We told you so... Senator calls for ban of bitcoin

[BoberFett]

Heads up:
It appears that bitcoin has attracted the attention of the US Government, and not in a positive manner. Tick tick tick tick tick tick... Imho, anyone who thought this was going to make it long term, without it being banned, was a bit naive. Also, imho, if I had been doing this and had value tied up in bitcoins, I'd get out before the value started crashing on this news.\

http://www.manchin.senate.gov/publi...eases?ID=237cbd66-6a26-4870-9bcb-20177ae902b0

That should be enough to legitimize the conspiracy theorists' fears. The government is afraid of uncontrolled currency.

As for the legal basis, I'm not sure how they could ban bitcoin without a significant amount of collateral damage. Will online games be banned? There's the potential to sell in-game currency for real dollars. Are they going to ban the exchange of encrypted files? Either the law will have to be so vague that you can fly a 747 through the loopholes, or it will be so specific that it won't have any effect at all.

 

[BoberFett]

The stock market and other legitimate businesses are highly regulated to prevent fraud.

Yes, and that has worked so well.

 

[Crusty]

Uh, that's from the 26th of February. Nothing happened to Bitcoins, and the dude was told to go take a hike.

 

[BoberFett]

You can ban businesses from accepting them, ban trading houses from trading them, ban tranasction processors from transactioning them.

Great, I'll do business in bitecoin instead. Problem solved.

Ultimatey bitcoin has to be converted to the dollar somewhere or its useless. You just ban that process. For example Overstock isn't really do business in bitcoin, they are really doing it in the dollar. They use a transaction processor to convert the bitcoins to dollars ASAP so they don't have to worry about the changing price of bitcoin when they sell goods.

Actually that's why bitcoin is a failure. It's precisely because it needs to be converted to a real currency.

If there was a self-sufficient Amish community that invented their own currency and used it for everything from paying for labor to buying food, clothing, housing, and everything else a person needs, isn't that a legitimate currency? You only have to convert it to USD if you want something that the community can't create, and in turn the people with USD have to want something the Amish can produce. That's how currency works.

If bitcoin could be used for something other than buying drugs or pumping and dumping bitcoin itself, it would have a chance at being something.

 

[ImpulsE69]

Bitcoin doesn't make sense to me as anything other than a thought experiment. Security, fraud, client errors, etc. Even the anonymous aspects seem overblown, since you can basically trace the transactions back forever. It seems much simpler to deal in cash if you're a criminal or anything else if you're not.

Except apparently when they disappear or are stolen....

 

[BikeJunkie]

It's basically a pyramid scheme that robs naive hopefuls of their life savings. I say ban it.

Yeah ban it! And trading cards, old coins, antiques, and anything else that people might get suckered over or harm themselves with... like 64oz sodas!

Oh wait :hmm: