Bitcoin

[Betruger]

But there’s also at least one important difference between Bitcoin and Liberty Reserve: If the authorities concluded that Bitcoin were a money laundering scheme, it’s not clear whom they’d prosecute. There’s no Budovsky for Bitcoin. Rather, the online currency was created by “Satoshi Nakamoto,” widely regarded as a pseudonym. Bitcoin transactions are processed in a distributed fashion by thousands of “miners” around the world. It would be difficult for the United States to indict all of them, and doing so would likely drive Bitcoin mining underground — which could make it even more attractive to criminals.

That sprawling, decentralized network would create a dilemma for federal regulators if former Liberty Reserve users switched to Bitcoin. The crypto currency doesn’t fit well into existing money-laundering laws, and there’s no one who can be required to reform the network to bring it into compliance. Trying to shut down Bitcoin could prove futile — the feds can make life hard for individual Bitcoin users but likely could not destroy the network altogether.
Civil libertarians have long lauded the Internet’s ability to resist government’s efforts to control the flow of information. The emergence of Bitcoin could threaten the United States’ ability to control the flow of electronic funds, too.

[hanelyp]

The way bitcoin is distributed it would be near impossible to shut down. Exchanges between bitcoin and other currencies, on the other hand, are an easier target.

[necoras]

What hanleyp said. Mt Gox (the largest USD exchange) has had numerous legal problems. Most recently they didn't setup some international monetary transfer account correctly and had some of its USD accounts frozen.

Bitcoins are in many ways an ideal currency, so long as you can find someone willing to accept bitcoins as payment. They have the same problems that any other currency does when you try to exchange them for a currency controlled by a central bank.

[painlord2k]

The way bitcoin is distributed it would be near impossible to shut down. Exchanges between bitcoin and other currencies, on the other hand, are an easier target.

Only large exchanges can be shut down easily.
But try to shut down localbitcoins.com and local street exchangers.
No more difficult than shutting down local drug exchangers.

Their best chance is to delay the process, not to stop it.
Delay and have the exchanges monitored, so they know who exchange, how much BTC they have and where they send them.

My opinion is, with China apparently in a supporting position, Bitcoin is little less than unstoppable.
The public ledger allow to follow the flow of BTC everywhere, if the users are not tech savy.
On the other hand, many are and know how use mixers and other features of the network to keep their privacy.

Bitcoin is an internet protocol and like TCP, a lot of other protocols could be built atop of it and many are already working on this to allow other services like allow anonymous spending and smart contracts.

[choff]

I very seriously considered buying bitcoin, going so far as to setup an ewallet. I decided not to based on two things, first is that there are now 40 competing cyber currencies out there, one of them is eventually going to knock bitcoin off. The other is the deflationary nature of bitcoin. It's okay for transactions that involve quick payments, the problem comes with long term investments. An example would be the drug dealer who would have been better off holding onto his bitcoins than using them to buy drugs for resale once the cyber currencies value shot up. It's great to recieve payment in bitcoin, not so great to buy with them.

[paperburn1]

now the feds say its reallly money http://www.nbcnews.com/business/sec-say ... 6C10722287

[Stubby]

FYI

http://www.vancouversun.com/Vancouver+w ... story.html

[Stubby]

FYI

27$ turns into $866 000

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2 ... -oslo-home

[choff]

Interesting article about who might be behind the creation of Bitcoin.

http://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ ... ut-a-clue/

Sort of wish I could have bought when it was cheap, got a little silver instead.

[JLawson]

I remember when Bitcoin came out and thought "Hey, that'd be neat..." But I figured it'd go the way of Beenz and other 'digital currencies'.

Now I wish I'd bought some. (Shrug.)

[hanelyp]

http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin- ... es-2013-11

Research ... found that 18 of the 40 Bitcoin trading platforms set up in the past three years had closed, including TradeHill, which was once the second largest in terms of transaction volume.

Moreover, 13 of the discontinued services closed without any prior notice, while the remaining five were forced to shut down following hacker attacks. Only six of them were known to have offered refunds to users.

Not a sign of a stable currency.

[choff]

They're not anonymous and the Fed loves them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipGIOip ... AxFmee1oSA