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Bitcoin Is an Existential Threat to the Modern Liberal State

bloomberg.com

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Re: Bitcoin Is an Existential Threat to the Modern Liberal State

#11

Post by guard-of-terra »

mbetter wrote: post #8
itistoday2 wrote: post #4

What a gigantic piece of FUD. > How do governments collect taxes on transactions in Bitcoin? The answer is they don't, and they can't. Crypto-currency's strong protections on anonymity make it impossible for any state to know who is buying what, who is paying whom, who earns what, and who has what in savings. BS! The state seems to be surviving just fine with its "inability" to track who is buying what with cash, and…

I'm not sure why that second sentence is there, it doesn't really make much sense. The rest of the point is valid, especially regarding money laundering.

Why should we ever care about money laundering when they didn't punish HSBC?

They aren't serious about this issue, why should we care?

Re: Bitcoin Is an Existential Threat to the Modern Liberal State

#12

Post by rayiner »

mrb wrote: post #2

"The volume of transactions in Bitcoin is growing only slowly, relative to the massive increase in demand for the currency" The author states this without presenting data. He is wrong. In fact, data shows the opposite: - The exchange rate increase by 5x between February (low of $20) and March (high of $100) - BitPay alone recorded a merchant transaction volume increasing by 7.6x between February ($687k) and March ($5…

> How can a Bloomberg article

Because it's not a Bloomberg article, it's an opinion piece.

Re: Bitcoin Is an Existential Threat to the Modern Liberal State

#13

Post by hazov »

rd108 wrote: post #9

I've been a bitcoin supporter. But there is a twinge in me that remembers government, properly set up, can often protect the weak from the strong. Extremely wealthy corporations and individuals moving around anonymous money would make it impossible to tax and impossible to know where political contributions were coming from. I don't know the answer-- I flip flop back and forth between total openness for everyone and…

On the contrary I believe, suppose bitcoin explodes national fiat currency as I saw a couple of guys wishing, once governments put some regulation, double booking accountting for companies who will have no incentive to avoid taxes and pay a lot later and the fact you can trace all transaction would kill any anonymity unless it remain a currency for black markets.

Re: Bitcoin Is an Existential Threat to the Modern Liberal State

#14

Post by rayiner »

guard-of-terra wrote: post #11
mbetter wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why that second sentence is there, it doesn't really make much sense. The rest of the point is valid, especially regarding money laundering.

Why should we ever care about money laundering when they didn't punish HSBC? They aren't serious about this issue, why should we care?

Because HSBC wasn't doing the money laundering. The charge was a failing to exercise the controls required by banking laws. See: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2012/12/11/hsbc...

Re: Bitcoin Is an Existential Threat to the Modern Liberal State

#15

Post by waterlesscloud »

hazov wrote: post #10

"which, for many of its libertarian-anarchist advocates, is the whole idea" The politics the community built around is for me the only reason why it sucks right now, the idea is interesting and it can certainly have some use. Selling all that I have. TL;DR: Well, the link speaks for itself: http://imgur.com/r/cringepics/gkLJswu EDIT: Ultimately what I hate about it is that the almost anywhere you go do discuss it the…

I think of bitcoin the same way I think of the music of Led Zeppelin: I don't let the fans stand in the way of my appreciation of a good product.

Re: Bitcoin Is an Existential Threat to the Modern Liberal State

#16

Post by mbetter »

guard-of-terra wrote: post #11
mbetter wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why that second sentence is there, it doesn't really make much sense. The rest of the point is valid, especially regarding money laundering.

Why should we ever care about money laundering when they didn't punish HSBC? They aren't serious about this issue, why should we care?

How is that the proper response? If one person gets away with running a red light, do we just turn them all off?

The travesty of HSBC getting away with their crimes should be a reminder of the value of the rule of law and an impetus to fight even harder against those that would think themselves above it.

Re: Bitcoin Is an Existential Threat to the Modern Liberal State

#17

Post by josephby »

"Taxation: How do governments collect taxes on transactions in Bitcoin? The answer is they don't, and they can't."

Grossly misleading.

You tax something at the point at which it gets exchanged into an externally viewable good or service. If either party refuses to disclose the value of the transaction, then the state just assigns one and uses its monopoly on force to collect.

That said, an increasing dependence on opaque stores of value would likely shift taxation away from income and towards consumption.

Re: Bitcoin Is an Existential Threat to the Modern Liberal State

#18

Post by kiba »

mrb wrote: post #2

"The volume of transactions in Bitcoin is growing only slowly, relative to the massive increase in demand for the currency" The author states this without presenting data. He is wrong. In fact, data shows the opposite: - The exchange rate increase by 5x between February (low of $20) and March (high of $100) - BitPay alone recorded a merchant transaction volume increasing by 7.6x between February ($687k) and March ($5…

The # of translations is linked in the article but not the actual USD volume of the graph.

Also, the blockchain data doesn't tell us much because for all we know it might be that somebody is merely moving coins from one wallet to another.

Re: Bitcoin Is an Existential Threat to the Modern Liberal State

#19

Post by guard-of-terra »

mbetter wrote: post #16
guard-of-terra wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should we ever care about money laundering when they didn't punish HSBC? They aren't serious about this issue, why should we care?

How is that the proper response? If one person gets away with running a red light, do we just turn them all off? The travesty of HSBC getting away with their crimes should be a reminder of the value of the rule of law and an impetus to fight even harder against those that would think themselves above it.

If this person is a minister of interior affairs then yes, we should just turn them all off.

And HSBC is something like that. It's exactly the bank that "we all the citizens" should trust in order to not be "anti-democratic" as another article put it.

And you know what, we're not going to trust HSBC or any other bank, no more.

Re: Bitcoin Is an Existential Threat to the Modern Liberal State

#20

Post by mrb »

Guvante wrote: post #7
mrb wrote: post #2

"The volume of transactions in Bitcoin is growing only slowly, relative to the massive increase in demand for the currency" The author states this without presenting data. He is wrong. In fact, data shows the opposite: - The exchange rate increase by 5x between February (low of $20) and March (high of $100) - BitPay alone recorded a merchant transaction volume increasing by 7.6x between February ($687k) and March ($5…

> there are many more Bitcoin-accepting vendors who make sales without using BitPay Who have independent increases. If I accept bitcoins and I didn't see an increase in transactions, that decreases the total transaction volume change. You can't just look at one particular vendor and apply their results to the aggregate. And BitPay's numbers are odd, they reported an average transaction size of 10 bitcoins, that seems…

The datapoint I cited was the most concrete irrefutable one. Firstly, BitPay is a big enough payment processor that their growth generally reflects accurately enough the growth of Bitcoin (their market share is actually slighly decreasing over time, as other payment processors sprang up in the recent past). Secondly, all other datapoints show as well that the volume of transactions increases:

- Estimated volume of USD transactions (attempting to ignore "change"): http://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction-volume-u...

- Silk Road going over 2 years from zero to $2 million/month of Bitcoin revenues: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/08/study-estimates-2...

- A bitcoin casino went from 0 to $0.5 million profits in 6 months: http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/01/bitcoin-based-casino...

- Etc. Generally all vendors and payment processors report huge increases.

It is wrong for the author to silently ignore all these facts.

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