Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Bitcoin app rejected by Apple

bitcoin.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 99 posts

Re: Bitcoin app rejected by Apple

#61

Post by narrator »

thinkcomp wrote: post #2

This really should not be a surprise to anyone. If Bitcoin is not already illegal (and I have reason to believe it is due to most states' money transmitter laws), it's almost guaranteed that it will be soon.

Why would it be illegal if bitcoins are never exchanged for dollars?

I know it's totally utterly contrary to human nature, but if everyone got up tomorrow and left their wallets at home and took things from stores with the consent of the owner and went to work, but received no pay, and stood in line at the soup kitchen and did not take from stores if they felt they had not contributed to the society, would that be illegal too?

Think about it for a while. Sometimes we lose sight of what money actually is.

Re: Bitcoin app rejected by Apple

#62

Post by JoachimSchipper »

webXL wrote: post #51
Joakal wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is likely to be illegal; banking without a licence, not revealing the ownership, etc. Look at E-Gold's fall: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/06/e-gold/

Isn't the "bank" on your hard drive? E-Gold was a commercial enterprise with only 20 employees and no legal team. Very easy to take down. It will be hard for the feds to take down a P2P network, although very easy for them to police e-commerce sites that accept it.

Bitcoin transactions are public, right? It's not exactly hard to find out who's using them...

Re: Bitcoin app rejected by Apple

#63

Post by yason »

weavejester wrote: post #15
thinkcomp wrote: post #2

This really should not be a surprise to anyone. If Bitcoin is not already illegal (and I have reason to believe it is due to most states' money transmitter laws), it's almost guaranteed that it will be soon.

I doubt Bitcoin will be made illegal. By itself, the Bitcoin network is just a mechanism for passing around signed messages and calculating hash values. It would be difficult to outlaw that without running into constitutional free speech issues. Where Bitcoin might run into trouble is the trading of bitcoins for dollars or commodities. Depending on how bitcoins are classified legally, there may be additional regulati…

Where Bitcoin might run into trouble is the trading of bitcoins for dollars or commodities.

But even if trading was made clearly illegal in the U.S. all that we need is a company abroad under benign legislation that allows you to buy/sell bitcoins and that accepts credit cards.

You're right that you obviously can't make it illegal to perform mathematical calculations over big numbers. Also, you can't make it illegal to interpret the result of the calculations or giving them a context.

But I think you can't make it illegal to trade bitcoins either: if everything else fails we can always have bitcoin trading parties where the participants can exchange bitcoins to money and money to bitcoins with no third party in the middle.

Re: Bitcoin app rejected by Apple

#64

Post by nandemo »

webXL wrote: post #50
joe_the_user wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no doubt that bitcoins will fall under one or another regulations. One argument would be that bitcoin is an illegal pyramid scheme. Another would be that bitcoin is means circumvent the tax system (all barter and local currency systems, for example, have to pay taxes). I'm sure many other arguments could be found.

I'm sure many other arguments could be found. Like, "Bitcoin is anti-American" or "Bitcoin will be used by heroin dealers who will sell your daughters into prostitution" If bitcoin is a means to circumvent the tax system, then we'd have to apply whatever tax regulation that results to all other forms of currency. Social Security is an illegal pyramid scheme because it wasn't sold to the American public that way. Let'…

Well, it is already being used by drug dealers (see Silk Road). In fact, if you have bitcoins it's probably easier to exchange it for illegal drugs than for food.

Re: Bitcoin app rejected by Apple

#65

Post by eropple »

fleitz wrote: post #10
sirlancer wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When does money start to become "real currency"? Numbers on an ATM machine are only representative of the physical currency that I can extract from a bank. A message on an IM window could essentially mean the same thing: "Thanks for helping me move my couch, I'll get that $20 over to you by tomorrow". So at what point does the rubber meet the asphalt and how will Apple enforce this down the road?

We don't have 'money' anymore, we have currency. USD is not money, it's currency and fiat currency at that. US Dollars are backed by an obligation to give you more US Dollars in the future. If you had liberty dollars then you'd have money. To directly answer your question, money becomes currency when you transfer representations of value instead of value. (eg. A piece of paper obliging the barer to receive something…

Liberty dollars again? Man, if they hadn't gotten raided I'd be suspicious of affiliate link scams.

Re: Bitcoin app rejected by Apple

#66

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

weavejester wrote: post #15
thinkcomp wrote: post #2

This really should not be a surprise to anyone. If Bitcoin is not already illegal (and I have reason to believe it is due to most states' money transmitter laws), it's almost guaranteed that it will be soon.

I doubt Bitcoin will be made illegal. By itself, the Bitcoin network is just a mechanism for passing around signed messages and calculating hash values. It would be difficult to outlaw that without running into constitutional free speech issues. Where Bitcoin might run into trouble is the trading of bitcoins for dollars or commodities. Depending on how bitcoins are classified legally, there may be additional regulati…

While I am sympathetic, this is the same sort of argument that was made in the past with napster and the trend of later laws has been to hold "enablers" liable (at least when it comes to copyright). Given what happened with egold I would not have much faith that the US (and western world) legal establishment will tolerate something like bitcoin. But who knows, maybe we'll get a judge who is willing to make fine distinctions from technical arguments, or is more favorable on free speech vs the interests of those who currently control the flow of capital.

Follow up:

egold plead guilty to "operation of an unlicensed money transmitting business". While I'm not familiar enough to say definitively if bitcoin could avoid this same statute in the US, I'd guess not.

Re: Bitcoin app rejected by Apple

#68

Post by janv »

JoachimSchipper wrote: post #62
webXL wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the "bank" on your hard drive? E-Gold was a commercial enterprise with only 20 employees and no legal team. Very easy to take down. It will be hard for the feds to take down a P2P network, although very easy for them to police e-commerce sites that accept it.

Bitcoin transactions are public, right? It's not exactly hard to find out who's using them...

You can have separate addresses (accounts) for every transaction, which makes tracking much harder (not impossible). Oh, you can also launder your bitcoins. :-) See https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Anonymity

Re: Bitcoin app rejected by Apple

#69

Post by moreati »

JoachimSchipper wrote: post #62
webXL wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the "bank" on your hard drive? E-Gold was a commercial enterprise with only 20 employees and no legal team. Very easy to take down. It will be hard for the feds to take down a P2P network, although very easy for them to police e-commerce sites that accept it.

Bitcoin transactions are public, right? It's not exactly hard to find out who's using them...

The transactions are pseudonymous - a public key of each participant is recorded, and world readable. The public key doesn't have to be connected to a real world identity. An attacker could analyse the transaction history to infer the identity controlling a given key, depending on how it was reused/managed.

Re: Bitcoin app rejected by Apple

#70

Post by fryguy »

hugh3 wrote: post #25
jarin wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that argument, EVE Online's PLEX should be illegal as well, as it is transferrable and exchangeable for something of monetary value (a subscription).

Again we're running into the geeks-trying-to-understand-the-law problem -- they always expect the law to be as sensible and self-consistent as geometry. But the law has no patience with reducito ad absurdum, and judges and lawmakers are quite happy to declare that X is legal and Y is illegal even if in some sense Y is really analogous to X . As far as alternative currencies go, my understanding is that they're illega…

Why are "alternative currencies" illegal under US law? AFAIK the only thing that's illegal is refusing to accept US$ as payment if you accept something else. For example, people can spend foreign money (GBP, Euros, etc) inside the non-international parts of airports. Also, people can transfer their USD to foreign currency and vice versa over the internet and at banks. Is there something different about bitcoin than say zimbabwe dollars? If anything, they're probably safer. As an aside, USD are accepted many places outside of the US in lieu of the local currency. I imagine there would be similar laws in those countries, but yet it's acceptable there.
Post reply on HN