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For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins

usmarshals.gov

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Re: For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins

#381

Post by mpyne »

topynate wrote: post #304
throwaway6637 wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But SR was not exclusively for drug sellers. Most of the business there was drugs, obviously, but some amount of that money would have bought legitimate items. So what gives them the right to sell off that money?

Users sent bitcoins to SR to hold for them, in return for a promise to return them on demand. So SR's assets and liabilities both increased with each deposit. Then USG seized SR's assets (under what right? That SR was an illegal enterprise established to facilitate narcotics sales). SR still has liabilities to its users, but now it can't meet them. Note that SR's liabilities are no concern of USG. Come on guys, is it…

> Come on guys, is it so hard to understand that if you exchange an asset for a security, you don't own the asset anymore?

In this case this fact is directly contrary to a worldview held by many at HN, so I suspect everyone pointing out how property law actually works is in for a long slog.

Re: For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins

#382

Post by aianus »

lmm wrote: post #367
rplnt wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A very stretched example follows, be warned: An online shop selling clothing also happens to sell firearms illegally. Its assets are seized. What about money from pending orders for the clothing? It seems to me it's obvious in this case. Couldn't SR users start a class action lawsuit against gov for seizing their assets stored on SR servers? This is assuming not everything sold there was illegal (this might be wrong)…

Once you've paid for an order it isn't your money any more (they're presumably not operating or licensed as a bank). In your clothing example your only recourse would be to sue the clothing store for failing to deliver your clothes (breach of contract or the like). In theory you could do the same thing with Silk Road, but the site operators being anonymous makes that rather difficult. (Of course in practice what you'…

They were 'operating as a bank' in that you had a wallet on the site. The majority of the money seized was not in escrow for drug purchases but sitting in the accounts of the users.

Re: For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins

#383

Post by aianus »

cornholio wrote: post #255
polshaw wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin proponents tend to have a vested interest and can be.. less than objective. @1: A trade alone does not help BTC stabilise. We ARE seeing an increase in BTC trade, but all of this is pegged to local currency, and usually traded out for that immediately. As it is held for a very short period, there is no real effect on price, and is essentially the same as cashing out.[1] What might help BTC stabilise would be…

> I think the best we could hope for is a little worse than gold (as it continues to be mined), which AFAIK still carries a significant amount of instability. Actually, the best we could hope for has much, much higher volatility than gold: there are vast reserves of gold available and the oceans contain about 9 pounds of gold for each person on earth, 100x the total amount of gold mined throughout human history. Ther…

The fundamental value of bitcoin is the float of all the transactions people want to engage in using the currency. Imagine that nobody speculated on the value of bitcoin, and people only entered into positions for the purpose of buying something from Silk Road. The sum of all of those positions would be the fundamental net market value of bitcoin.

If it continues to become more useful as a payment network, the value will grow and the volatility will go down.

Re: For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins

#384

Post by mpyne »

zik wrote: post #191
polshaw wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has very limited use as a serious transaction system while there is so much volatility. Prices are therefore pegged to local currencies, and if you want to keep that then it's no longer low cost because conversion to/from local currency costs just as much. The speculation and (eventually) deflationary nature of BTC significantly hinders the chances of it ever stabilising, and therefore a true 'bitcoin economy' eme…

Not really. I bought my lunch in bitcoin today. Bitcoin transactions are usually priced in dollars so the volatility is immaterial to its use in transactions.

> Bitcoin transactions are usually priced in dollars so the volatility is immaterial to its use in transactions.

That then leaves the question of why not simply use the non-volatile currency directly. Bitcoin would still have the advantage of being able to transfer money more easily than a wire transfer, but that wouldn't matter for the use case of paying for lunch.

Re: For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins

#385

Post by swalkergibson »

talmand wrote: post #341
curun1r wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're explicitly not selling the Bitcoins seized from his personal wallet(s). They're selling the ones seized from the servers that ran Silk Road. My bet would be that Ulbricht has denied any connection to those servers as part of his defense since claiming to own/control them would make it too easy for the government to prove its case. If, at this point, those servers belong to anyone else, they're free to come fo…

Somehow I doubt that's how it works, or at least I really hope it doesn't work that way. The government seizes something and attempts to sell it off before identifying who it belongs to? Sure, sounds the right way to handle things.

The forfeiture action is a civil proceeding against the asset itself. If somebody has a claim to the asset, they can come forward and contest the proceeding, and potentially win. However, in a case like this, coming forward would essentially identify yourself as a co-conspirator in a clearly illegal enterprise. As such, nobody came forward, so a default judgment in favor of the plaintiff was granted because nobody was there to represent themselves as the owner of the asset.

Re: For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins

#386

Post by GFischer »

logfromblammo wrote: post #375
GFischer wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Milton Friedman believed that there should be an increase in monetary supply, irrespective of business cycles, etc: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman%27s_k-percent_rule Most mainstream economists agree with a steady expansion of the money supply (which does not necessarily lead to inflation unless the monetary supply grows faster than demand). Cryptocoins are an interesting example of rule-based monetary policy,…

In order to maintain stable prices, the size of the money supply should grow or shrink at the same rate that the economy itself grows or shrinks. Historically, capital and technology improvements have caused a 2-3% increase in productivity, ever since the industrial revolution. Moneys based upon industrial processes, most notably mining of metals and coin minting, would then naturally increase the money supply at abo…

I agree with you that new money is going to the wrong people, it has always bothered me since I understood the explanations and "got it".

I also hope that Bitcoin is a proof of concept for a better system :) .

Thanks for the lengthy post. It's worth the read.

Re: For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins

#387

Post by [deleted] »

saraid216 wrote: post #179
[deleted] wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

> For the same reason I wouldn't hand anybody involved in illegal activity my wallet. Well, let's not go that far. I'd totally give someone my wallet if they were pointing a loaded gun at my head. Ain't nothing in there worth dying for.

[deleted]

Re: For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins

#389

Post by sillysaurus3 »

thesimpsons1022 wrote: post #324
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When someone tries to use email and fails, they can lose some time. When someone tries to use bitcoin and fails, they can lose their home. When silk road 2 lost their users' bitcoins to theft, there was a comment on Reddit about a silk road user who became homeless because they had converted their savings into bitcoin and stored the coins in silk road's webwallet. When the coins were lost, so was their home, since th…

a lot of these people don't have that good of arguments, so they instead use crappy metaphors to make their points. they take something that is totally different than bitcoin and try to use that to make their point. but they need examine f it is a valid analogy. I don't think a PC, a consumer good, can be compared to something that's supposed to function as a currency. one is a store of a value and one has a function…

That's a bit harsh. The metaphor made a lot of sense, because their point was that bitcoin is currently hard to use, and will get easier with time, which is true.

Re: For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins

#390

Post by pessimizer »

talmand wrote: post #337
rayiner wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: I think civil forfeiture laws are applied without sufficient discretion in drug cases. And it's troubling that they apply not just to illegally-obtained assets, but those that are "instrumentality of a crime." That said, there's an important wrinkle here that you're glossing over, and that is usually glossed over in discussions about civil forfeiture. Civil forfeiture is not confiscation of your property…

How do they determine the property is the result of illegal activity if the owner of the property has yet to be convicted of illegal activity? That way of thinking opens up our current problems of police seizing everything within grasp during an arrest or traffic stop claiming the property is the result of illegal activity. "Hello, I pulled you over because it's late at night and I'm wondering if you're okay. Oh, you…

>If this is the way the law is being interpreted then we gave up property rights a long time ago.

It is the way the law is interpreted, and we've given up a lot of rights in the name of the drug war.

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