP/HKD etc etc.

Until it's a recognized currency and not a fad/scam whatever, it's worthless and more people every day are coming to that realisation as the sell off continues.

Bitcoin market is doomed to fail. If bitcoins did take off, because more than 21 million coins can never exist, hyperinflation would take its toll. You'll have 7 billion people on this planet soon and 21 million bitcoins, if they really did become a safe place to stash cash people would drive the price up to the point of where the rich can only afford bitcoins, like $10,000+ a bitcoin.

If you want to see what happens to a stock that's in high demand that never gets split just look at NYSE:BRK.A. Yeah I wanna buy a bag of weed but one bitcoin is worth $100,000 and this bag of weed only has a $20 market value = a totally failed currency. It'd be held like a false commodity like $GLD.

A place for the wealthy to hide money away in, to expensive to ever be widely accepted. So your currency is failed either way. Not to mention that once it attracts the attention of wall street and the major investment banks like Goldman Sachs you're all totally fucked anyway.

They'll robbed you till you're all piss fucking poor, and there's nothing you'll be able to do about it.

Case closed.

Good luck bros!

Jeeta

I didn't realise you could own less than a bitcoin so they may not be totally fucked with hyper-inflating their value. Lol I though these where being sold like stocks. But still a good point to also add is that nobody knows who the bitcoin founder is or his access to the market?

How do you know that this guy can't create as many bitcoins for himself as he likes, there's already stories floating around that this guy owns 25% of the market.

erifdekciw

Although it was pretty evident you had bitcoins by you being the only person in the room trying to defend bitcoin I think its funny you had to lie just so you could defend your precious bitcoin. Looks like you even doubt it yourself if you have to lie about owning it and are just trying to convince yourself otherwise.

lukep

Read my responses to Guerilla above. You're wrong.

A new economy (teh interwebz) has been created without a perfect currency.

Bitcoin was created specifically to be that currency, and nothing else even comes close to offering its' unique properties.

That's the problem, for sure. It's a real catch-22 situation... You can't overthrow the powers that be without Bitcoin, but you can't use Bitcoin everywhere without overthrowing the powers that be.

What is happening now is inevitable, and will continue to be inevitable until 1 of 2 things happen:

1. More people want freedom and use BTC because it's all they've got...

2. Less people want freedom and shun BTC because they are sheeple and use USD instead.

Honestly I think #2 has the far stronger chance but forgive me if I don't want to help them go down that road!


For traders. Not for thousands upon thousands of people who use bitcoin for one of the pther purposes mentioned a couple posts back.

Stop thinking of BTC in pure market terms. The Fanaticism about it that created all the hundreds of BTC merchants and all the hundreds or thousands of BTC Miners is 100% about the cause.

It's only the pathetically few traders that seem to think that BTC is just another new option on their Forex radar.


If so, then so is the entire hope of liberty without an extremely bloody worldwide revolution. I hope you're wrong.

This is an extremely silly argument. It shows you didn't start reading this thread from the top, where we talked about this point before.

BTC is divisible to the 8th place past the decimal point. That's a total of 21 Quadrillion units of currency. Pretty close to as many Pennies as we have in circulation today.


Seems likely but what are their weapons?

How do these weapons fight against a headless, peer-to-peer adversary where there is complete anonymity in who is using these things?

It's like fighting a ghost. No matter how many tanks and bombers they've got, they can't shoot a damn ghost, bro!

No, I maintain that the only way those in power can fight the BTC is using propaganda on the masses to make them feel evil for touching it.

They'll say BTC can only be used for fraud, laundering, and to buy illegal goods. (Which is wrong.)

They'll say that BTC is going to ruin the economy. (As if they know how to help it anyway...)

They'll say that BTC is the primary way that sex slaves, large shipment of drugs, and even nuclear bombs are sold to TERRORISTS and that if you use BTC you're helping them do it.

They'll even appeal to the lower & middle classes of the world and say that BTC is a tool for the people who got rich by doing evil; basically defrauding them of their tax dollars through money laundering schemes.

The poor will hate the rich, the patriotic will hate everyone touching these things, and the people sympathetic to all of the individual causes that BTC can be used towards will be adamant about getting these users hunted down and imprisoned.

And the last chance for our freedom completely eradicated along with them.

Tom Jefferson would probably break down and cry at this point.

So mark my words; BTC is not out of this nor will it be soon. BTC will be a fringe topic for years not quite making it mainstream like Torrents did for years. Then once it is a problem for the powers that be that is finally too big for them to ignore, you can be sure that it will be Public enemy #1 on that day and they'll pull every stop to kill it.

It represents that much power to them.

So all we can hope for is that too many people can appreciate it for them to stop by then.

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lukep

It's open source. Another reason it's damn near invincible.

Read up more, brah. This thread alone (& it's links) have everything you need to know. Wikipedia's entry is quite good too. & Tradehill's FAQ page.


No lies, I own 0 BTC right now, nor have I ever even had a single BitPenny.

I am all about the idea. I want freedom. Once I understood the nature of BTC, and specifically what it means to the powers that be, I knew this is our one shot.

So I'll help it any way I can, and there's no need to own any to do so. I'll invest in whatever I know is going to make me lots of money with little risk, and there is obviously a ton of risk in BTC.

Why do you always assume the worst with me? Still mad about some previous thread where I called you a mental midget or something? Look deeper, bro!

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erifdekciw

Oh god that whole statement was a big contradiction.

I love the idea, I'll help it anyway I can!

Buy bitcoins?

Nope.

lukep

It's just like with voting dude, even when you like a candidate, sometimes you know he's going to lose this election and you don't go vote. (Yet.)

I stated clearly a page back in this thread what It would take for me to do so. No contradictions here.

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conv3rsion

The fact of the matter is that bitcoins are currently the best available solution to a very difficult problem. That problem being how to instantly and (mostly) anonymously send money irreversibly for a very low fee. They are also, in some instances, the only possible payment for goods and services (which is the exact definition of money). As such, they have value and will continue to have value until such a time as a better solution to that problem is developed.

Whether their current value relative to USD or another currency will increase or decrease in the future is irrelevant to the point of whether bitcoins have value (they do) and are used as money (they are).

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