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Title: WAS BITCOIN CREATED BY THIS INTERNATIONAL DRUG DEALER?
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URL Source: https://www.wired.com/story/was-bit ... ternational-drug-dealer-maybe/
Published: Jul 16, 2019
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Post Date: 2019-07-16 08:06:04 by A K A Stone
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Views: 42997
Comments: 88
THE MESSAGES STARTED arriving on a Sunday afternoon in mid-May. “Just wanted to draw your attention to this,” one began. “Rumors are starting to surface,” another informed me. “I’d be very interested in getting your thoughts,” a third suggested. My correspondents, mostly strangers, were polite but insistent. They wanted my take on a theory, newly circulating online, that offered a resolution to one of the most alluring digital mysteries of the past decade, the real identity (or identities) behind the persona of Satoshi Nakamoto.
The question, as someone in my Twitter DM’s articulated it, was this: “Do you think that Paul Le Roux is bitcoin creator Satoshi?”
In one sense, they’d all come to the right place. I spent five years tracking Paul Calder Le Roux, a South African programmer who built a global drug and arms dealing empire, and transformed himself into one of the 21st century’s most prolific and pursued criminals. I’d obsessively catalogued his life, from his early history as an encryption coder; through his creation of an online prescription drug business worth hundreds of millions of dollars; to his diversification into smuggling, weapons, and violence; to his 2012 capture by, and cooperation with, the Drug Enforcement Agency.
Along the way he had, among other endeavors, simultaneously fed the American opioid epidemic; built his own base operations in Somalia, protected by an armed militia; run gold and timber extraction operations in a half-dozen African countries; laundered millions of dollars through Hong Kong; plotted a coup in the Seychelles (later abandoned); bought off law enforcement in the Philippines, where he was based; trafficked methamphetamine out of North Korea; and overseen a team of engineers building missile guidance systems for Iran and drones for drug delivery.
I’d traveled into the Manila underworld and found former employees, including ex-military mercenaries who’d worked as Le Roux’s enforcers. I’d distilled hundreds of interviews and tens of thousands of pages of records into a 400-page book, The Mastermind, detailing Le Roux’s epic rise and fall.
These questions about Satoshi, however, filled me with a special kind of dread. I’d traveled down the Satoshi rabbit hole before and returned empty handed. “I’ve got a secret theory that Paul invented bitcoin,” I’d written in 2016 to Mathew Smith, Le Roux’s cousin. Smith, along with over a hundred other Le Roux–connected people I interviewed, from employees to cops, had seen or heard nothing to support my theory. By the time I finished the book, in late 2018, I’d largely discarded it. “I wasted countless hours trying to determine if there was any connection” between Le Roux and Satoshi, I wrote in the final manuscript. “As far as I could tell, there wasn’t.”
There was some relief in this. I’d seen the ignominy when people went Satoshi hunting in the past. The siren song of bitcoin’s progenitor had been calling out to journalists since Satoshi seemed to exit the cryptocurrency world in 2011, leaving behind a technology that—even today, after all the hype cycles—promises to shape the future of everything from money to contracts. Whoever Satoshi was, the person (or persons) was sitting on a fortune, roughly a million bitcoins that analysts estimated Satoshi had mined at the currency’s inception in 2009. (At current prices that stash would be worth more than $10 billion.) There had been many attempts to unmask the creator, unresolved.
But now the messages about Le Roux kept coming, driven by 4chan and Hacker News threads churning over a tantalizing new clue—a footnote in one filing in a multibillion-dollar federal lawsuit in Florida.
This is where things started to get weird. The defendant in the lawsuit is an Australian computer scientist named Craig Wright. As followers of the Satoshi saga will know, Wright was the man outed in late 2015 by WIRED and Gizmodo as a likely candidate to himself be Satoshi Nakamoto. Both publications later walked back the stories after it appeared that documents they’d relied upon had been faked and manipulated.
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Bitcoin is for suckers and predators.
The question of who created bitcoin is not relevant as it is both decentralized and open source. And even if it was important, there are hundreds of copycat crypto currencies in existence (though 98% of them I would not touch with a 10 foot pole). The US dollar, on the other hand, is centralized. If you believe in freedom and object to centralized control of the monetary system, then bitcoin and/or decentralized crypto is what you should be championing. By not doing so, you by default to the position that the US dollar is NOT for suckers and predators. Bitcoin was started in 2009, coincidentally not long after the 2008 financial crisis which saw huge bailouts for banking corps for implementing finance strategies to loot the economy. Crypto currency is the answer to that kind of abuse.
- - - - - - - - - - [Pinguinite #2] The question of who created bitcoin is not relevant as it is both decentralized and open source. And even if it was important, there are hundreds of copycat crypto currencies in existence (though 98% of them I would not touch with a 10 foot pole). The US dollar, on the other hand, is centralized. If you believe in freedom and object to centralized control of the monetary system, then bitcoin and/or decentralized crypto is what you should be championing. There is no such thing as absolute security on the internet. With banks, you have insurance if your account gets hacked. With crypto, primarily used by crooks, drug dealers, tax evaders, and others attempting to avoid the law, a successful hack means you are usually shit out of luck, with no legal recourse. As for a hack, anything that has been done, can be done. https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/032615/can-bitcoin-be-hacked.asp By Nathan Reiff Investors all over the world are swarming to buy Bitcoin, prompting some governments to step in with severe regulations. The success of bitcoin fueled the rise of legions of followers, including hundreds of new cryptocurrency launches and a wave of startups predicated on blockchain technology. Nonetheless, with all the fuss and hubbub surrounding bitcoin, many investors are still unsure about the security of the currency itself. Can bitcoin be hacked? And, if so, how can investors work to protect their investments? Bitcoin and Security Bitcoin was launched in 2009 as a decentralized digital currency, meaning that it would not be overseen or regulated by any one administrator, like a government or bank. Peer-to-peer transactions have fueled the rise of the digital currency world, and bitcoin has been at the forefront throughout. The blockchain is a public ledger used to verify and record these transactions. The issue of security has been a fundamental one for bitcoin since its development. On one hand, bitcoin itself is very difficult to hack, and that is largely due to the blockchain technology which supports it. As blockchain is constantly being reviewed by bitcoin users, hacks are unlikely. On the other hand, though, the fact that bitcoin itself is difficult to hack does not mean that it's necessarily a safe investment. There does exist the potential for security risks at various stages of the trading process. Wallets and the Transaction Process Bitcoins are held in wallets and traded through digital currency exchanges like Coinbase. There are various security risks inherent in each of these two components. Developers are always improving wallet security, but there are also those looking to access other peoples' wallets illegally to swipe their tokens and coins. In the transaction process. two-factor identification is commonly used as a security measure. Of course, having the security of a transaction linked to an email address or a cell phone number means that anyone with access to those components can authenticate transactions. If a hacker is able to determine some of your non-cryptocurrency-related personal information, he or she may be able to infiltrate your transactions in that space regardless. There have been widely publicized frauds, scams, and hacks which have plagued individual investors and even major cryptocurrency exchanges in their short history. Part of the issue is simply that the technology and the space itself are new. While this makes cryptocurrencies like bitcoin incredibly exciting--and potentially very profitable--investments, it also means that there are those looking to capitalize on security holes before they are corrected. All bitcoin investors are advised to take proper precautions in order to best protect their holdings. Related Terms Bitcoin Definition Bitcoin is a digital or virtual currency that uses peer-to-peer technology to facilitate instant payments. Bitcoin is a digital currency created in January 2009. It follows the ideas set out in a white paper by the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto, whose true identity has yet to be verified. Cryptocurrency A cruptocurrency is a digital or virtual currency that uses cryptography. A cryptocurrency is difficult to counterfeit because of this security feature. Blockchain Explained A guide to help you understand what blockchain is and how it can be used by industries. You've probably encountered a definition like this: “blockchain is a distributed, decentralized, public ledger." But blockchain is easier to understand than it sounds. Coincheck Coincheck is a Tokyo-based cryptocurrency exchange and digital wallet founded in 2014. tZero TZero is a cryptocurrency and distributed ledger platform that was launched by Overstock. Bitcoin Maximalism Bitcoin maximalists favor bitcoin over other use cases and for the long term. Maximalists are unapologetically in favor of a bitcoin monopoly at some point in the future. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - https://www.bitfolio.org/cryptocurrency-hack-mt-gox Shubham Davey - 21 August 2018 https://www.coindesk.com/hackers-are-turning-binances-stolen-bitcoin-into-fiat John Biggs Jul 16, 2019 at 11:30 UTC A new analysis by Coinfirm shows the movement of the bitcoin stolen from Binance into various wallets. The hack, which netted 7,000 BTC, happened on May 7, 2019 at 17:15:24 UTC and the hackers have been moving stolen bitcoin from wallet to wallet. Now, however, Coinfirm has spotted some activity that suggests the hackers are moving their gains off of exchanges, potentially into other cryptocurrencies. [...] Bitpoint's president says it will repay victims in cryptocurrency David Canellis Published July 16, 2019 — 12:47 UTC Embattled cryptocurrency exchange Bitpoint has revealed that roughly half of its 110,000 users were affected by last week’s $3.02 billion yen ($28 million) hack, reports The Mainchi. Speaking at a Tokyo press conference, Bitpoint president Genki Oda noted that of the 3.02 billion yen stolen, customers owned 2.06 billion yen ($19 million), while 960 million yen ($8.9 million) consisted of the company’s own holdings. According to Oda, customer losses represented 13 percent of the total amount of cryptocurrency users had kept on Bitpoint. He also pledged to repay victims (in cryptocurrency) once standard trade resumes. The theft, which included sums of Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Ripple, was disclosed last Thursday. Originally reported to have totalled $32 million, those losses were later revised to a slightly smaller number of $28 million. To find success, hackers were said to have targeted Bitpoint’s “hot wallets,” a term for internet-connected cryptocurrency storage software. Oda then confirmed the discovery of an additional 250 million yen ($2.3 million) worth of stolen funds that were taken from overseas exchanges using Bitpoint software. This directly contradicts apparently incorrect media reports that indicated a fraction of the stolen funds had been recovered. An estimate for when Bitpoint will resume standard trade is yet to be determined, as official investigations are reportedly ongoing. Fellow Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Zaif was ransacked by hackers last September, who stole $60 million worth of cryptocurrency in a seemingly similar raid.
Then why do people want to change their bitcoins into dollars? This is America and the dollar is what we use. If it was replaced by these drug dealer scams of computer numbers that have no value it would hurt all Americans. Use gold if you want something decentralized. That is just the way I see it.
Usually true, yes. But your dollars held in a bank are not protected against debasement or inflation, which is a loss of purchasing power. This occurs when the government continues to run up a national debt or bails out financial institutions after they conduct immoral and or illegal activity which led to, as an example, the 2008 financial crisis for which no one was even charged with a financial crime. Funds held by banks are also not safe from seizure requests made by governments or other 3rd parties with court orders that may or may not be morally legitimate even if they are legally legitimate which they, again, may not be in every case. I'm sure that would fall under illegal activity in the mind of many but it nonetheless qualifies as risk. But if one trusts the government never to do that, then it is not a concern. But free market crypto protects against these potential losses in value. Obviously a demonizing statement. Cars, guns, baseball bats and knives are also used by crooks attempting to conduct illegal activities. Hacking is an admitted and understood potential problem for any holder of crypto. To be clear, this is not a problem for the crypto blockchain which is the place where crypto holdings are actually recorded. This is instead a problem with the keys to the blockchain which are not on the blockchain but held privately in "wallets" which is not really an accurate description of how crypto works. These keys must be kept secure and the hacking of crypto has always involved accessing these keys or otherwise causing these keys to be used by a hacker to transfer funds on the blockchain. In every case, therefore, hacking has been possible because of security failures related to the keys, which is the responsibility of individual parties that either hold the keys or produced 3rd party wallets, and not the responsibility of the blockchain or crypto as a whole. Yes there have been millions (in USD value) in Bitcoin hacked by hackers, however in the case of bitcoin, funds are traceable on the blockchain, such that all bitcoin stolen from one wallet can be seen in the new wallet to which it has been transferred. Though the identity of the person or party controlling that wallet cannot be directly known from the blockchain, any subsequent transfer of funds from that wallet to a new wallet can be monitored, and if any transfer is made to an exchange or other party that can be identified, no matter how small the amount, then the potential of tracing and identifying the original criminals is possible, even many years later. As one of the articles stated, crypto is new technology and being such, makes it vulnerable, though again, it's not the crypto itself that has demonstrated vulnerabilities but rather the 3rd party wallets and holders of crypto that have the security flaws. Crypto also is non-mature as a currency due to the time it takes to make a transaction. While it is certainly far faster and far less hassle and far cheaper than bank wires, compared to credit card transactions, it is far too slow for general usage such as in a grocery store check out line. Still, being a digital technology, crypto has the ability to improve in these areas with additional software upgrades. I understand Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin as a direct result of how the 2008 financial crisis was resolved (or to whatever extent it qualified as being resolved) by using taxpayer funds to forgive and make right massive problems that resulted from their gross and fraudulent mishandling of funds for the benefit of shareholders of major financial instiutions. There was no other remedy offered by government to that problem.. Not in the courts via prosecution, and not in law. Government is in bed with these institutions and objecting to crypto due to its independence neglects the interests of the American people and all holders of legal tender US dollars. Crypto is a protest response currency to neglectful and abusive government policies. Crypto is facilitated by technology which in our society and world is growing at an exponential pace, and it is on that basis something I see as inevitable. Ever changing technology has impacted society and business in significant ways in the past and it will continue to do so in the future. As I see it, regardless of how people feel about crypto, it cannot be stopped.
If everyone wanted to do that, the value of bitcoin would go to zero. Sometimes people do because they want to buy things, and the USD is how things are priced and what people & businesses generally accept in such transactions. Does not a national debt of $23 trillion hurt all Americans? Fiat money offers the potential for scam/abuse on the part of government. Free market cypto cannot be printed ad infinitum. Cypto holders are protected against that. But to be clear, bitcoin is not simply "computer numbers" as though such numbers can be created at will by anyone. There is a guaranteed limit to the number of bitcoins in existence by the nature of the math within the blockchain system. The same cannot be said for the current USD financial system in which the vast majority of dollars in existence do not even exist in printed form, but instead are, in fact, "computer numbers" that express value in digital form. If you look up the difference between M1, M2 and M3 money supply, that should be easy to see. According to the Federal reserve, there is only $1.70 trillion in cash and coin in circulation. www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12773.htm (compare that to the US debt alone of some $23 trillion). Real gold in possession is good, but even gold has been abused. Far more gold is transferred on financial exchanges than is actually held by institutions that claim to hold it. The manipulation of gold and silver prices by institutions such as JP Morgan is an open secret. But is not prosecuted due to the compromized relationship between these institutions and the SEC.
So in other words it is for drug dealers and criminals. It's a scam. It isn't anything but numbers on a computer. Utterly worthless. It is good for predators to take advantage of suckers though. That is the way I see it.
I know it is just nothing based on nothing.
Sounds just like the US Dollar, to me.
Except the dollar is accepted everywhere.
At what rate? You don't internationally travel very much, do you?
CRYPTO CURRENCY - THEFT AND LOSS That the crypto may have functioned perfectly is no consolation for those whose virtual fortune has disappeared. This sweeping claim is evidently not accurate. People who had invested with Quadriga CX found out the hard way with the sudden death of founder GerGerald Cotten. Cotten died and nobody else seemed to know how to access the virtual fortune. There was no hack, nor any irresponsible parties. The virtual fortune is still safe with Gerald Batten who is not talking. Five years later, customers are still left in limbo. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47203706 By Jessica Murphy When the 30-year-old founder of a Canadian cryptocurrency exchange died suddenly, he took the whereabouts of some C$180m ($135m; £105m) in cryptocurrency to his grave. Now, tens of thousands of Quadriga CX users are wondering if they will ever see their funds again. In 2014, one of the world's biggest online cryptocurrency exchanges - MtGox - unexpectedly shut down after losing 850,000 Bitcoins valued at the time at nearly $0.4bn (£0.3bn). Its meltdown shook investors in the volatile emerging marketplace - but the calamity at the Tokyo-based company proved a boon for a new Canadian online cryptocurrency exchange. "People like the fact we're located in Canada and know where their money is going," Quadriga CX founder Gerald Cotten said at the time. Some five years later, Cotten's sudden, untimely death has left thousands of his customers scrambling for information about their own missing funds. "We don't know whether or not we're going to get our money back," Tong Zou, who says he is owed C$560,000 - his life savings - told the BBC. "There's just a lot of uncertainty." This month, Quadriga - which had grown to become Canada's largest cryptocurrency exchange - was granted temporary bankruptcy protection in a Canadian court. The firm said it had spent the weeks since Cotten's death trying desperately to "locate and secure our very significant cryptocurrency reserves". [...] - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - While it is true that inflation or deflation causes a loss of purchasing power for money stored in a bank, or even stored in yourr wallet or under your mattress, it is also true that crypto is unregulated and subject to wild fluctuations if value, the likes I have never seen occcur with U.S. currency in my lifetime. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_cryptocurrency_crash The 2018 cryptocurrency crash (also known as the Bitcoin crash and the Great crypto crash was the sell-off of most cryptocurrencies from January 2018. After an unprecedented boom in 2017, the price of bitcoin fell by about 65 percent during the month from 6 January to 6 February 2018. Subsequently, nearly all other cryptocurrencies also peaked from December 2017 through January 2018, and then followed bitcoin. The cryptocurrencies' market capitalization lost at least 342 billion US dollars in the first quarter of 2018, the largest loss in cryptocurrencies up to that date. By September 2018, cryptocurrencies collapsed 80% from their peak in January 2018, making the 2018 cryptocurrency crash worse than the Dot-com bubble's 78% collapse. By 26 November, bitcoin also fell by over 80% from its peak, having lost almost one-third of its value in the previous week. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - I see nothing which would support this claim. A crypto currency has no intrinsic value and may devalue to zero. Paper currency could devalue to zero. If paper currency devalued to zero, there would be nobody to buy your virtual currency with real currency, and nobody would exchange anything of value for virtual currency. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - [Pinguinite #5] Obviously a demonizing statement. Cars, guns, baseball bats and knives are also used by crooks attempting to conduct illegal activities. Cars, guns, baseball bats and knives are readily distinguishable as they were not created with the intent of evading law enforcement action. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - I have made no objection to crypto due to its independence. It cannot be a legal currency because that is unlawful. It is unregulated, and there is little legal recourse in case of loss. As an investment it is UNSAFE due to unregulated value fluctuation, and theft or loss. It is not demonization to observe that crypto currency was created as a means to evade government regulation. https://www.investopedia.com/news/beware-9m-are-lost-each-day-crypto-scams/ By Shobhit Seth While you may be tempted to think that open-source, decentralized, anonymous cryptocurrencies are safe because they are free of control from a single authority and work in a transparent manner, the reality is, they are constant targets for scams, including digital theft, phishing, fraud, and hacking. (For more, see Beware of these Five Bitcoin Scams.) In a recent finding by Bitcoin.com News, $1.36 billion worth of cryptocurrencies have been stolen by fraudsters during the first two months of 2018. Fraud constituted the majority of virtual currency scams, at 30 percent. It was followed by hacking attempts (22 percent), theft and exit scams (17 percent each), and phishing (13 percent). The biggest recent heist occurred at cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck Inc in late January, where hackers made off with almost $500 million in virtual tokens. (See more: Coincheck May Have Suffered The Worst Hack In Cryptocurrency History.) Around the same time, Bitconnect, a cryptocurrency-lending scheme, shut down its operations and vanished, leading to an exit scam with an estimated loss of around $250 million. And in February, an Italian crypto exchange called BitGrail reported that it was hit with a hacking attempt that led to a loss of nearly $195 million worth of customers' virtual tokens. [...] https://www.pymnts.com/blockchain/bitcoin/2017/bitcoin-cryptocurrency-value-lost/ By PYMNTS Its expected that 21 million Bitcoins will have been mined by 2040, but the amount available to spend and trade will be a lot lower, according to recent reports from Fortune. In fact, between 2.78 million and 4 million Bitcoin have disappeared already, implying 17 to 23 percent are already gone, according to new research from digital forensics firm Chainalysis. Each Bitcoin is valued at approximately $8,500 as of Saturday, Nov. 25. Researchers have long made guesses as to how much of the cryptocurrency is gone, but Chainalysis’ findings rely on an empirical analysis of blockchain, the underpinnings of Bitcoin. The results reflect Bitcoins that have been lost completely — in the process of taking coins out of circulation, hoarding coins, buying and selling coins and strategic investments, among other factors — not those stolen by hackers or other bad actors. The research shows that going forward more Bitcoins will be lost, but the rate will slow compared to the past because the cryptocurrency is more valuable. The new research also raises the question of whether the missing coins are already priced into the value of Bitcoin. [...] https://www.wired.com/story/wired-lost-bitcoin/ Author: Louise Matsakis Back in 2013, when you could still mine bitcoins at home, WIRED was sent a small, sleek mining device manufactured by the now-defunct Butterfly Labs. We turned on the Roku-looking machine in our San Francisco offices and allowed it to do its job. A small fortune was soon amassed, now worth around $100,000. Then, we lost the money. Forever. Here's what happened to WIRED's 13 Bitcoins—and to the millions of others that have faced the same fate. [...] Throwing Away the Key To deal in bitcoin, you need at least two different keys, one public and one private (newer security protocols allow you to add more private keys). Together, the combination of codes lets you trade Bitcoin without an intermediary like a bank. You can look up WIRED's public key to send us money, and then in theory, we could use our private key to access those funds—had we not destroyed it. It's extremely unlikely we could successfully guess the code: it's 64 digits long and no one remembers what it was. No additional copies of the private key exist, at least according to the people who were there. "I didn't make a copy of the paper, or commit the 64 characters on it to memory," says Antonowicz, the technologist who set up the miner. The good news is that if someone did move the coins, the transaction would be public, allowing WIRED to see where they traveled to. In fact, you too can check out WIRED's lost Bitcoins right here. In theory, we might be able to recover the Bitcoin wallet from the hard drive where it was stored, but even that wouldn't be much help. "There might have been a way to forensically recover the wallet—with the encrypted key—from my hard drive, but I shredded that particular drive years ago," says Antonowicz. Plus, even if the wallet was resurrected, it's encrypted. Breaking that protection via brute force would take an unimaginable amount of time. There are three times more possible combinations than there are atoms in the observable universe, by Antonowicz's count. "Originally I was going to say that the closest metaphor I have is that we dropped a car key somewhere in the Atlantic, but I think it's closer for me to say we dropped the key somewhere between here and the Alpha Centauri," says Antonowicz. Recovering our bitcoins is essentially like trying to recover a photo album on a lost computer. Except not only did you get rid of the hard drive, you also protected the album in an encrypted folder with a 64-digit passcode that you threw away. Still, we wanted to make sure there was absolutely no way to get the bitcoins back. WIRED's editor-in-chief, Nicholas Thompson, suggested that if we were able to recover the funds, they might go toward hiring a full-time cryptocurrency reporter. I reached out to the founder of Butterfly Labs, who didn't respond. I also contacted Mark Frauenfelder, a writer and the author of a WIRED article about how he recovered $30,000 worth of Bitcoin. He agrees we're screwed. "If you lost your private keys I think it’s game over," he says. I also looked into a service that tries to crack cryptocurrency wallets via sheer brute force. But their services would be no help, since we don't have access to the hard drive itself. It looks like WIRED really did lose the money forever. The good news is we're far from alone. Lost and Never Found Chainalysis, a research firm that analyzes activity across different cryptocurrency markets, estimates that between 2.78 and 3.79 million, or between 17 and 23 percent of all bitcoins have been lost. That includes wallets believed to belong to Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious founder of Bitcoin who hasn't touched his estimated 1 million coins since 2011. “The number of lost coins over time will drop,” says Michael Gronager, the CEO and co-founder of Chainalysis. He argues that's because there’s more awareness of Bitcoin’s enduring value, even if the price wildly fluctuates. He also says that even if Satoshi were to reemerge, his activity wouldn't significantly impact the market because he wouldn't likely spend a large sum of Bitcoin at once. There are several ways you can lose Bitcoin. Like WIRED, you can simply lose track of your private key or your hard drive. One of the most famous cases of this is what happened to James Howells, an IT worker in London who lost 7,500 bitcoins, or around $56 million, when his laptop was thrown away in 2013. He reportedly wants to dig through five years of trash to unearth the computer. This is the most common way to lose Bitcoin; even Elon Musk tweeted that he forgot how to access a portion of a coin. You can also lose bitcoins by running buggy code or making software mistakes, though these instances are more rare. Last year, for example, someone forgot to collect their mining reward and burned 12.5 coins. In another similar incident, someone may have accidentally swapped a processing fee with the value of the transaction, resulting in nearly 300 coins lost. One time, someone even sent 2,600 coins to an incorrectly configured address, burning them into nonexistence. All of these examples come from BlockSci, a tool developed at Princeton University for analyzing the Bitcoin blockchain. It can be difficult to assess whether any given bitcoin is really lost for good. "It's actually pretty difficult to say for certain. A lot of what we do is look at the big picture," says Harry Kalodner a PhD at Princeton who helped develop BlockSci. He says part of the problem is that you can rarely determine whether someone is just holding onto their Bitcoin, or whether they've definitively lost access to it. Since Bitcoin isn't controlled by any single authority, there's no one who can simply close your account. So what could WIRED have done, were we to do the whole thing again? Since 2013, Bitcoin has added a number of new, more sophisticated features. For one, we could have locked our coins away until a certain date. "One Bitcoin feature that's been added is that it now supports time-locked coins, that makes them completely un-spendable until a set point in the future," says Kalodner. Like, say, May 2018, when the editor-in-chief could really use some money to hire another reporter. https://time.com/5625194/japan-cryptocurrency-remixpoint-hack/ By Associated Press July 12, 2019 (TOKYO) — A Japanese cryptocurrency exchange has reported a hack causing the loss of 3.5 billion yen, or $32 million, worth of virtual money. Tokyo-based Remixpoint, which runs the BITPoint exchange as well as travel, used car and energy businesses, apologized Friday, saying the losses were confirmed starting Thursday. The reason for the losses, which include bitcoins as well as Ethereum, Ripple and other kinds of cryptocurrencies, is under investigation. About two-thirds of the losses affected customers while the rest of the missing assets belonged to Remixpoint, the company said in a statement. All transactions have been halted. [...]
I don't care what your problem is. Get some pesos if you don't like it here.
Some forms of crypto can be created in any volume at will. Bitcoin cannot be, by design. Terminology is not established in the industry, but a crypto that can be created at will is only of use if it is centrally controlled and created. "Tether" is one such type. I call them "tokens". Tether Limited is a company that creates them and issues them at a cost of $1 per Tether coin. They are much like digital versions of coupons that you could find in magazines and newspapers. Any number can be printed. The value of Tether depends solely on the credibility, reliability and honesty of Tether Limited. If that company reneges on their redemption promise of $1 per Tether, holders of Tether are SOL. Bitcoin, and what I call "free market" crypto is not centrally controlled and therefore it's value does not hinge upon the existence or trust of any single entity or even country or set of countries. Any one part of the world could be devastated by meteors or nuke war, and free market crypto will not be destroyed. Anyone can seek to coin/mint/mine additional coins, but it is a race to solve each set of coins in sequence, so the creation of new coins is limited. This limits the supply of them, and limited supply imparts value. To win the race to mine more coins, computers much solve problems so complex that it comes at a usage cost to do so, not unlike how mining for gold comes with an investment cost. So no, it's not simply numbers. It is numeric solutions. Bitcoin also comes with utility value in serving as a medium of exchange between 2 parties anywhere on the internet. This provides a finance solution that in some cases is superior to that offered by traditional banking services. Namely, lower cost, no paperwork, no need to involve intermediary banks and no political sanctions that could interfere with the transfer (which can be disadvantageous or advantageous depending on the perspective, but is always advantageous to the immediate parties desiring to do the transfer).
As though no one has ever lost dollar holdings? It most certainly has via banks, both in distant times and in more recent times. But cash is constantly being stolen. The currency itself does not provide a guarantee vs loss due to a variety of methods. Even when banks are robbed, there is a loss. Perhaps not to the account holders directly but do you think the replacement funds are simply printed into existence without consequence? Wealth transfer *always* occurs either through debasement of the currency via more printing, in which case all USD holder pay the fee, or taxpayers picking up the bill. So it is not accuarate to say that always safe in USD form, even when on deposit. It most certainly is accurate. Your citation reflects a case of keys not being securely protected, just as I stated they must be. In this case, Cotten and/or the company with which he was associated, utterly failed to safeguard the private keys to this fortune. It was gross negligence on their part. They apparently entrusted them to a single man's memory which was one heartbeat away for oblivion. That key could have been safeguarded in any number of ways. Bitcoin, by design, can be secured with multiple keys such that of, say, 5 different keys any 3 or 4 would be needed to access the funds. This protects both against the loss of any single key as well as protects against any one party from absconding with the funds unilaterally. As for the members, who entrusted this company, that is most unfortunate for them of course, though ultimately, it was the account holders who chose to trust an incompetent company, so some of that responsibility resides with them, and not with the fundamental design of bitcoin. It most certainly has. Though it's not accuarte to simply conclude it has been "volatile" without also mentioning the tremendous growth in value it has seen over the years. The very first official bitcoin transaction was made for 2 pizzas. The cost: 10,000 bitcoin, which is about $100,000,000 at today's prices. Bitcoin has seen about 6 or 7 booms and busts but has not died. Each boom has well surpassed the prior boom, such that *even* if anyone had invested in bitcoin at the *worst* possible time of each boom with the exception being the most recent of $20k, he would still be sitting on a very healthy return today. And even today, with BTC price at about 50% of it's all time high, prospects are not altogether dire for it rising again above 20k. Of course, this valuation is in US dollars, which is not necessarily the best benchmark. This citation is not even accurate in terms of "unprecedented". It has gone up and down by amounts that would rock any standard commodity market to its core, but it's been far more up than down, even taking into consideration the half dozen or so busts that it's seen. 2018 was just the latest bust and its not even the biggest bitcoin has seen. My information is 93% drawdown is the record, and it has bounced back from that. I first accepted bitcoin for payment when it was about $450. I've certainly not done poorly with that particular transaction. The first part of your comment implies that a paper currency that devalues to zero would still constitute "real currency". It also implies that crypto currency could or would not be exchangable for goods and services directly. It seems your thinking implies that cyrpto as never able to qualify as a currency itself, that it MUST be first exchanged for some kind of paper currency. That is certainly not the idea with which most crypto currencies were designed. The second part of your comment that "nobody would exchange anything of value" for virtual currency in a world where no paper currency exists I see as fallacious. Currency exists not because people believe currency itself has value -- it doesn't (the paper form, at least). Currency exists as a tool for society to exchange goods and services. It's an invention that serves that purpose. And as long as society is in need of exchanging goods and services, something -- anything -- that can serve as a money will do. True, crypto has no intrinsic value but neither does the USD. But crypto does score fairly high when weighed against all properties a quality money must have such as being finely divisible, non-degrading/unlimited storage life, in limited supply, and easy to store. It was principly designed to evade abuse by the government itself as previously cited in regards to the 2008 finance crisis as well as the continuing problem of escalating national debt. If one believes the government is completely benevolent, then yes, they might see crypto as having little moral benefit. It is unregulated, but along with that unmanipulated. I agree loss is a danger, but there is no method of value storage that is completely risk free. For those who consider crypto to be only a temporary storage of value, it can be viewed as risky. As one who works in software development and is cognizant of the ever growing impact that technology has in society and given my general distrust of government which I consider well validated, I view crypto as a tool that is both unstoppable and a moralizing force to right some of societies wrongs. That is my personal assessment. No, not to evade regulation. It was to evade theft of value as previously mentioned. If one does not see anything morally wrong with the 2008 bailouts, one may indeed see the development of crypto as having only nefarious, immoral purposes. But bitcoin would not have any value if it was only used by the relatively small criminal elements in the world. It would only have value if the general population starts to adopt it. And the general population is that entity that the government is morally bound to serve. It was never intended that the government would rule the general public. Re: your links at this point, I'll only say that yes, hacking and criminal theft of crypto has occurred, as has happened with all forms of wealth. Your source of investopedia may well be biased, as I have found that traditional financial professionals are generally anti-crypto simply because it is contrary to everything about finance they have ever learned. Crypto is a new kid on the block, and none of us likes it when we our lifelong expertise is challenged. Yes some crypto has been lost. There is a hard drive in a land fill somewhere that was accidentally thrown away in the early bitcoin days when bitcoin was worth fractions of a penny. The rightful owner has offered a sizeable percentage to anyone who can think of a way to find it. But it's not really necessary as far as the economy goes. The smallest increment of bitcoin is worth about 1/100th of a penny. If bitcoin gose to $1 million per coin, the smallest increment would be worth 1 cent. That's small enough to serve monetary needs, and even if it weren't, software upgrades could divide it even further. So no, it's not a "problem" for bitcoin as a whole. FTR, most wallets -- all I am familiar with -- translate your private key to a series of 12 or 24 ordinary words that are much more easily memorized. With those words memorized or recorded somewhere, in the correct order, one can recreate their wallet and restore full access to funds. That provides a recovery method even if all of your electronics were destroyed in, say, a house fire.
Pinguine you are grasping at straws to try to make your point. Bitcoin which isn't a coin but a series of numbers in cyberspace has zero value. They will not replace your money like a bank would. You treat it like it is no big deal if your preferred money system of the world is hacked and there is zero recourse to get your money back. But you are hung up on this pet theory of yours.
Your money is always secure in a bank against theft up to 100 thousand per bank account. Bitscamcoin zero.
It is how they work though isn't it. Side note. Facebook should be seized and dismantled if they go through with this libra scam.
Even the mark of the beast huh. Ok. Take the mark under your skin in order to buy or sell. You would do that? Even thought the Bible warned you thousands of years ago?
Come on you are not that naive. The US, the European Union and China need to investigate who is behind the manipulation of bitcoin’s price. And since I happen to know Donald Trump and I also happen to know that the president reads my column regularly, that’s what I’m suggesting right now. No need to even make a phone call. As I’ve said before, bitcoin is nothing more than a confidence game. It’s worth nothing if people suddenly lose their confidence in this fake digital currency. It’s backed by nothing. It’s the definition of a con. That’s why people who are propping up bitcoin lose their minds whenever someone like me writes anything negative about it. That’s what happened on Tuesday. Thanks, folks, for all the e-mails and tweets. Keep them coming! I’ll keep them handy because I am sure that every one of these writers will be thrilled to defend bitcoin in front of investigators from the Securities & Exchange Commission, the Justice Department, the IRS, Homeland Security and any other agency that will eventually get in on the action. Just so you know, I didn’t start this latest skirmish with the bitcoin, uh, let’s call them “enthusiasts.” Mario Draghi, head of the European Central Bank started it when he said recently: “Cryptocurrencies or bitcoins, or anything like that, are not really currencies — they are assets. A euro is a euro — today, tomorrow, in a month — it’s always a euro. And the ECB is behind the euro. Who is behind the cryptocurrencies? So they are very, very risky assets.” Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has said pretty much the same thing. “There are investor and consumer protection issues as well” with bitcoins, Powell told the House Financial Services Committee a year ago. Powell also said cryptocurrencies are not real currencies because they have no intrinsic value. –– ADVERTISEMENT –– I’ve said the same thing when a bitcoin was selling for $20,000. And still was saying it when it plunged to $4,000. Its real worth: $0. https://nypost.com/2019/05/22/bitcoin-manipulation-madness-calls-for- massive-investigation/
So no, it's not a "problem" for bitcoin as a whole. Because you said so. Ok.
So no, it's not simply numbers. It is numeric solutions. Bitcoin also comes with utility value in serving as a medium of exchange between 2 parties anywhere on the internet. This provides a finance solution that in some cases is superior to that offered by traditional banking services. Namely, lower cost, no paperwork, no need to involve intermediary banks and no political sanctions that could interfere with the transfer (which can be disadvantageous or advantageous depending on the perspective, but is always advantageous to the immediate parties desiring to do the transfer). Strange. ra·tion·al·i·za·tion /ÌraSH(Y)n(Y)lYÈzSH(Y)n,ÌraSH(Y)n(Y)l+ÈzSH(Y)n/ noun 1. the action of attempting to explain or justify behavior or an attitude with logical reasons, even if these are not appropriate.
So in other words it is for drug dealers and criminals. Plenty of banks are used to launder drug money. Banks Launder Billions of Illegal Cartel Money Bank of America, Western Union, and JP Morgan, are among the institutions allegedly involved in the drug trade. Meanwhile, HSBC has admitted its laundering role, and evaded criminal prosecution by paying a fine of almost $2 billion. The lack of imprisonment of any bankers involved is indicative of the hypocritical nature of the drug war; an individual selling a few grams of drugs can face decades in prison, while a group of people that tacitly allow — and profit from — the trade of tons, escape incarceration.
Government is in the last resort the employment of armed men, of policemen, gendarmes, soldiers, prison guards, and hangmen. Back in 2008 (or 2009), they increased this to $250,000. They said they wanted to protect consumers during the banking crisis. However, what it did was eliminate the incentive for people to hold cash in their bank accounts from having a bunch of bank accounts, each with less than $100K in it. And who really benefited from this? The biggest banks who, instead of seeing people move their savings over $100K out of their bank to split it up among two more banks. So the big bank would get to keep a lot more of these most desirable customers. And Congress, as usual, supported the big banks (who had caused the financial crisis) at the cost of the smaller banks.
That may be true. But it is also true that peoples money is even more secure. If you account for inflation from when the 100 thousand dollar policy started. Is it about the same today in what a dollar is worth compared to the past? I don't know.
100000 in 1980 → $304741.30 in 2018 - Inflation Calculator
The goldbugs have an argument against fiat currency. They say that the government and big business have historically favored big investors and banks. And favored borrowers over savers. The goldbugs say the value of the money, whether backed by gold or not, can be measured simply in the cost of something a century ago as compared to the cost of the same quality of good today. They typically use the cost of a good men's suit, like a lawyer or businessman would choose. So they observe that a century ago, when the Federal Reserve was just really getting started and the dollar was still backed (imperfectly) by gold, a good men's suit cost $20. And today a comparable suit costs about $2,000. So they estimate that a dollar today is worth roughly 1% of what it was worth a century ago. So your arguments against crypo aren't as strong when you recognize the "petrodollar tax". Namely, that the U.S. government, Wall Street, the Federal Reserve and big institutional investors have a known bias toward devaluing the currency over time while still trying to make it the one indispensable currency globally. Because seeing the dollar as indispensable is part of its power, despite its defects as the chosen currency of dollar manipulators and their cronies. Bitcoin's value can similarly vary but a massively indebted government with its Wall Street cronies and investor class and borrowers et cetera will always be trying to force dollar values down, primarily to benefit the investor class. Since we have allowed federal debt to grow so large, it is virtually guaranteed that the federal government will favor dollar devaluation just so its own books can be (roughly) balanced. While continuing to run a trillion dollar deficit in 2020. The dollar starts to look more and more like a plot by the Federal Reserve to keep the petrodollar as the indispensable currency while using monetary policy (interest rates) to favor the big banks, Wall Street, the investor class, and smaller borrowers and even the small fry like mortgage holders, all to keep that system intact. Even foreign governments and investors are tied into this system and the inevitable "tax" on all dollar holders that the deliberate institutional devaluation of the petrodollar necessarily entails.
Tell you what. Invest with me and I can guarantee that in thirty years your dollars will be worth 30% of what you invest with me. Doesn't that sound like a really good investment plan for you? Just mail me a check already. You see, this is a way to use monetary policy to reduce government (and private) debt, all at the expense of the entire economy. However, since we force the entire oil industry to conduct its business in petrodollars (and no country has yet really escaped the petrodollar system), then this constant devaluation is actually a subsidy that props up the value of a dollar. Look back a few years, to the attempts to establish a different foreign currency like the euro or the Chinese yuan as an alternative to the petrodollar (because those foreigners were pissed at the constantly and deliberately devalued petrodollar at their expense and to the benefit of the American economy and, especially, the biggest American banks and investors and the federal government most of all with its huge ongoing debt crisis). We pulled out the stops and all that talk has amounted to nothing. Yet, some very serious players wanted to proceed. Like Saddam in Iraq looking to sell oil to the EU using a petro-euro or petro-franc. Fast forward some years and Saddam is now gone, a nice object lesson to regional dictators. And the oil contracts Saddam had got invalidated and the contracts for Iraqi oil had to mostly be renegotiated, using the petrodollar of course. And in the meantime, America's fracking explosion has now made the petrodollar more hard to escape than ever since America is now the world's leading producer of natural gas and of oil and of gasoline. Point out the defects of Bitcoin all you like. But don't pretend the dollar is perfect either. It has some serious defects as well.
Bitscamcoin zero. I believe one of the recent hacks was actually insured against loss. And yes, there is no reason why crypto could not be so insured in the same way cars, houses and jewelry is insured.
Crypto has no more in common with the Biblical "mark of the beast" than does dollars at this point. Your credit card is just numbers too, isn't it? Worse yet, it has your name attached to those numbers. At least bitcoin doesn't conflate the two.
If you want a currency that is actually backed by something, that's fine, but don't pretend the US dollar meets that requirement. You are pretty much left with the Swiss Frank, which is partially gold backed, and gold and silver itself. As I've conceded numerous times that crypto is not so backed, but neither is the dollar, I don't see the point of bantering that point further. The people who lose their minds are those who can't admit the fact that bitcoin is almost 10 years old and has not gone away in spite of comparisons to tulip bulb mania. And that tulip bulb mania only lasted about 3 years in times of antiquity. And here in the modern age, bitcoin has done almost 10. Congress has called for hearings about libra and has dragged FB execs to DC to discuss it. They insist it's important to talk about potential illicit use, money laundering, security, Know Your Customer and all those things before FB moves forward with it. It's because of DC's insatiable appitite for controlling money. But they didn't do that for bitcoin, and do you know why? There are no execs to drag to DC to question!. There is no central party that controls bitcoin, and that's a good thing. Yes there is good and bad, but government control is just as bad, or worse, than any other potential illicit use of bitcoin you could name. I believe there are many thing you don't trust the gov with stone. Why do you trust the monetary system with them? But of course professional, lifelong bankers will hate bitcoin. They are oriented to central control of the monetary system and bitcoin is decentralized. What's not to hate? If its real worth was truly zero, there would be no need to investigate.
Good point! The type of money is not the problem.
Sounds about right. So in about 40 years, the US dollar has lost 2/3rds of it's purchasing power.
So someone should take out an insurance policy in case their money disappears in cyberspace. That isn't comforting. I like it the way it is better. Pity to the poor person who couldn't afford to insure their money. Should the government mandate that you have insurance on your "money" you know to protect us? 16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: 17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Hey that verse up there in the Bible could maybe make crypto more secure. Number everyone with a microchip. Then their microchip could identify them and make sure it isn't stolen money or an illegitimate transaction. Uh Oh 9 And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, 10 The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb: 11 And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name. No thanks
That is the way it goes. People make more money today. So that is just the way it is. Bitcoin would't change any of that.
Me and you should team up and make a virtual currency. We'll call it the liberty.
Because it works. Everyone in the world wants dollars. It makes Americans richer because everyone wants our money. No one wants pesos. I know it should be backed by gold. Or I used to know or think that. That could be bad too. Not enough gold. Gold theft from Fort Knox possibility.
I agree crypto right now obviously isn't the mark of the beast. I disagree that they are equally unlike the mark of the beast. There will be problems with Crypto. People will want help with the government. They will eventually use mark of the beast to make it secure. That is where I see it going long term from my perspective. With crypto type stuff who is to say you wont be locked out of your money somehow in the future if you are not compliant with governments wishes. Who knows maybe the CIA made Bitcoin. Or some government.
I worked in a grocery store in the 80's. Milk was $1.89 for the red topped vitamin D milk. !0 cents less for the Blue top and another for the watered down 1 percent. Now I can get it for 99 cents or a buck 29. Computers are cheaper too. Why am I telling you. Well you'll have to figure that out I don't have time to develop my thoughts in a manual for you to read. Computers are cheaper too. And Dewalt power tools.
I'm glad the world prefers dollars. It makes us richer. It is to our advantage that we can print money and these other countries take it instead of our gold.
That's just it, and the bottom line with crypto is that it is *decentralized*. That means no other party can lock you out of your funds. Not even the CIA. If someone gets a court order to turn over bitcoin funds, and the person doesn't want to do it, they may be held in contempt and put in jail but ultimately, if that person doesn't want to turn over the funds, then the funds cannot be taken from them. Contrast that to funds in a bank account where the gov can go straight to the bank and take your funds. If you don't understand that then you really don't even come close to understanding crypto currency at all. It is one of the best selling points. It is a free-market currency where no central power has a monopoly on it's creation OR usage. New currency creation is controlled by supply and demand forces. The more demand there is, the more/faster that is created. If demand drops off, then creation drops off as well. In many respects, the US dollar could be a better match for the mark of the beast than crypto currency, as the gov CAN obstruct your usage of dollars. It wouldn't even matter, as I pointed out at the beginning of this thread because it is *open source* programming, meaning anyone can see the source code and inspect it for any kind of back door access. Now I say it absolutely was not created by the CIA but EVEN IF IT WAS, it wouldn't matter.
You realize you are talking like a banker, don't you?
They can require isps to make you log in or cut them off. There are lots of ways government can take control of it,
We have a trade defecit. If we gave all those countries our gold for those goods we wouldn't have any gold left here. So that would suck. There is only so much Gold.
While you, as a working joe American consumer, get a little more stability over the years from this scheme, it is fundamentally aimed at making you and countries overseas and all lenders poorer. Well, lenders other than the biggest banks who get their money virtually for free from the source, the Federal Reserve. The petrodollar is a net loss for American consumers but it is a big win for the federal government, good for multinations, good for the Fortune 500 and Wall Street (the greatest beneficiaries as well as a group which makes it a policy to structure their businesses in such a way that they never pay any federal taxes). Its greatest merit is that it is a loss leader for foreigners who hold dollars as well which makes them even bigger losers than average American consumers from the fraud of the fiat petrodollar and the machinations of the Fed. If you're going to heap some scorn on the cryptos, you need to reserve at least as much for the fiat dollar if you are to have any sort of coherent opinion on monetary policy and currency issues. C'mon, Stone. The Federal Reserve policy is good for Wall Street, good for Goldman-Sachs, good for the biggest borrowers. And your last name isn't Rockefeller or Gates or Bezos or Soros or Koch or Zuckerman.
But that is not an argument against cryptocurrencies. You're merely supporting Nixon taking us off the gold standard as our gold reserves waned due to America being such an industrial powerhouse after WW II when Europe's and Asia's strongest industrial economies had been destroyed. It's an empty argument anyway. They could have simply increased valuation of gold in the fiat exchange rate. So we could still have a gold-backed dollar today, no problem. But an ounce of gold would be worth $50,000 instead of a bit over $1,000. Going off the gold standard was not the only solution available in 1973. Nixon also instituted wage and price controls, another very stupid move and also something he didn't have to do to deal with the economy. And none of that has anything to do with cryptocurrency's value as a currency. Maybe currency is too important to leave it in the hands of political scalawags in the District of Criminals.
No they can't. WiFi is practically free, if not from home than from elsewhere. And as far as the gov is concerned, shutting down the internet would shut them down too. The gov is as addicted to the net as any family is, and actually moreso. Not with crypto there isn't. Even if the US gov could shut down all mining operations in the USA, crypto would still keep ticking in other countries. Crypto is borderless.
If we did that, then the ever increasing shortage of gold would make gold more valuable at home, and the imports would decrease on that basis and the trade deficit would end. You are now advocating the position that the American people should exploit the working class in other countries, sending them printable dollars in exchange for real goods and services. In my view, that is international counterfeiting, no different from a domestic non-government counterfeiter that prints paper money illicitly representing real value. You are also advocating a permanent trade deficit which is ultimately unsustainable. That's not a boat I'm getting on.
As though no one has ever lost dollar holdings? Can you identify where all customers of a bank lost all their deposited assets because the bank could not access them??? That happened in the Quadriga case where Quadriga CX founder Gerald Cotten died suddenly. The assets of the entire exchange were rendered inaccessible. I never made any such claim. To the contrary, I explicitly stated at #12, to which you purport to reply, that "it is true that inflation or deflation causes a loss of purchasing power for money stored in a bank, or even stored in your wallet or under your mattress," and that "paper currency could devalue to zero." In the United States, in over two centuries, the count Your straw man argument is a fail. [nolu chan #12] This sweeping claim is evidently not accurate. It most certainly is accurate. Your citation reflects a case of keys not being securely protected, just as I stated they must be. It is most certain that after five years, the customers still cannot access their assets, and that hacking or a security failure had nothing to do with it. The founder of the exchange died. The keys were so securely held that nobody has ever discovered a copy. Perhaps they were held in the most secure location, Gerald Cotten's brain. However the keys were secured, they remain secured, as do the assets. The numbers are still there, but they have been rendered useless and without value. The individual investors' only mistake was putting their assets in that exchange. It is small consolation that the block chain and crypto continue to work, and the exchange remains locked out. You mean it is the customers' responsibility to understand block chain technology and asynchronous cryptography? It is accurate to call crypto volatile. The term indicates large swings back and forth. That is what crypto has done. Of course, US dollars is the only legal currency in the United States. Things may be valued in crypto, but nobody has to accept it, and it cannot be marketed as currency or the marketer can be prosecuted and sent to prison. No, not to evade regulation. It was to evade theft of value as previously mentioned. Righhht. The drugs dealers were concerned with inflation of the dollar, not with prosecution for income tax evasion and civil asset forfeiture of their ill gotten loot. They are really good guys with noble souls when you get to know them. Of course, that was it. /s If the owner or director of the exchange suddenly dies, and he takes his memorized key with him, the exchange cannot access the data. The customers have a learning experience.
I have no idea why you believe worthless paper, devalued to zero, would continue to function as currency. Crypto, Liberty Dollars, and any other invention which attempts to compete with the official currency is unlawful. If one attempts to pass off something as currency, which is not currency, one follows the footsteps of Bernard von Nothaus and goes to jail. If crypto was created with the purpose of qualifying as a currency itself, in the United States it would be unlawful. It MUST be converted into official currency in order for anyone to be required to accept it. Like Monopoly money, you could exchange it for goods and services, provided somebody will accept it. Any official currency is determined by the power of Congress, pursuant to Article I, Section 8 of the U.S Constitution (see Norman v. B & O R. Co., 294 U.S. 240, 302-04 (1935)), quoted in relevant part below. Make and declare your own counterfeit currency and you may go to jail. Currencies competing with the official currency are illegal. https://www.leagle.com/decision/infdco20141112b90 See United States v. von Nothaus, NCWD (Statesville) 5:09-cr-00027-RLV, (10 Nov 2014), MEMORANDUM AND ORDER On May 19, 2009, a federal grand jury sitting in the Western District of North Carolina returned a Bill of Indictment against Defendant and three co-defendants. (Doc. 3). This Order pertains only to Defendant von Nothaus. Defendant was charged with violating 18 U.S.C. § 371, conspiracy to violate 18 U.S.C. §§ 485 and 486, and substantive violations of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1341, 485, 486, and 2. On November 17, 2010, the grand jury returned a Superseding Bill of Indictment against the same group of defendants.2 (Doc. 103). This Superseding Indictment charged Defendant with violating 18 U.S.C. § 371, conspiracy to violate 18 U.S.C. §§ 485 and 486, and substantive violations of 18 U.S.C. §§ 485, 486, and 2, eliminating the charge under 18 U.S.C. § 1341. Defendant's jury trial began in Statesville, North Carolina, on March 8, 2011. The Government rested its case after two days of evidence. The Court denied Defendant's motion to dismiss pursuant to Fed. R. Crim. P. 29. Defendant presented evidence for approximately four days, and rested on March 17, 2011. The Government offered testimony from one rebuttal witness. The jury began deliberations on March 18, 2011. After approximately two hours of deliberation, the jury found Defendant guilty on all counts in the Superseding Bill of Indictment. Following announcement of the jury verdict, the Court likewise denied Defendant's renewed Rule 29 Motion. Defendant now moves for post-conviction relief pursuant to Rules 29, 33, and 34 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. [...] The Superseding Bill of Indictment ("Indictment") alleged that between January 1998 and May 19, 2010, Defendant Bernard von Nothaus designed, created and minted coins called "Liberty Dollars," coins "in resemblance or in similitude" [or made to look like] of U.S. coins. The Indictment alleged that the Liberty Dollar coins were to be introduced into the U.S. economy and meant to compete with U.S. currency in violation of federal law. According to the Government, the Defendant sought to have his Liberty Dollar coins accepted by merchants (and distributed by merchants) in the place of U.S. currency in order to make a profit for the Defendant and those associated with his Liberty Dollar Organization. [...] The Government produced evidence during its case-in-chief that Liberty Dollar training materials [dated as early as 2006 and as late as 2007] expressly state that associates are not to "attempt to educate people about money when using Liberty Dollars." (3/8/11 Tr. 121-22). Special FBI Agent Andrew F. Romagnuolo ("Romagnuolo") explained that the FBI's concern was not the merchants voluntarily accepting the Liberty Dollar coin, but rather the folks receiving Liberty Dollar coins without being educated about the coin and its actual value: (3/8/11 Tr. 34; 60, 75-76). Although Defendant admits to most of the facts alleged, namely, that he designed, minted, marketed, sold, and used the Liberty Dollar coins in commerce, Defendant disputes that his purpose or intent was unlawful. The Defendant maintains that his purpose and intent was, and always has been, to promote use of a "local currency" or "private barter currency" and to repeal the Federal Reserve Act as opposed to attempting to compete with U.S. currency. The jury verdict reflects that the fact finders accepted the Government's evidence and theory. [...] 2. Constitutional Authority For Enactment Of 18 U.S.C. § 486 In Article I, Section 8, the United States Constitution specifies that Congress, within its enumerated powers, has the power to "coin money," "regulate [its] value," and to "provide for the punishment of counterfeiting." U.S. Const. Article I, Section 8.19 Congress also has the power to pass any laws "necessary and proper" to achieve those ends that are specifically enumerated. See U.S. Const. Article I, Section 8, cl. 18.20 (3/9/11 Tr. 130-31). Whether characterized as an enumerated power or as "necessary and proper" to any of the enumerated powers within Clauses 5 and 6, it is undisputed that Congress has the ability to enact comprehensive laws concerning the coinage of money, the value of money, and counterfeiting. See Norman v. B & O R. Co., 294 U.S. 240, 302-04(1935) (emphasizing "the broad and comprehensive national authority over the subjects of revenue, finance, and currency"); see also United States v. Yeatts, 639 F.2d 1186, 1190 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 452 U.S. 964 (1981) (citing U.S. Const. Art. I § 8, cl. 6 and cl. 18, rejecting constitutional challenge to conviction under 18 U.S.C. § 485 for counterfeiting of gold coins no longer in circulation as current coins; finding "Congress had a rational basis for protecting the integrity of non-current gold United States coins."). The Constitution does not expressly state within Article I, Section 8, clause 5 that the Congressional power to coin money is "exclusive." See U.S. Const. Art. I § 8, cl. 5. Nonetheless, the exclusive power of Congress and the federal government can be reasonably inferred from the fact that in Section 10 of Article 1, the Constitution expressly prohibits States from coining money. See U.S. Const. Art. 1 § 10, cl. 1. The Government's legal position that Congress has the constitutional power to enact laws to regulate matters of commerce, finance, and money finds significant support in our jurisprudence. (Doc. 201, 7-8, 12)(citing Norman v. B & O R. Co., 294 U.S. 240 (1935); and United States v. Marigold, 50 U.S. 560 (1850)). United States v. Marigold stands for the proposition that the United States, through Congress, is tasked with regulating commerce via the power to coin money found within Article I, Section 8, clause 5 of the Constitution.22 The Supreme Court described this power in terms of "the execution of an important trust invested by the Constitution. . . ." Marigold, 50 U.S. at 567. In Marigold, the Supreme Court explained in dictum: Marigold, 50 U.S. at 567. Therefore, in the mid-1800's, Marigold anticipated that without the power to maintain uniformity and the value of a national money, different views of policy stemming from different communities might threaten to undermine a "constitutional currency." Id. at 567-68. Indeed, to hold otherwise would deny Congress the power to protect the value of federally issued currency, a currency backed by the United States. Some years later, the Supreme Court weighed in again concerning the constitutional authority granted to Congress in this area. Norman v. B & O R. Co., 294 U.S. 240, 302-04 (1935). In relation to currency, and express congressional powers, the Supreme Court stated in Norman that "the source of [Congressional] authority was in all the related powers conferred upon the Congress and appropriate to achieve `the great objects for which the government was framed' —'a national government, with sovereign powers.'" Norman, 294 U.S. at 302-04 (quoting McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. 316, 4 Wheat. 316, 404-407 (1819); citing Knox v. Lee (Legal Tender Cases), 12 Wall. 457, 545 (1870)) (other internal citations omitted). Norman provides insight as to what types of laws could be "necessary and proper" to Article I, Section 8: Norman, 294 U.S. at 303-04 (internal citations and quotation marks omitted). Both Norman and Marigold place a premium on the ability of Congress to promote a uniform "constitutional currency." The undersigned turns now to cases applying 18 U.S.C. § 486. [...] The Government cites Gellman for the proposition that individuals are likewise prohibited from competing with the United States currency while Defendant and Amicus question application to the individual as opposed to another sovereign. Whether the rationale set forth in Gellman is adopted or not, the Court finds that under the construction of Section 486 applied here, contemplating that if a coin is intended for use as current money then there is necessarily a deceptive quality about its design, Defendant's conviction on Count Three must be upheld. For the reasons set forth herein, the undersigned is of the opinion, and this Court so finds as a matter of law, that Congress indeed possesses the power to criminalize an individual's minting of coinage, whether in resemblance of U.S. coins or of original design, that is intended for use as current money.
You do know your modern goldbugs. : ) Very few people now even know who he was after his legal troubles a decade back.
Am I allowed to go back to 1929, or more recently in other countries? I myself suffered an inability to access my funds for a period of time due to a bank failure in the state of Maryland circa 1984. I was refunded by the state insurance on the bank I recall FSLIC, but my funds were indeed mishandled and lost. We obviously disagree on the definition of "security failure". I define it as, in this context, a failure to preserve the private key to the crypto funds. They lost the key. That was a security failure and I'm completely comfortable classifying it as such. Perhaps you define "security" as when something is completely immune from access by unauthorized parties. If so, then yes, this company's losing of the private key was an overwhelming security "success". I don't define it that way, as losing access for any reason, whether because it was absconded by an unauthorized party or permanently buried in a desert the size of the solar system is just as bad. In fact it's worse as there's no prospect of recovery as there is with theft. I find your characterization of losing private keys as something other than a security failure to be disingenuous. Regardless, it is semantics. The company is what failed. I presume we could agree on that. Perhaps we could liken that to the responsibility of criminal defendants to understand the law and court procedures when they appear before a judge and offered a plea deal? Crypto holders certainly should understand the basics of crypto and how to secure their crypto holdings, and they should similarly understand that companies they transfer control of their crypto to are similarly being trusted to know what they are doing. It's done far more "forth" than "back". Far, far more. More accurately, US dollars are the only "legal tender" currency" in the US, meaning that people are obligated by law to accept it as payment for goods and services. Your statement should not be inferred to mean that other forms of currency are forbidden as I do not believe that is the case. Only that other forms of currency do not carry penalties for failure to accept it. That the US dollar requires a law obligating people to accept it is a statement unto itself as, if the dollar does have real value, then why is there a law required obligating people to accept it as payment? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe it cannot be marketed as "dollars". Marketing it as "currency" is a bit more obtuse and it would surprise me if that term is in the law. But this is an area I concede you should have better access to than me. I reject the presumption that those in government do not possess fraudulent and criminal motives. The FBI activities with Trump illustrate that well. Hillary Clinton. James Clapper lied to congress about the gov's survailance of the American citizenry. That these individuals violated the law does not incriminate the gov at a whole. That they went unprosecuted does. Civil asset forfeiture is a violation of the 4th, plain and simple. Such is the nature of people and power. We always want more and the erosion of the Bill of Rights is an obvious example of that. They should have a suing experience for the gross negligence of the company.
I agree. It is negligent to deal in bitcoins.
Quadriga CX founder Gerald Cotten died suddenly and, five years later, all the customers remain locked out of their collection of bits and bytes. Also, crypto does have inherent security weaknesses. A Lloyd's report in 2015 [Emerging Risk Report 2015, Innovation Series, Technology, BITCOIN, Risk factors for insurance] cited insider attacks, the 51% attack, and Sybil attacks, among others. Lloyd's also cited regulatory risks, specifically citing the Reserve Bank of India public warning to citizens of December 24, 2013, provided below. https://www.rbi.org.in/Scripts/BS_PressReleaseDisplay.aspx?prid=30247 RBI cautions users of Virtual Currencies against Risks The Reserve Bank of India has today cautioned the users, holders and traders of Virtual currencies (VCs), including Bitcoins, about the potential financial, operational, legal, customer protection and security related risks that they are exposing themselves to. The Reserve Bank has mentioned that it has been looking at the developments relating to certain electronic records claimed to be “Decentralised Digital Currency” or “Virtual Currency” (VCs), such as, Bitcoins, litecoins, bbqcoins, dogecoins etc., their usage or trading in the country and the various media reports in this regard. The creation, trading or usage of VCs including Bitcoins, as a medium for payment are not authorised by any central bank or monetary authority. No regulatory approvals, registration or authorisation is stated to have been obtained by the entities concerned for carrying on such activities. As such, they may pose several risks to their users, including the following: The Reserve Bank has also stated that it is presently examining the issues associated with the usage, holding and trading of VCs under the extant legal and regulatory framework of the country, including Foreign Exchange and Payment Systems laws and regulations. Ajit Prasad Press Release : 2013-2014/1261 Compared to sitting in jail until I give up the money, or having them go the bank and take the money, I would prefer to sit eternally in a jail cell, just to show them that they can't make me do something I don't want to do. /s As a reasonable alternative, they can seize any of your property of value and auction it off to the highest bidder as partial payment.
Am I allowed to go back to 1929, or more recently in other countries? You may go back to any point in history as long as you remain on topic. The question pertains to "all customers of a bank lost all their deposited assets because the bank could not access them???" Bankruptcy, where the assets are gone, does not apply. The assets have not been taken, but cannot be accessed, as in the case of Quadriga CX. Perhaps we could liken that to the responsibility of criminal defendants to understand the law and court procedures when they appear before a judge and offered a plea deal? In a plea deal you are given an attorney who explains it to you, the Court explains the deal to you, and you must state to the Court that you understand the deal and its consequences, and that you enter into it freely and voluntarily. Bitcoin does not provide a mathematician or geek who explains an Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA), a hash function, or a one way function, or a 51% attack or a Sybil attack. As it is unregulated, the user assumes the risk. More accurately, US dollars are the only "legal tender" currency" in the US, meaning that people are obligated by law to accept it as payment for goods and services. I provided the U.S. Supreme Court on the matter: The SCOTUS usage is correct. The distinction is noticable in some other countries where some offcial currency is not legal tender, e.g., not all Bank of England pound notes are legal tender in Scotland. Commerce. Bernard von Nothaus had a learning experience when the Court stated, The Court also stated, A four dollar coin (or bill) intended for use as current money provides the requisite criminal intent. And the Court also stated, If there is intent to compete with official U.S. currency, it ain't a private barter system. I reject the notion that I said any such thing. Strawman argument fail. Under the First Amendment, you are entitled to make and repeat absurd statements of law. Your pronouncement that civil asset forfeiture is unconstitutional lacks any basis in law. SCOTUS has ruled 9-0 that the civil asset forfeit laws may not impose excessive fines, but civil asset forfeiture was left in place and constitutional.
Yep, that's Sybil. I reckon the NSA has the computing power to pull that off if it chose to do so. A way to frustrate Bitcoin miners is to just raise the cost of their electric.
So states can't make money but facebook or some drug dealer can?
They can spend the dollars here all they want. So it is a silly notion to say it is counterfeiting. Unless you say the money we have now is counterfeit. Which I have said in the past. I am not advocating a trade deficit. I'm just telling you how it is working right now and it isn't hurting me. I would rather we get the better deal than another country get the better deal.
Please, Nolu. Have you lost your reading comprehension ability? Nothaus lost his case because his Liberty dollars were intended to be the equivalent value of dollars. The liberty dollar silver rounds even stated a value in dollars (even though the intrinsic value was worth significantly more than that, though the paper versions were not). That is why he was charged and convicted. Bitcoin is not illegal in the US. I'm suer it could be used in an illegal way but the same is true for cars, guns baseball, bats and knives. And hair dryers. And kitchen sinks. And US dollars.
You present nothing new here. Crypto is new and it has more maturing to do, and which was especially true 4-6 years ago which is when these reports are dated, one of which is from the Central bank of India which would clearly be a biased anti-crypto source. Fraud has existed in regards to dollars and credit cards, but you make it sound like only crypto is vulnerable in this way. Crypto fraud does hurt the value of crypto, and if the amount of fraud and loss due to any means was sufficient, it would kill the value of crypto completely. But that hasn't happened. My obvious point is that crypto cannot be taken from someone via the dictates of the government. Dollars held in a bank obviously can be. Which easily demonstrates that crypto is MORE secure than even physical possessions, doesn't it?
Sigh..... And here I thought we were talking about the merits and safety of dollars vs crypto. So.... People who deposited dollars in a bank account but lost their money in a particular way don't count as having lost their dollars due to a failure of the custodian of dollars themselves. Crypto is worse, you say, because the custodian of the crypto lost the crypto in a different way. So, crypto is much worse than dollars. Okay, got it. Freely and voluntarily? Are you shitting me? There is no "freely and voluntarily" when you are dragged against your will into a courtroom and given a choice of which hell you want to go through. That is an absolute LOAD OF CRAP nolu! Yes they must say they understand and are making the statement freely. And it's a load of SHIT every time because the key word is "must". They have NO CHOICE. And yet somehow, because there's this friendly attorney sitting them telling them their choices, that somehow makes it okay when people who did not commit the crime they were accused of committing end up taking a guilty plea deal that provides a permanent felony conviction and ruins their employment prospects for life. The legal system is no doubt where your profession lies and you stand by it and defend it like it's your only child. You've defended the legal system saying it works as designed or words to that effect. Okay fine, but then you come on and bash crypto likes it's the worst thing that's ever been created because people have gotten hurt with it. Hypocrisy, nolu. Go fix your legal system so innocent people stop getting felony convictions and even executed and then come on back and tell us about how bad crypto is. And one more point on this: No one is forced to participate in crypto. Anyone buying, trading, exchanging or sitting on crypto does so as a matter of free choice. Getting charged with a crime is NOT any such free willed activity. When a woman rides her bike down the road and is stopped by a crooked cop who claims he found drugs in her purse, she doesn't have the choice to participate or not in the legal system. She is arrested and dragged before a court and has her whole life, both present and future, at state. It is NOT a matter of free will. So don't you dare try to demonize crypto as victimizing people who had a choice and then stand proudly by a legal system that has caused injury to innocent people, even sending them to their deaths for murders for which they were later exonerated. And you know full well that has happened. Then the USSC has outlived its usefulness. But it is apparent from the facts that the conviction of Nothaus related to Liberty dollars was because his coins and redeemable bills stated a value in dollars. Many similar silver rounds have been produced over the years as any visit to any bullion dealer can prove, but the only the Liberty dollars attracted legal trouble. I guess that makes the Liberty Dollar coins I still have collectors items!
Neither facebook nor drug dealers can make money or currency. Facebook can make block chains of data and some people can make believe it is money or currency.
I have no idea why you believe worthless paper, devalued to zero, would continue to function as currency. Please, Nolu. Have you lost your reading comprehension ability? No. I have never had the ability to comprehend how someone could believe that paper currency that devalues to zero would still constitute "real currency." Have you lost your reading comprehension ability? The intrinsic value of the coins was LESS than the face value. That's how the scammer made a profit on EVERY transaction pushing his contraband. von Nothaus was convicted of conspiracy and counterfeiting. The coins, as well as the dies, were seized as contraband. He was entering them in commerce. [...] The Superseding Bill of Indictment ("Indictment") alleged that between January 1998 and May 19, 2010, Defendant Bernard von Nothaus designed, created and minted coins called "Liberty Dollars," coins "in resemblance or in similitude" [or made to look like] of U.S. coins. The Indictment alleged that the Liberty Dollar coins were to be introduced into the U.S. economy and meant to compete with U.S. currency in violation of federal law. According to the Government, the Defendant sought to have his Liberty Dollar coins accepted by merchants (and distributed by merchants) in the place of U.S. currency in order to make a profit for the Defendant and those associated with his Liberty Dollar Organization. [...] Special FBI Agent Karen Walsh ("Walsh"), acting undercover as "Kristen Wallace," posed as a Liberty Dollar Associate in 2005 - 2006 while living in Asheville, North Carolina. (3/8/11 Tr. 23). Walsh attended her first Liberty Dollar University event ("LDU 7") held in Asheville, North Carolina, October 19 through October 22, 2005. During the October 2005 LDU 7, Defendant's "New RCO Strategy" was featured. (Government Exh. 21). The new strategy represented a shift from the organization's initial focus on having the consumer offer the Liberty Dollar to merchants to having the merchant either offer the Liberty Dollar to the consumer when making change or mixing the Liberty Dollar in with U.S. currency). (3/8/11 Tr. 117-18). Agent Walsh attended a second Liberty Dollar University seminar ("LDU 11") held in Skokie, Illinois, in October 2006 where she had occasion to speak directly with, and even train with Defendant in a small group setting. (3/9/11 Tr. 165-66, 171-73). (Government Exh. 14, 15). According to the Government, Defendant von Nothaus and his fellow Liberty Dollar Organization members made money on each transaction. (3/8/11 Tr. 54, 106-11; 3/9/11 Tr. 245). Walsh testified that when distribution of a given value of Liberty Dollar coin was no longer profitable for the organization, Defendant collected the existing coins (always the same 1 troy ounce silver coins) and had them reminted at a higher face value. (3/8/11 Tr. 110-11; 3/9/11 Tr. 205). This procedure was called the "move-up." "The Liberty Dollar structure was based on the moving average of the spot price of silver. So when the 30-day moving average of the spot price of silver was a certain level . . . if that spot price was less than $8, then . . . the Liberty Dollar was minted with $10 on the front of it. But once that average went over $8, it was minted with $20 on the front of it." (3/9/11 Tr. 151). The Defendant was responsible for determining the price point or when to remint and move-up to a greater face value. (3/9/11 Tr. 155-56). Agent Walsh testified about the events leading up to the move from a $10 silver base Liberty Dollar to a $20 silver base in November 2005. (Government Exhs. 30-32). In 2006, the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice contacted Daniel Shaver, Chief Counsel for the U.S. Mint, for his input concerning the lawfulness of the Liberty Dollar Organization's activities. (3/9/11 Tr. 261). On September 14, 2006, the U.S. Mint posted an advisory to consumers regarding the Liberty Dollar medallions on its website entitled "Consumer Awareness - Hot Items" with the caption or headline, "Liberty Dollars Not Legal Tender, United States Mint Warns Consumers, Prosecutors with Justice Department Determine Use of Liberty Dollar Medallions as Circulating Money is a Crime''9 (Doc. 114-21 / Defendant's Motion To Dismiss) (italics in original). The consumer advisory received national attention in the press and was also sent to each of the Liberty Dollar Organization Regional Currency Officers and the Defendant via certified mail to make clear that the U.S. Department of Justice viewed the activities of the Liberty Dollar Organization as unlawful. (Government Exhs. 47, 48; 3/9/11 Tr. 252-61, 263-64). The Liberty Dollar Organization continued to operate notwithstanding the consumer advisory. The United States Mint urges consumers considering the purchase or use of "Liberty Dollar" medallions, marketed by the National Organization for the Repeal of the Federal Reserve Act and the Internal Revenue Code (NORFED), to be aware that they are not genuine United States Mint bullion coins, and not legal tender. These medallions are privately produced products that are neither backed by, nor affiliated with, the United States Government. Prosecutors with the Department of Justice have determined that the use of these gold and silver NORFED "Liberty Dollar" medallions as circulating money is a Federal crime. (3/8/11 Tr. 34-35; 3/9/11 Tr. 261-63). The advisory stated that according to NORFED, "more than $20 million dollars worth of Liberty Dollar coins and notes are in circulation." Id. The advisory warned that advertisements for the Liberty Dollar might be confusing, that advertisements refer to the product as "real money" and "currency," and then described certain similarities in the appearance of the Liberty Dollar and genuine U.S. currency. Id. In March 2007, a second undercover FBI Agent, Julia Mueller ("Mueller"), posed as an Asheville business owner named "Julie Mills" to team up with Agent Walsh. (3/8/11 Tr. 38-40; 3/9/11 Tr. 183, 299). Agent Walsh scheduled a meeting with William Kevin Innes ("Innes"), the Regional Currency Officer (and former co-defendant) in Asheville, to provide Innes an opportunity to sell Mueller on the Liberty Dollar Organization. (3/8/11 Tr. 38; 3/9/11 Tr. 183-84). On or around March 28, 2007, the two undercover agents met with Innes. (3/9/11 Tr. 184, 300, 302). This meeting was recorded by Agents Walsh and Mueller. (Government Exh. 16). At trial, the Government's theory of the case was "making money making change." Agent Walsh testified that as a Liberty Dollar Associate, she was trained via the Liberty Dollar Organization to pitch the Liberty Dollar coins to merchants as a means for "making money by making change" for consumers with the Liberty Dollar as opposed to ordinary U.S. currency or legal tender. (Government Exhs. 19-25). The Welcome Packet included a book entitled, The Liberty Dollar Solution; Chapter 58 was titled, "Making Money - Making Change." (3/9/11 Tr. 242-44; Government Exh. 25A). The Government produced evidence during its case-in-chief that Liberty Dollar training materials [dated as early as 2006 and as late as 2007] expressly state that associates are not to "attempt to educate people about money when using Liberty Dollars." (3/8/11 Tr. 121-22). Special FBI Agent Andrew F. Romagnuolo ("Romagnuolo") explained that the FBI's concern was not the merchants voluntarily accepting the Liberty Dollar coin, but rather the folks receiving Liberty Dollar coins without being educated about the coin and its actual value: (3/8/11 Tr. 34; 60, 75-76). Although Defendant admits to most of the facts alleged, namely, that he designed, minted, marketed, sold, and used the Liberty Dollar coins in commerce, Defendant disputes that his purpose or intent was unlawful. The Defendant maintains that his purpose and intent was, and always has been, to promote use of a "local currency" or "private barter currency" and to repeal the Federal Reserve Act as opposed to attempting to compete with U.S. currency. Special FBI Agent Andrew F. Romagnuolo explained that a "local currency" or "private barter currency" is "something where a trade occurs" and "could be as simple a barter as trading a chicken for chopping a cord of wood." (3/8/11 Tr. 67-68). Agent Romagnuolo was familiar with a local currency used in Ithaca, New York, called the "Ithaca Hours." (3/8/11 Tr. 68). The "Ithaca Hours" community issued certificates with a designated hour and worth that could be used for trading. Id. According to Agent Romagnuolo, the only legal requirement for the Ithaca Hours was that individuals report whatever is gained to the Internal Revenue Service. Id. The jury verdict reflects that the fact finders accepted the Government's evidence and theory. The Verdict Form was largely a general verdict. (Doc. 191). For Counts One (§ 371 conspiracy) and Three (§ 486), the jury was simply asked to select either "Guilty" or "Not Guilty." For Count Two (§ 485), which contemplated conviction on one of two possible avenues of proof, or both, if the jury found Defendant "Guilty" on that offense, the jury was asked to answer additional questions and indicate whether their verdict was unanimous as to one or both of the avenues of proof specified. The first avenue of proof under § 485 was described as "Making Counterfeit Coins" and the second avenue of proof was called "Passing / Uttering Counterfeit Coins With Intent To Defraud." The jury indicated it based its Count Two conviction on both avenues of proof. [...] = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = https://www.leagle.com/decision/infdco20150226a76 Docket No. 5:09CR27-RLV. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, v. BERNARD VON NOTHAUS, Defendant. United States District Court, W.D. North Carolina, Statesville Division. February 25, 2015. CONSENT ORDER FINAL DISPOSAL AND FINAL FORFEITURE OF CONTRABAND RICHARD L. VOORHEES, District Judge. WHEREAS, on November 17, 2010, the Grand Jury for the Western District of North Carolina returned a Superseding Bill of Indictment against the defendant. In the Superseding Bill of Indictment, Counts One, Two, and Three charged the defendant with conspiracy and substantive offenses related to counterfeit Liberty Dollar coins, all such conduct in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 371, 485, 2, and 486. WHEREAS, the Superseding Bill of Indictment included a Notice of Forfeiture and Finding of Probable Cause, pursuant to, amongst other statutes and rules, 18 U.S.C. § 492, 18 U.S.C. §§ 982(a)(2) and (b)(1), 21 U.S.C. § 853, and Fed. R. Crim. P. 32.2, for forfeiture of, amongst other properties, the properties described below constituting or derived from any proceeds the defendant obtained, directly or indirectly, as a result of such violations; and/or all property involved in, used, intended to be used, made, or possessed in any manner or part to commit or facilitate the commission of the violations. WHEREAS, on March 18, 2011, in a jury trial in the Western District of North Carolina, the jury found the defendant guilty of Counts One, Two, and Three in the Superseding Bill of Indictment. WHEREAS, on November 10, 2014, the Court entered a Memorandum and Order affirming the guilty verdicts of the jury. WHEREAS, on December 1, 2014, the Court entered a Memorandum and Order providing for the forfeiture of almost all of the property (excluding "16,000.5 Troy Ounces of Raw Silver" and Hawaii Dala coins) listed and described in the Notice of Forfeiture and Finding of Probable Cause in the Superseding Bill of Indictment. WHEREAS, the same Memorandum and Order of December 1, 2014, ordered the United States and the defendant to confer in order to decide and propose to the Court a list of the forfeited properties that should be "forfeited under Section 492 [18 U.S.C. § 492] as `contraband' . . . not subject to third party ancillary litigation under § 853(n) [21 U.S.C. § 853]." Memorandum and Order at 12. WHEREAS, the United States and the defendant have conferred and agreed that the properties listed below are contraband and can and should be finally forfeited and disposed of by the United States without any further proceedings and that such properties are not subject to the provisions of 21 U.S.C. § 853(n) ("Third party interests") and Fed. R. Crim. P. 32.2(c) ("Ancillary Proceeding"). WHEREAS, the United States has contemporaneously filed a Motion for an Amended Preliminary Order of Forfeiture concerning the remaining properties listed and described in the Notice of Forfeiture and Finding of Probable Cause in the Superseding Bill of Indictment. NOW, THEREFORE, the Court, pursuant to its Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law in its Memorandum and Order of November 10, 2014, its Memorandum and Order of December 1, 2014, and 18 U.S.C. § 492, ORDERS that the following properties are contraband and that no person or entity, other than the United States, may have a property right or interest in them. The Court further ORDERS that the properties identified herein are forfeited to, and may be disposed of by, the United States in accordance with applicable law: ___ Approximately 1574.5 troy ounces of silver coins, but excluding 75 coins of .1 ounce minted in 2006; and of the "Dies, Molds, and Casts from Dies, Molds, and Casts Seized at Sunshine Minting, Inc. on November 14, 2007" in the Notice of Forfeiture and Finding of Probable Cause in the Superseding Bill of Indictment, the following (with evidence identifications) property: ___ A-004 Die—1oz. Liberty Head 2007 and the following property (with evidence identifications) from Exhibits 71, 71A, and 71B: ___ A006 Die—1 oz Libertad, 2007 ___ A143 Sample of 2 Peace Silver coins, 2008 IT IS SO ORDERED.
Money shouldn't have to mature.
Are you an anarchist?
That is no argument. Everyone lost their little computer numbers. That can't happen with dollars.
What about the 82yo woman in the thread you posted who lost her life savings and committed suicide? She was duped into giving out her bank account information and lost her savings and then ended her life. Who was supposed to protect her from scammers and keep her money safe? Who lost her money? Banks. And thousands of people get defrauded every day. And the banks holding their money never so much as get their hands slapped for allowing it to happen after they implemented all of the electronic features for funds transfer which enable such fraud to occur. Why aren't these wonderful and secure banks required to reimburse fraud victims for allowing their wealth to be stolen? The banks have a position of public trust and they do receive the lowest interest rates possible and are allowed to load out $10 for every dollar they have on deposit. I think the banks should be held accountable to reimburse all victims of electronic transfer theft of money held in trust in those banks. It is not the victims' fault if the banks have made it so easy to steal the money of depositors.
You've made many excellent points on this thread. I appreciate them.
Three words. Civil Asset Forfeiture.
Ideally, no. But in our technological world, everything is changing at an exponentially greater and greater speed. It has impacted communications and is spilling over into our monetary system. It cannot be stopped.
Legal currency has matured. Your constant digressions do not change the incontrovertible fact that like credit cards, or even worse, debit cards, crypto uncurrency is unregulated, and while sharing insecurities, crypto uncurrency offers none of the means of recourse available to credit card users. And my obvious point was that the government can jam your ass in a cell until you have an attitude adjustment, and while you are pondering whether to adjust your attitude, they can seize your valuables, if you have any, and auction them to the highest bidder. They may take your freedom and your property, while you celebrate your collection of electronic digits. The only slight problem is the loss of your other property, and the lack of internet in your cell, and the attendant lack of access to your precious electronic digits which are not legal currency which might be used to make bail or pay fines. Yeah, give it to the man!
Ugggh. No, I was showing that crypto uncurrency is not safe, and you were attempting to digress about dollars, as if showing that dollars or credit cards were unsafe would somehow make crypto uncurrency a safe investment. Crypto uncurrency remains dangerously volatile and hackable. Crypto uncurrency is worse because when disaster strikes, the user has no legal recourse. The one saving grace is when disaster strikes and the crypto kid jumps of the window and lands on the sidewalk. He survives landing on the sidewalk outside his mother's basement window. Yes, freely and voluntarily. You made a choice of your own free will and you swore under penalty of perjury that was so. You had a choice between a plea deal and a trial. You were free to pick between either one. Take away the possibility of a voluntary plea deal and you would be left with the choice of pleading guilty and accepting what comes your way, or pleading not guilty and proceeding to trial. As usual, you know nothing about me, and merely spout from your point of ignorance. By your standards, you would adjudge that the legal system is where the profession of most inmates lie. As they work on their appeal, they become knowledgeable on the law. Learning sooner, rather than later, is good preventive medicine. I do not bash crypto as the worst thing ever created. I bash claims that crypto is safe or invulnerable. It is not. It is very risky and well understood by few. The people deserve protection from the predators shilling his crap, just as they deserved protection from the predators shilling bogus income tax avoidance plans, or counterfeit, contraband coins. Few have the knowledge to recognize the risks of crypto uncurrency and to make an informed choice to accept that risk. I dare. I dare. Get down off your high horse and stop shoveling that shit. In defending your absurdly pie in the sky claims about crypto, you invariably try to change the subject. INVESTING IN CRYPTO IS DANGEROUS. You sound like Ilhan Omar and the socialist/commuunist clan calling themselves "The Squad." That seems a good argument for you to take to court when your blather runs directly contrary to SCOTUS opinions. On the odd chance that the court will not agree that SCOTUS is passé, you can always pick up a law book and read it. You never know, you might learn something. Again. Stop with the bullshit. The court opinions quoted at my #50 and #64 make perfectly clear that your repeated claim is bullshit. The Court made unerringly clear that von Nuthaus was placing his counterfeit coins into commerce in competition with the U.S. dollar. As I quoted the Court stating in my #64: [...] According to the Government, Defendant von Nothaus and his fellow Liberty Dollar Organization members made money on each transaction. (3/8/11 Tr. 54, 106-11; 3/9/11 Tr. 245). Walsh testified that when distribution of a given value of Liberty Dollar coin was no longer profitable for the organization, Defendant collected the existing coins (always the same 1 troy ounce silver coins) and had them reminted at a higher face value. (3/8/11 Tr. 110-11; 3/9/11 Tr. 205). This procedure was called the "move-up." (3/9/11 Tr. 151). The Defendant was responsible for determining the price point or when to remint and move-up to a greater face value. (3/9/11 Tr. 155-56). Agent Walsh testified about the events leading up to the move from a $10 silver base Liberty Dollar to a $20 silver base in November 2005. (Government Exhs. 30-32). [...] At trial, the Government's theory of the case was "making money making change." Agent Walsh testified that as a Liberty Dollar Associate, she was trained via the Liberty Dollar Organization to pitch the Liberty Dollar coins to merchants as a means for "making money by making change" for consumers with the Liberty Dollar as opposed to ordinary U.S. currency or legal tender. (Government Exhs. 19-25). The Welcome Packet included a book entitled, The Liberty Dollar Solution; Chapter 58 was titled, "Making Money - Making Change." (3/9/11 Tr. 242-44; Government Exh. 25A). The Government produced evidence during its case-in-chief that Liberty Dollar training materials [dated as early as 2006 and as late as 2007] expressly state that associates are not to "attempt to educate people about money when using Liberty Dollars." (3/8/11 Tr. 121-22). Special FBI Agent Andrew F. Romagnuolo ("Romagnuolo") explained that the FBI's concern was not the merchants voluntarily accepting the Liberty Dollar coin, but rather the folks receiving Liberty Dollar coins without being educated about the coin and its actual value: (3/8/11 Tr. 34; 60, 75-76). Although Defendant admits to most of the facts alleged, namely, that he designed, minted, marketed, sold, and used the Liberty Dollar coins in commerce, Defendant disputes that his purpose or intent was unlawful. The Defendant maintains that his purpose and intent was, and always has been, to promote use of a "local currency" or "private barter currency" and to repeal the Federal Reserve Act as opposed to attempting to compete with U.S. currency. Special FBI Agent Andrew F. Romagnuolo explained that a "local currency" or "private barter currency" is "something where a trade occurs" and "could be as simple a barter as trading a chicken for chopping a cord of wood." (3/8/11 Tr. 67-68). Agent Romagnuolo was familiar with a local currency used in Ithaca, New York, called the "Ithaca Hours." (3/8/11 Tr. 68). The "Ithaca Hours" community issued certificates with a designated hour and worth that could be used for trading. Id. According to Agent Romagnuolo, the only legal requirement for the Ithaca Hours was that individuals report whatever is gained to the Internal Revenue Service. Id. The jury verdict reflects that the fact finders accepted the Government's evidence and theory. You should keep your collection outside the United States. Recall, as quoted at my #50 and #64, the Court decided, "NOW, THEREFORE, the Court, pursuant to its Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law in its Memorandum and Order of November 10, 2014, its Memorandum and Order of December 1, 2014, and 18 U.S.C. § 492, ORDERS that the following properties are contraband and that no person or entity, other than the United States, may have a property right or interest in them." You should keep your Liberty Dollar coins hidden in your pocket, only taking them out to briefly gaze upon these relics of another scam that resulted in criminal convictions, and to proclaim your affection for your precious.
She was duped into giving out her bank account information and lost her savings and then ended her life. Who was supposed to protect her from scammers and keep her money safe? Who lost her money? Banks. Marjorie Earl Jones died May 4, 2010. She was an easy mark targeted by predator scammers. Marjorie Earl Jones sent her money to the scammers. She lost her money. She sent it to the scammers. The bank had no liability, nor should it. Ms. Jones was an adult, and had not been held incompetent to handle her own affairs. She sent her money and proceeded to borrow $8,000 and then $6,000 from the father of her grand-daughter (named Stancik). Testimony was recently taken by the Senate Aging Committee, from the grand-daughter Angela Stancik. Stancik said she realized her grandmother was a victim of elder fraud in the last conversation she had with her. She needed $6,000 “as soon as possible,” and was desperate. The family could never think of a time she needed to borrow money in the past. “I could hear the panic in her voice, and she was very very afraid.” Stancik’s father had just wired $8,000 the week prior. He thought someone was scamming her, but given her tone, he wired the $6,000. Jones killed herself a week later. “It is clear to us that the circumstances that led to her death were caused by these criminals,” Stancik said through tears. Her grandmother had bags of receipts in her closet that showed the money sent to unknown accounts, took out a second mortgage on her home, drained her life savings and cashed out all of her life insurance. Federal authorities busted the elder fraud ring last year, when then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the victims targeted more than 1 million people living in the U.S. The hearing follows a number of bills and initiatives proposed to help stop unwanted robocalls from reaching Americans on their phones. A scammer obtained her money through larceny by trick.
Some fresh crypto news today. Reuters: Japan to lead development of SWIFT network for cryptocurrency Tokyo aims to have the network in place in the next few years, the person said, declining to be identified because the information has not been made public. A team related to the inter-governmental Financial Action Task Force (FATF) will monitor its development and Japan will cooperate with other countries, the source said. It remains unclear how the cryptocurrency network would work. SWIFT is the international payments messaging system used by banks to send money around the world. ...
oooo... under penalty of perjury, you say? Well, that changes everything, doesn't it? As no one charged with violating a feloney law would EVER lie to a judge, right? You live in your lala land all you want. You have chosen your god, and it is the legal system with its high priests in black robes that tell you the difference between right and wrong, because YOU can't tell that by yourself. Feel free to ignore the real world that real people live in, where innocent people falsely accused would yes, commit their very first federal crime by pleading guilty to a crime they did not commit and not seek the dangerous path -- far more dangerous than crypto could ever be -- of insisting on a trial where jail time could by far more ... far far more than they get if they agree not to trouble the state and the court for an honest trial. In t he real world, nolu, these falsely accused people have responsibilies of parenting and caring for loved ones where taking that extra time to fight and sit in jail has a cost that you apparently are clueless about. So yeah, go take solice in the make believe world that you live in where those who actually plead guilty are making a "free choice" in doing so. It certainly should make you feel good. Certainly requiring people to do so under PoP is designed not for the benefit of the accused, but for the benefit of people like you that want to believe the justice system is a perfect, moral machine. How ironic that this PoP plea arrangement only creates a criminal out of those who are falsely accused, and never for those real criminals who are correctly accused. Every case should go through trial. That would greatly increase the load on the judicial system and force the state and the courts to only deal with REAL crimes that REALLY matter, and also deliver the due process that people, particularly the falsely accused, are entitled to. Who ever said that? I sure didn't. How many people understand the US dollar? How many people understand fractional reserve banking, or the M1 M2 & M3 money supply? How many people understand the history behind it? Investing in the stock market has risks. Investing in real estate -- risks. Any kind of "investing" has risks. Starting a business is more risky than crypto given a strong majority fail in the first 2 years. Life has risks. Get used to it. But it is apparent from the facts that the conviction of Nothaus related to Liberty dollars was because his coins and redeemable bills stated a value in dollars. Many similar silver rounds have been produced over the years as any visit to any bullion dealer can prove, but the only the Liberty dollars attracted legal trouble. ... because the fact that they were denominated in US dollars was deemed to have constituted competition. Do you have any other case anywhere of anyone making silver rounds being convicted or even charged? Again, visit any coin bullion shop and you'll see plenty of 1 ounce silver coins available to purchase. Yes, noted. Fortunately for me, I didn't see any of my liberty coins listed in the order which was plainly referring ONLY to the specific property that which was apparently seized from Nothous. Or do you maintain that this court order, which involved a case in which I was not a party, is binding upon persons not that were not a party to the case OR to property that was also not involved?
There's news about Crypto every day, of one type or another. That would be an understatement. Crypto needs no central point through which transactions would take place, unless one considers the entire blockchain to be a virtual central location, but it would be hard to do. Bitcoin is not even the most private type of crypto as any wallet with a known transaction can be publicly monitored for how much it has and also will show other transactions it involves. So yes, bitcoin could be monitored to an extent. Only problem for the states is connecting ID's to the wallets, and of course, no ID is required to start accepting/receiving crypto. Another crypto called Monero, which is a bit shy of ranking with the major alt cryptos was designed for extra privacy. I don't know how that works, but I imagine wallet amounts cannot be viewed publicly as bitcoin can be.
I suspect Japan is proposing the monitoring of any conversion of traditional currency to crypto. So you might have laws that people can only buy/sell bitcoin from a legit and verified bank account in the current SWIFT system. Or else you're assumed to be a drug-dealing terrorist whose hobby is molesting children. And you go to prison. This somehow ties to the current SWIFT system. I don't think it is comparable to SWIFT, I think it will be an attempt to use SWIFT to capture all crypto transactions.
It won't work. Not in the long run. This scenario would completely undermine the idea of a decentralized system of transfer. If I cannot xfer my crypto *directly* to any party I want, such as making a payment to someone in Australia, but instead must go to a trackable exchange and convert it to US dollars, then send a wire or paypal payment to the party in Australia, after which that party can convert the US dollars back to bitcoin by an exchange, then bitcoin has completely lost its utility value. So that pig won't fly. But the free market response, assuming using bitcoin could risk jail time: People will stop using bitcoin in which transactions can be monitored and start using a different crypto in which transactions can't be monitored, like Monero. Or bitcoin would be upgraded to employ the same degree of privacy. But this could be bad for crypto users as, at the present time, anyone who hacks bitcoin could potentially be discovered if any hacked funds ever makes it way to a known party such as a retail company that can identify the real party that stolen bitcoin can be tied to. Cooperative persons could ID the sending party which could be followed up the chain to ID the thieves, even many years later. Crypto is a world of "living" currency. Some in law refer to the Constitution as a "living document" in which it's meaning is altered over time to, sans formal amendments, infer a meaning that the founders would have agreed to if they lived in more modern times (or more likely, satisfies the encroachment of government desires upon the people such as the difference between when phone calls were once considered as private as in-home face to face conversations but in today's world is NOT afforded to email communications). Crypto likewise is a "living" currency in that it can evolve and mutate into new forms to conform to the needs and desires of the free market, and one of those needs and desires is to bypass or become "immune" to gov regulations that would be viewed as obstructions in any way which would be of no value to the free market as a whole, such as the one proposed in Japan. Government wants to be in control, always wants more power and never wants to give up power once it obtains it, such as with "Know Your Customer" regs that didn't even exist over 90% of US history. But technology will, I believe, role that otherwise irreversible trend back IF the free market desires it.
Given Japan's terminal arc in its breeding rate, nothing about Japan is long-term. I've started to expect to see a complete collapse of Japan during my lifetime. I'm suggesting that Japan is trying to build a system where all bitcoin transaction to/from fiat currency is recorded/reported. IOW, they wouldn't try to track all the bitcoin transactions. Instead, they'd track all conversions of cash to bitcoin and vice versa. And make that info available to various governments via the current SWIFT system. This would eliminate a lot of the attempts to launder money via bitcoin and moving large amounts of wealth untraceably and the use of bitcoin for Dark Web markets.
[...] oooo... under penalty of perjury, you say? Well, that changes everything, doesn't it? As no one charged with violating a feloney law would EVER lie to a judge, right? You live in your lala land all you want. You have chosen your god, and it is the legal system with its high priests in black robes that tell you the difference between right and wrong, because YOU can't tell that by yourself. Feel free to ignore the real world that real people live in, where innocent people falsely accused would yes, commit their very first federal crime by pleading guilty to a crime they did not commit.... Oh, you poor baby. You have parlayed your traffic ticket into a ten year about your supposed oppression by the government. You should join The Squad of Alexandria Occasional Cortex, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley. You could be the fifth horseman of the oppressed. You could even run for the Dem nomnation on your platform of seeking reparations for all who have ever been subjected to the oppression of a plea bargain offer. It was a damn traffic ticket. You were making your delusional legal claims back when. You were the man Living Without A Number (LWAN), not to be confused with Obi Wan. You claimed, inter alia, that when you were behind the wheel of a car, put putting along on a public road, you were not driving but traveling, and that you had a legal, Constitutional right to do so without being encumbered by a license to drive or auto insurance, and it seemed that you also deemed it acceptable to drive after sunset, in the rain, without turning on your headlights, and, of course, you did not have to identify yourself. The cop who stopped you did not buy your load of rubbish, and you proceeded to booking. You got a court date and a plea offer. You took the plea offer and went before the judge. The honorable judge preached, the sky opened, angels sang, a light shone down upon you, and you got religion. As part of your penance, you agreed to hop on down to the DMV and get a valid driver's license. So let it be written, so let it be done. You would forego the false religion you blogged about (LWAN) and act like an adult. You went to the DMV and applied for a license. You sufferered a moment of LWAN temptation and told the DMV clear that you did not have a SSN. The ever helpful DMV clerk replied, yes you do, it's right on the computer, and put it on the application for you. And so it came to pass that you had been living with a number the whole time you were blogging LWAN rubbish. Ever since, you have been spinning your tale of oppression. You need a valid license to drive. You need insurance. Depending on conditions, you need to turn on your headlights. No, neither a cop nor a judge needs to believe your nonsense about being a traveler and not a driver. No, you were not an innocent man, wrongly accused. Neither your traffic ticket nor your plea agreement was oppression. Good luck with your next decade of playing the victim card, and do seek reparations for plea bargain oppression pursuant to a traffic ticket. Give my regards to The Squad as y'all battle against government oppression. Every case but yours. You volunteered for a plea agreement, of your own free will. You have pleaded your case of being an innocent victim of oppression ever since.
This thread is not about me. Or not supposed to be. Is that what you think my comments about plea deals are, a whining about what happened to me? It's not. What I went through was nothing compared to what others have gone through, like those falsely accused of drug possession. Maybe one day you'll be falsely accused of a crime and given the choice of confessing to it in exchange for a lessor punishment so you'll know what it's like to experience it. Coersion like that is considered sufficient to render confessions invalid. But not if it happens in a courtroom, right? So you think making them confess under penalty of perjury makes it okay. That's laughable. No, I am correct. That little PoP mechanism is just there to make people like you feel like the system works perfectly, as designed, oblivious to how obviously identical it is to when physical torture is used to elicit confessions. But life is about experiencing things and learning. I did that and continue to do that, and unlike you, apparently, I've made mistakes in life from time to time and continue to do so. But I have no regrets about doing what I believe is right, neither now nor in the past or future. And whatever mistakes I *may* have made related to legal wranglings, it's gotten me to were I am to day which ain't all that bad. Should I care what your opinion is of me? Even you don't even care what your opinion is on the 4th Amendment in regards to civil asset forfeiture because it's the USSC's opinion that counts. Well, if you don't think your opinion on that counts, why should I consider your opinion of me to be significant? Here you are, the great Nolu Chan, master of law research, who demonstrates a complete inability to make independent moral decisions. He has no ability to judge moral right vs wrong **AT ALL**. Take away your law books and you'd be completely lost. Maybe you are offended at my comparisons of the legal system to a religion. You shouldn't be. It's completely accurate, at least in your mind. What is a priest but a human link between the common person and a divine god? What is a judge but a link between the common person and the divine law? They both have the common purpose of bringing that mysterious divinity to the people, interpreting the will of the god for the masses that are incapable of understanding that divinity? I'm still guessing you are a sitting judge. You certainly have the mindset for it. But who knows, and, I guess, who cares? Your opinion doesn't count anyway.
This thread is not about me. Or not supposed to be. It is about crypto uncurrency and its origin. It is not about plea bargains, counterfeit Liberty Dollars, and whatever diversionary bullshit you can come up with when your argument on the actual topic is destroyed. This thread is not supposed to be about your legal bullshit, either. Yeah. It was your only close up and personal experience with a plea bargain. You blogged about at length and you've whined about it ever since. You chose not to present your legal bullshit that you were not required to identify yourself, or that you were not required to have a drivers license or insurance, or that such brilliance emanated from you that you could drive in the dark without headlights. If you wanted a trial you could have had one. You chose to plead guilty. You could have pleaded not guilty, but you knew full well that your bullshit only goes so far, and definitely not that far. You could have tried to squirt a few and look tearfully at the judge and say you were really, really sorry and promise you would never do it again, and ask, judge, can't I just go home now? You went through a traffic ticket. I simple damned traffic ticket, and you parlayed it into a major blog experience of government oppression. Before you can effectively defend yourself or fight with the system, you have to stop being an ignorant dumshit. From your position of sublime ignorance, you do not know shit about what I have experienced or why I have certain legal knowledge. You only know I have it, and it is real, just as your ignorance of the law is real. Your bullshit about plea bargains is just that. Bullshit. At #76 you opined the brilliancy that "Every case should go through trial." When offered the chance to plea bargain, you felt very different. If every case had to go to trial, you would not only remove the plea bargain but would remove the plea of guilty. If there is no defense to present, why have a trial? How would you be better off if you were unable to take a plea deal or plead guilty? You been consistently unable or unwilling to answer that question. As ~95% of cases are resolved with a plea agreement, taking all cases to trial would require 20 times the resources to process. It would be like the mess at the Mexican border where all the illegal aliens requesting asylum are entitled to a hearing. You would mess up the judicial system to make it look like the immigration court system. No, you are just full of shit. That is not why you swear orally and in writing that your voluntary choice was, indeed, voluntary; and you sign a waiver of rights. The purpose for all that is to prevent people, such as you, from succeeding with a post-plea appeal that their agreement was coerced or involuntary. You ignore a UNANIMOUS (9-0) opinion by the U.S. Supreme Court. Brady v. United States, 397 U.S. 742, 751-53 (1970) 397 U. S. 752 constitutionally forbidden, because the criminal law characteristically extends to judge or jury a range of choice in setting the sentence in individual cases, and because both the State and the defendant often find it advantageous to preclude the possibility of the maximum penalty authorized by law. For a defendant who sees slight possibility of acquittal, the advantages of pleading guilty and limiting the probable penalty are obvious -- his exposure is reduced, the correctional processes can begin immediately, and the practical burdens of a trial are eliminated. For the State, there are also advantages -- the more promptly imposed punishment after an admission of guilt may more effectively attain the objectives of punishment, and, with the avoidance of trial, scarce judicial and prosecutorial resources are conserved for those cases in which there is a substantial issue of the defendant's guilt or in which there is substantial doubt that the State can sustain its burden of proof. It is this mutuality of advantage that perhaps explains the fact that, at present, well over three-fourths of the criminal convictions in this country rest on pleas of guilty, a great many of them no doubt motivated at least in part by the hope or assurance of a lesser penalty than might be imposed if there were a guilty verdict after a trial to judge or jury. Of course, that the prevalence of guilty pleas is explainable does not necessarily validate those pleas or 397 U. S. 753 the system which produces them. But we cannot hold that it is unconstitutional for the State to extend a benefit to a defendant who, in turn, extends a substantial benefit to the State and who demonstrates by his plea that he is ready and willing to admit his crime and to enter the correctional system in a frame of mind that affords hope for success in rehabilitation over a shorter period of time than might otherwise be necessary. A contrary holding would require the States and Federal Government to forbid guilty pleas altogether, to provide a single invariable penalty for each crime defined by the statutes, or to place the sentencing function in a separate authority having no knowledge of the manner in which the conviction in each case was obtained. In any event, it would be necessary to forbid prosecutors and judges to accept guilty pleas to selected counts, to lesser included offenses, or to reduced charges. The Fifth Amendment does not reach so far. Of course, when confronted with a unanimous 9-0 opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court which says a legal argument of yours is bullshit, you have the fallback opinion, as in #62, "Then the USSC has outlived its usefulness." Of course, when a unanimous Supreme Court disagrees with your legal bullshit, we should all embrace your bullshit that the Supreme Court should just go away. It is the only court that is required by the U.S. Constitution (at Article III), so you are just going to have to deal with it. Yep. Making believe you didn't have a social security number. Making believe you had no duty to identify yourself. Making believe you did not need a drivers license or insurance, or needed to turn on your headlights. Making believe Save-a-Patriot was not a tax scam and criminal enterprise. Making believe the counterfeit Liberty Dollar was not a scam and a criminal enterprise. Making believe crypto is perfectly safe, although there are a string of documented instances where assets have disappeared or been transformed into unobtanium. No regrets in having scam shit follow you around like the cloud that follows Pig Pen. Nope. But you should care that the U.S. Supreme Court opined unanimously 9-0 that civil asset forfeiture is constitutional and legal. That is the law, not because I say so, but because they said so, and they are empowered by the U.S. Constitution to make that legal determination. Stating your bullshit as fact does not make it something other than bullshit. Saying what the law actually is, is not a moral decision. If the Supreme Court interprets the Constitution to hold that abortion is lawful under specified conditions, then abortion under said conditions is lawful. You may consider abortion to be infanticide and a moral outrage. Lawful does not conflate with moral. Your sense of morality does not change the law. You do not get to tell everyone else that your personal bullshit is the law. You are just completely full of shit. We have no divine law. We have man's law, and man's courts. We have courts of law, not courts of morality. We do not have Ecclesiastical courts. A judge has nothing to do with divine anything. You appear to be a link between the common internet user and your divine ignorance. If a religion were like the legal system, one would arrive at the pearly gates and be judged by a jury of his peers, to be admitted or excluded based on a majority opinion. An adverse opnion would presumably be appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Celestial Circuit. An unsuccessful appeal could be further appealed to the Supreme Being, sitting in His appellate authority. Why He would not exercise original jurisdiction in all cases is unknown. Equally unknown is what religion describes any such heavenly system. This is because religion as a legal system is bollocks. I confess. I'm Judge Pigmeat Markham. Here Come The Judge - Pigmeat Markham (1968) (HD Quality)
Do witnesses place their hand on a Bible before testifying? Do they promise to tell the truth "so help me God"? Is the hand on the Bible something from the past that is no longer used?
Could you say "shit" a few more times please? Granted I used it first here but not to that scale. Thanks. Yes, this thread is supposed to be about crypto, which you deemed as "dangerous" because people supposedly didn't know much about it. You cite hacks on crypto as evidence of it's worthlessness while ignoring the market prices that say otherwise. I pointed out that at least one is not forced to deal with crypto as they are forced to deal with the legal system sometimes in spite of not breaking any laws. Apparently, you take offense when the legal system itself stands accused of injuring people. You think the legal system is working perfectly by blaming those falsely accused for permanent criminal records they plead guilty to, ignoring the fact that these pleas are always, always coerced. They don't call them "deals" for nothing, afterall. But no, this justice system you love so dearly is working perfectly, like a well oiled machine. It seems you refuse... REFUSE to admit that even a single injustice has ever occurred in the American judicial system. By definition. Yes, that's a religious position, no less so than someone denying their version of God would ever make a mistake. Yes it would. That's precisely the point. It would ensure the state would only prosecute things that are truly offenses against the people *it serves* instead of creating a money making legal industry that has made the land of the free have the highest incarceration rate in the world. You hate crypto. We get that. Fine. Stay away from it. The free market isn't supposed to have a choice in the matter. Fine, we get that too. You are not a capitalist. You think the gov should dictate business terms and also take people's money on suspicion of criminal behavior without having to prove it and that that's okay because the 9 robed high priests in DC have consulted their divine oracles and declared it so. And somehow, morality has nothing to do with it, which I guess is pretty evident on its face, isn't it? When you deal with law you need to check your morality at the door. Maybe we can agree that that's how it is working. I guess you'd fit in great with any tyrannical regimed country. But who cares? You have no moral compass and by your own admission, your opinion doesn't count anyway. Thankfully. Is there anything else? I'm really getting tired of this crap, and I do have better things to do that respond to your temper tandrum postings.
Some do; some don't. Bibles and swearing are not requirements. Those with religious objections may affirm that they will tell the truth. The words "so help me God," are not a requirement. https://openjurist.org/989/f2d/1015/united-states-v-ward United States v. Ward, 989 F.2d 1015 (1992) This started a few centuries ago, to accomodate the religious beliefs of Quakers, and is now extended to all religions, and to the non-religious.
Shit, shit, shit. I used a bad fucking word. I hate it when I do that. It may have something to do with my spending twenty years in the Navy while telling myself I should have become a damn judge. Bullshit. It is not dangerous because people do not know much about it. If the people knew about all the disasters, they would know it is risky and dangerous. Bullshit. I did not cite hacks to claim crypto was worthless. I cited hacks to demonstrate that it entailed risks for which there was no legal recourse. I stated it has no inherent value. The value of paper U.S. currency is the full faith and credit of Uncle Sam. The value of crypto is the full faith and credit of some anonymous people at some cryptic location such as Mt. Gox. And the beat goes on.... You're just lucky you were not one of those who was forced to deal with the legal system sometimes in spite of not breaking any laws. Bullshit. I take offense when you spew your shit as if the vast majority of dindus are not guilty, but are pure and innocent. Of course, all the people in prison are innocent. Just ask them. Bullshit. I have never said the legal system is perfect. It is a creation of man. It ain't perfect, but it does not get as much shit wrong as you do. Bullshit. They did not beat you with a rubber hose. You could have declined and went to trial. You weighed the odds and made an intelligent choice of your own free will. Bullshit. The Innocence Project has proven lots of cases of injustice, using DNA evidence. Bullshit. It is just more of your afactual bullshit. Bullshit. That would hardly be the result. The result would be a few people to set an example, a la Eddie Slovik. Bullshit. Crypto is nothing more than electronically stored digits. I oppose bullshit, especially when it tends to seperate people from their money by encouraging a risky investment while denying the risks or "forgetting" to mention the risks. The free market can do whatever the law allows. If you want to put all your money in electronic digits, knock yourself out. If you want to misrepresent that shit and call it currency, and compete with the U.S. dollar, go to jail. If you can't to the time, don't do the crime. I'm a capitalist, and you are a bullshit artist. With Article I of the Constitution, the people delegated to Congress, "the power to regulate Commerce with foreign nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes." So, there's the power to regulate commerce. Nobody takes money on suspicion of criminal behavior, or without having to prove it. Money is taken on belief that it is contraband, the fruit of criminal activity. If someone wants to claim the suspected contraband, and they seldom do, they need only show on a preponderance of the evidence, that it more likely than not came from a legal source. People with drugs, a lot of money, and no legal source of income generally do not claim the money as theirs. They refrain from saying, Hey, that contraband is mine. The 9 robed high priests do not consult their divine oracles, but the law. They opine on what is lawful or unlawful. They do not write the laws, and it is not their job to orate about the wisdom, or lack there of, regarding any particular law. We don't have courts of morality, we have courts of law. If you want to drive with no license and no insurance, not bother to use headlights when required by law, refuse to provide identification, or advocate for a scam, saying you are a sovereign citizen and have a moral right won't take you much further than a cell. You can take your morality with you. After they close the door behind you, you will have time to meditate about anarchy, sovereign citizen philosophy, and juvenile morality. I did live in a country with a dictator, but they held a revolution and threw him out while I was there. And by free will, or coercion, you live in a country that coerced Julian Assange out of the embassy and into the arms of the arresting authorities. You have the moral compass of an anarchist sovereign citizen who drove with no license or insurance, only used headlights if he felt like it, claimed the right to not identify himself, and had cried oppression for a decade. Bullshit. When saying what the law is, my opinion or your opinion does not count if it is contradictory to a court opinion or the law. If you opine that abortion is infanticide, that does not make it a crime, as long as Roe v. Wade stands and says otherwise. My assertion is a fact. Yours is bullshit.
I started reading your post but I'm not even going to finish wading through all your bullshit. I'm done with you nolu. Have a good one. I hope life treats you well.
#2. To: A K A Stone (#1)
#3. To: A K A Stone, Pinguinite (#1)
[A K A Stone #1] Bitcoin is for suckers and predators.
Can Bitcoin Be Hacked?
Investopedia
Updated Jun 25, 2019 The biggest cryptocurrency hack in the history of blockchain (hack attack that uprooted a giant from industry)
Bitfolio Hackers Are Turning Binance’s Stolen Bitcoin Into Other Cryptocurrencies
Coindesk
Updated Jul 16, 2019 at 16:38 UTC 55,000 cryptocurrency users affected in Bitpoint’s $28 million hack
TNW
#4. To: Pinguinite (#2)
The US dollar, on the other hand, is centralized.
#5. To: nolu chan, A K A Stone (#3)
There is no such thing as absolute security on the internet. With banks, you have insurance if your account gets hacked.
With crypto, primarily used by crooks, drug dealers, tax evaders, and others attempting to avoid the law, a successful hack means you are usually shit out of luck, with no legal recourse.
#6. To: A K A Stone (#4)
Then why do people want to change their bitcoins into dollars?
This is America and the dollar is what we use. If it was replaced by these drug dealer scams of computer numbers that have no value it would hurt all Americans.
Use gold if you want something decentralized.
#7. To: Pinguinite (#5)
Funds held by banks are also not safe from seizure requests made by governments
#8. To: Pinguinite (#6)
Free market cypto cannot be printed ad infinitum.
#9. To: A K A Stone, Pinguinite (#8)
Pinguinite: Free market cypto cannot be printed ad infinitum.
A K A Stone: I know it is just nothing based on nothing.
#10. To: buckeroo (#9)
#11. To: A K A Stone (#10)
Except the dollar is accepted everywhere.
#12. To: Pinguinite, A K A Stone (#5)
[Pinguinite #5] Hacking is an admitted and understood potential problem for any holder of crypto. To be clear, this is not a problem for the crypto blockchain which is the place where crypto holdings are actually recorded. This is instead a problem with the keys to the blockchain which are not on the blockchain but held privately in "wallets" which is not really an accurate description of how crypto works.
[Pinguinite #5] These keys must be kept secure and the hacking of crypto has always involved accessing these keys or otherwise causing these keys to be used by a hacker to transfer funds on the blockchain. In every case, therefore, hacking has been possible because of security failures related to the keys, which is the responsibility of individual parties that either hold the keys or produced 3rd party wallets, and not the responsibility of the blockchain or crypto as a whole.
Quadriga: The cryptocurrency exchange that lost $135m
BBC News, Toronto
17 February 2019 [Pinguinite #5] But your dollars held in a bank are not protected against debasement or inflation, which is a loss of purchasing power.
2018 cryptocurrency crash
[Pinguinite #5] But free market crypto protects against these potential losses in value.
[nolu chan #3] With crypto, primarily used by crooks, drug dealers, tax evaders, and others attempting to avoid the law, a successful hack means you are usually shit out of luck, with no legal recourse.
[Pinguinite #5] Government is in bed with these institutions and objecting to crypto due to its independence neglects the interests of the American people and all holders of legal tender US dollars.
$9 Million Lost Each Day In Cryptocurrency Scams
Updated Jun 25, 2019 Bitcoin’s Missing 23 Percent Problem
Posted on November 27, 2017 How WIRED Lost $100,000 in Bitcoin
WIRED
security
05.28.18 07:00 am A Hacked Japanese Cryptocurrency Exchange Just Lost $32 Million of Virtual Money
#13. To: buckeroo (#11)
At what rate? You don't internationally travel very much, do you?
#14. To: buckeroo, A K A Stone (#9)
#15. To: nolu chan (#12)
That the crypto may have functioned perfectly is no consolation for those whose virtual fortune has disappeared.
[Pinguinite #5] These keys must be kept secure and the hacking of crypto has always involved accessing these keys or otherwise causing these keys to be used by a hacker to transfer funds on the blockchain. In every case, therefore, hacking has been possible because of security failures related to the keys, which is the responsibility of individual parties that either hold the keys or produced 3rd party wallets, and not the responsibility of the blockchain or crypto as a whole.
This sweeping claim is evidently not accurate.
Cotten died and nobody else seemed to know how to access the virtual fortune. There was no hack, nor any irresponsible parties. The virtual fortune is still safe with Gerald Batten who is not talking. Five years later, customers are still left in limbo.
While it is true that inflation or deflation causes a loss of purchasing power for money stored in a bank, or even stored in yourr wallet or under your mattress, it is also true that crypto is unregulated and subject to wild fluctuations if value, the likes I have never seen occcur with U.S. currency in my lifetime.
2018 cryptocurrency crash
The 2018 cryptocurrency crash (also known as the Bitcoin crash and the Great crypto crash was the sell-off of most cryptocurrencies from January 2018. After an unprecedented boom in 2017, the price of bitcoin fell by about 65 percent during the month from 6 January to 6 February 2018.
[Pinguinite #5] But free market crypto protects against these potential losses in value.
I see nothing which would support this claim. A crypto currency has no intrinsic value and may devalue to zero. Paper currency could devalue to zero. If paper currency devalued to zero, there would be nobody to buy your virtual currency with real currency, and nobody would exchange anything of value for virtual currency.
[Pinguinite #5] Obviously a demonizing statement. Cars, guns, baseball bats and knives are also used by crooks attempting to conduct illegal activities.
Cars, guns, baseball bats and knives are readily distinguishable as they were not created with the intent of evading law enforcement action.
I have made no objection to crypto due to its independence. It cannot be a legal currency because that is unlawful. It is unregulated, and there is little legal recourse in case of loss. As an investment it is UNSAFE due to unregulated value fluctuation, and theft or loss.
It is not demonization to observe that crypto currency was created as a means to evade government regulation.
Bitcoin’s Missing 23 Percent Problem
"If you lost your private keys I think it’s game over,"
#16. To: Pinguinite (#15)
As though no one has ever lost dollar holdings? It most certainly has via banks, both in distant times and in more recent times. But cash is constantly being stolen. The currency itself does not provide a guarantee vs loss due to a variety of methods. Even when banks are robbed, there is a loss. Perhaps not to the account holders directly but do you think the replacement funds are simply printed into existence without consequence? Wealth transfer *always* occurs either through debasement of the currency via more printing, in which case all USD holder pay the fee, or taxpayers picking up the bill.
#17. To: Pinguinite (#15)
So it is not accuarate to say that always safe in USD form, even when on deposit.
#18. To: Pinguinite (#15)
It seems your thinking implies that cyrpto as never able to qualify as a currency itself, that it MUST be first exchanged for some kind of paper currency. That is certainly not the idea with which most crypto currencies were designed.
#19. To: Pinguinite (#15)
anything -- that can serve as a money will do.
#20. To: Pinguinite (#15)
It is unregulated, but along with that unmanipulated.
#21. To: Pinguinite (#15)
Yes some crypto has been lost. There is a hard drive in a land fill somewhere that was accidentally thrown away in the early bitcoin days when bitcoin was worth fractions of a penny. The rightful owner has offered a sizeable percentage to anyone who can think of a way to find it. But it's not really necessary as far as the economy goes. The smallest increment of bitcoin is worth about 1/100th of a penny. If bitcoin gose to $1 million per coin, the smallest increment would be worth 1 cent. That's small enough to serve monetary needs, and even if it weren't, software upgrades could divide it even further.
#22. To: Pinguinite (#14)
Bitcoin, and what I call "free market" crypto is not centrally controlled and therefore it's value does not hinge upon the existence or trust of any single entity or even country or set of countries. Any one part of the world could be devastated by meteors or nuke war, and free market crypto will not be destroyed. Anyone can seek to coin/mint/mine additional coins, but it is a race to solve each set of coins in sequence, so the creation of new coins is limited. This limits the supply of them, and limited supply imparts value. To win the race to mine more coins, computers much solve problems so complex that it comes at a usage cost to do so, not unlike how mining for gold comes with an investment cost.
#23. To: A K A Stone, Pinguinite (#7)
Funds held by banks are also not safe from seizure requests made by governments
The essential feature of government is the enforcement of its decrees by beating, killing, and imprisoning.
Those who are asking for more government interference are asking ultimately for more compulsion and less freedom.
#24. To: A K A Stone, Pinguinite (#17)
#25. To: Tooconservative (#24)
And who really benefited from this? The biggest banks who, instead of seeing people move their savings over $100K out of their bank to split it up among two more banks. So the big bank would get to keep a lot more of these most desirable customers. And Congress, as usual, supported the big banks (who had caused the financial crisis) at the cost of the smaller banks.
#26. To: Tooconservative (#24)
#27. To: A K A Stone, Pinguinite (#25)
If you account for inflation from when the 100 thousand dollar policy started. Is it about the same today in what a dollar is worth compared to the past?
#28. To: A K A Stone (#25)
(Edited)
That may be true. But it is also true that peoples money is even more secure.
#29. To: A K A Stone (#17)
Your money is always secure in a bank against theft up to 100 thousand per bank account.
#30. To: A K A Stone (#19)
Even the mark of the beast huh. Ok. Take the mark under your skin in order to buy or sell. You would do that? Even thought the Bible warned you thousands of years ago?
#31. To: A K A Stone (#20)
As I’ve said before, bitcoin is nothing more than a confidence game. It’s worth nothing if people suddenly lose their confidence in this fake digital currency. It’s backed by nothing. It’s the definition of a con.
That’s why people who are propping up bitcoin lose their minds whenever someone like me writes anything negative about it. That’s what happened on Tuesday.
I’ll keep them handy because I am sure that every one of these writers will be thrilled to defend bitcoin in front of investigators from the Securities & Exchange Commission, the Justice Department, the IRS, Homeland Security and any other agency that will eventually get in on the action.
Mario Draghi, head of the European Central Bank .... Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has said .....
I’ve said the same thing when a bitcoin was selling for $20,000. And still was saying it when it plunged to $4,000. Its real worth: $0.
https://nypost.com/2019/05/22/bitcoin-manipulation-madness-calls-for- massive-investigation/
#32. To: Deckard (#23)
Plenty of banks are used to launder drug money.
#33. To: A K A Stone (#26)
100000 in 1980 → $304741.30 in 2018 - Inflation Calculator
#34. To: Pinguinite (#29)
I believe one of the recent hacks was actually insured against loss. And yes, there is no reason why crypto could not be so insured in the same way cars, houses and jewelry is insured.
#35. To: Pinguinite (#33)
Sounds about right. So in about 40 years, the US dollar has lost 2/3rds of it's purchasing power.
#36. To: Pinguinite (#31)
(Edited)
#37. To: Pinguinite (#31)
I believe there are many thing you don't trust the gov with stone. Why do you trust the monetary system with them?
#38. To: Pinguinite (#30)
Crypto has no more in common with the Biblical "mark of the beast" than does dollars at this point.
#39. To: Tooconservative (#28)
Tell you what. Invest with me and I can guarantee that in thirty years your dollars will be worth 30% of what you invest with me.
#40. To: Tooconservative (#28)
Look back a few years, to the attempts to establish a different foreign currency like the euro or the Chinese yuan as an alternative to the petrodollar
#41. To: A K A Stone (#38)
With crypto type stuff who is to say you wont be locked out of your money somehow in the future if you are not compliant with governments wishes.
Who knows maybe the CIA made Bitcoin. Or some government.
#42. To: A K A Stone (#40)
I'm glad the world prefers dollars. It makes us richer. It is to our advantage that we can print money and these other countries take it instead of our gold.
#43. To: Pinguinite (#41)
That's just it, and the bottom line with crypto is that it is *decentralized*.
#44. To: Pinguinite (#42)
You realize you are talking like a banker, don't you?
#45. To: A K A Stone, Pinguinite (#40)
I'm glad the world prefers dollars. It makes us richer. It is to our advantage that we can print money and these other countries take it instead of our gold.
#46. To: A K A Stone, Pinguinite (#44)
We have a trade defecit. If we gave all those countries our gold for those goods we wouldn't have any gold left here. So that would suck.
#47. To: A K A Stone (#43)
They can require isps to make you log in or cut them off.
There are lots of ways government can take control of it,
#48. To: A K A Stone (#44)
We have a trade defecit. If we gave all those countries our gold for those goods we wouldn't have any gold left here. So that would suck.
#49. To: Pinguinite, A K A Stone (#15)
That the crypto may have functioned perfectly is no consolation for those whose virtual fortune has disappeared.
So it is not accuarate to say that always safe in USD form, even when on deposit.
[Pinguinite #5] These keys must be kept secure and the hacking of crypto has always involved accessing these keys or otherwise causing these keys to be used by a hacker to transfer funds on the blockchain. In every case, therefore, hacking has been possible because of security failures related to the keys, which is the responsibility of individual parties that either hold the keys or produced 3rd party wallets, and not the responsibility of the blockchain or crypto as a whole.
As for the members, who entrusted this company, that is most unfortunate for them of course, though ultimately, it was the account holders who chose to trust an incompetent company, so some of that responsibility resides with them, and not with the fundamental design of bitcoin.
it's not accuarte to simply conclude it has been "volatile" without also mentioning the tremendous growth in value it has seen over the years.
Of course, this valuation is in US dollars, which is not necessarily the best benchmark.
It is not demonization to observe that crypto currency was created as a means to evade government regulation.
FTR, most wallets -- all I am familiar with -- translate your private key to a series of 12 or 24 ordinary words that are much more easily memorized. With those words memorized or recorded somewhere, in the correct order, one can recreate their wallet and restore full access to funds.
#50. To: Pinguinite (#15)
The first part of your comment implies that a paper currency that devalues to zero would still constitute "real currency".
It also implies that crypto currency could or would not be exchangable for goods and services directly. It seems your thinking implies that cyrpto as never able to qualify as a currency itself, that it MUST be first exchanged for some kind of paper currency. That is certainly not the idea with which most crypto currencies were designed.
I. BACKGROUND
The problem occurs when these coins that they're distributing in currency leave the pyramid of the people who are educated about the Liberty Dollar Organization and they distribute them by making change with no further information to unsuspecting people in those businesses. They could end up with a 10, 20 or even 50 dollar coin that's worth half, or in some cases less than what the coin is marked as.
The power of coining money and of regulating its value was delegated to Congress by the Constitution for the very purpose, as assigned by the framers of that instrument, of creating and preserving the uniformity and purity of such a standard of value; and on account of the impossibility which was foreseen of [or] otherwise preventing the inequalities and the confusion necessarily incident to different views of policy, which in different communities would be brought to bear on this subject. The power to coin money thus given to Congress, founded on public necessity, it must carry with it the correlative power of protecting the creature and object of that power.
The Constitution 'was designed to provide the same currency, having a uniform legal value in all the States.' It was for that reason that the power to regulate the value of money was conferred upon the federal government, while the same power, as well as the power to emit bills of credit, was withdrawn from the states. The states cannot declare what shall be money, or regulate its value. Whatever power there is over the currency is vested in the Congress. . . . [T]he Congress is empowered 'to issue the obligations of the United States in such form, and to impress upon them such qualities as currency for the purchase of merchandise and the payment of debts, as accord with the usage of sovereign governments.' The authority to impose requirements of uniformity and parity is an essential feature of this control of the currency. The Congress is authorized to provide 'a sound and uniform currency for the country,' and to 'secure the benefit of it to the people by appropriate legislation.'
#51. To: nolu chan (#50)
Crypto, Liberty Dollars, and any other invention which attempts to compete with the official currency is unlawful. If one attempts to pass off something as currency, which is not currency, one follows the footsteps of Bernard von Nothaus and goes to jail.
#52. To: nolu chan (#49)
Can you identify where all customers of a bank lost all their deposited assets because the bank could not access them???
[nolu chan #12] This sweeping claim is evidently not accurate.
It most certainly is accurate. Your citation reflects a case of keys not being securely protected, just as I stated they must be.
It is most certain that after five years, the customers still cannot access their assets, and that hacking or a security failure had nothing to do with it. The founder of the exchange died.
The keys were so securely held that nobody has ever discovered a copy. Perhaps they were held in the most secure location, Gerald Cotten's brain. However the keys were secured, they remain secured, as do the assets. The numbers are still there, but they have been rendered useless and without value. The individual investors' only mistake was putting their assets in that exchange.
You mean it is the customers' responsibility to understand block chain technology and asynchronous cryptography?
It is accurate to call crypto volatile. The term indicates large swings back and forth. That is what crypto has done.
Of course, US dollars is the only legal currency in the United States.
Things may be valued in crypto, but nobody has to accept it, and it cannot be marketed as currency or the marketer can be prosecuted and sent to prison.
Righhht. The drugs dealers were concerned with inflation of the dollar, not with prosecution for income tax evasion and civil asset forfeiture of their ill gotten loot. They are really good guys with noble souls when you get to know them.
If the owner or director of the exchange suddenly dies, and he takes his memorized key with him, the exchange cannot access the data. The customers have a learning experience.
#53. To: Pinguinite (#52)
They should have a suing experience for the gross negligence of the company
#54. To: Pinguinite, A K A Stone (#41)
That's just it, and the bottom line with crypto is that it is *decentralized*. That means no other party can lock you out of your funds.
Date : Dec 24, 2013
Assistant General Manager If someone gets a court order to turn over bitcoin funds, and the person doesn't want to do it, they may be held in contempt and put in jail but ultimately, if that person doesn't want to turn over the funds, then the funds cannot be taken from them. Contrast that to funds in a bank account where the gov can go straight to the bank and take your funds.
#55. To: nolu chan, pinguinite (#54)
#56. To: Pinguinite (#52)
Can you identify where all customers of a bank lost all their deposited assets because the bank could not access them???
You mean it is the customers' responsibility to understand block chain technology and asynchronous cryptography?
Of course, US dollars is the only legal currency in the United States.
The Constitution 'was designed to provide the same currency, having a uniform legal value in all the States.' It was for that reason that the power to regulate the value of money was conferred upon the federal government, while the same power, as well as the power to emit bills of credit, was withdrawn from the states. The states cannot declare what shall be money, or regulate its value. Whatever power there is over the currency is vested in the Congress. . . .
That the US dollar requires a law obligating people to accept it is a statement unto itself as, if the dollar does have real value, then why is there a law required obligating people to accept it as payment?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe it cannot be marketed as "dollars". Marketing it as "currency" is a bit more obtuse and it would surprise me if that term is in the law.
The Court finds that Section 486 means exactly what it says, and that the language within Section 486 is, in fact, plain and unambiguous, with the possible exception of the phrase "intended for use as current money." To the extent deemed ambiguous, the Court construes the phrase "intended for use as current money" consistent with its "ordinary and plain meaning." See e.g., Yeatts, 39 F.2d at 1189 ("A basic canon of statutory construction is that words should be interpreted as taking their ordinary and plain meaning.") (internal citation omitted). "Current money" is defined by Black's Law Dictionary as "money that circulates throughout a country; currency." BLACK'S LAW DICTIONARY 1021 (7th ed. 1999). Commonly understood definitions of related terms such as "money," "currency," and "legal tender" all refer to United States-approved money. Applying plain meaning to the terms themselves, and considering that the thrust of § 486 is to penalize competition with U.S. currency, Section 486 is not meant to be applied unless actual U.S. currency is being competed with.
... it is the view of this Court that the phrase "intended for use as current money" speaks to the requisite statutory intent for conviction under § 486. The Liberty Dollar can be "intended for use as current money" even if the specific coin denominations are different.
In other words, the difference between a private barter system and counterfeiting is intent.
I reject the presumption that those in government do not possess fraudulent and criminal motives.
Civil asset forfeiture is a violation of the 4th, plain and simple.
#57. To: A K A Stone, Pinguinite (#55)
#58. To: nolu chan, pinguinite (#56)
The states cannot declare what shall be money, or regulate its value. Whatever power there is over the currency is vested in the Congress. . . .
#59. To: Pinguinite (#48)
You are now advocating the position that the American people should exploit the working class in other countries, sending them printable dollars in exchange for real goods and services. In my view, that is international counterfeiting, no different from a domestic non-government counterfeiter that prints paper money illicitly representing real value. You are also advocating a permanent trade deficit which is ultimately unsustainable. That's not a boat I'm getting on.
#60. To: nolu chan (#50)
The first part of your comment implies that a paper currency that devalues to zero would still constitute "real currency".
I have no idea why you believe worthless paper, devalued to zero, would continue to function as currency.
Crypto, Liberty Dollars, and any other invention which attempts to compete with the official currency is unlawful. If one attempts to pass off something as currency, which is not currency, one follows the footsteps of Bernard von Nothaus and goes to jail.
#61. To: nolu chan (#54)
Also, crypto does have inherent security weaknesses. A Lloyd's report in 2015 [Emerging Risk Report 2015, Innovation Series, Technology, BITCOIN, Risk factors for insurance] cited insider attacks, the 51% attack, and Sybil attacks, among others. Lloyd's also cited regulatory risks, specifically citing the Reserve Bank of India public warning to citizens of December 24, 2013, provided below.
Compared to sitting in jail until I give up the money, or having them go the bank and take the money, I would prefer to sit eternally in a jail cell, just to show them that they can't make me do something I don't want to do. /s
As a reasonable alternative, they can seize any of your property of value and auction it off to the highest bidder as partial payment.
#62. To: nolu chan (#56)
You may go back to any point in history as long as you remain on topic. The question pertains to "all customers of a bank lost all their deposited assets because the bank could not access them???" Bankruptcy, where the assets are gone, does not apply. The assets have not been taken, but cannot be accessed, as in the case of Quadriga CX.
You mean it is the customers' responsibility to understand block chain technology and asynchronous cryptography?
Perhaps we could liken that to the responsibility of criminal defendants to understand the law and court procedures when they appear before a judge and offered a plea deal?
In a plea deal you are given an attorney who explains it to you, the Court explains the deal to you, and you must state to the Court that you understand the deal and its consequences, and that you enter into it freely and voluntarily.
Your pronouncement that civil asset forfeiture is unconstitutional lacks any basis in law. SCOTUS has ruled 9-0 that the civil asset forfeit laws may not impose excessive fines, but civil asset forfeiture was left in place and constitutional.
#63. To: A K A Stone (#58)
So states can't make money but facebook or some drug dealer can?
#64. To: Pinguinite, A K A Stone (#60)
The first part of your comment implies that a paper currency that devalues to zero would still constitute "real currency".
Nothaus lost his case because his Liberty dollars were intended to be the equivalent value of dollars. The liberty dollar silver rounds even stated a value in dollars (even though the intrinsic value was worth significantly more than that, though the paper versions were not). That is why he was charged and convicted.
US v Von Nothaus, NCWD (Statesville) 5:09-cr-00027-RLV, MEMORANDUM AND ORDER (10 Nov 2014)
Agent Walsh testified:
9 The consumer advisory, further discussed, infra, which was not admitted into evidence, read in part:
10Both agents made an audio recording. A video recording of the meeting was made as well. (Government Exhs. 16A, 16B).
"The problem occurs when these coins that they're distributing in currency leave the pyramid of the people who are educated about the Liberty Dollar Organization and they distribute them by making change with no further information to unsuspecting people in those businesses. They could end up with a 10, 20 or even 50 dollar coin that's worth half, or in some cases less than what the coin is marked as."
US v VON NOTHAUS
___ 1,000.5 troy Ounces of Silver Coins;
___ 1,000.5 troy Ounces of Silver Coins;
___ 100 Ounces of Copper Coins;
___ A-006 Die—1oz. Libertad, 2007
___ A-009 Die — $50 Liberty Torch
___ A-017 Die—Liberty Head
___ A-048 Die—Peace Liberty Head
___ A-060 Die—Liberty Head
___ A-086 Die—Liberty Head 2008
___ A017 Die—Liberty Head, 2007
___ A060 Die—Liberty Head, 2008
___ A086 Die —Liberty Head 2008
___ A142 Two (2) 2008 coins on Sheet w/sample Gold coins, but not 2008 Ron Paul Liberty Dollar, and not 2000 and 2006 coins
___ A144 Tray containing 200 $50 Liberty Dollar Coins 2007
___ A146 Tray containing 213 $20 Liberty Dollar coins, 2007
___ C-024 Box Containing 960 $50 Liberty Dollar Coins, 2007
___ C-026 Box Containing 960 $50 Liberty Dollar Coins, 2007
___ C-027 Box Containing 960 $50 Liberty Dollar Coins, 2007
___ C-030 Box Containing 960 $50 Liberty Dollar Coins, 2007
___ C-040 Box Containing 960 $50 Liberty Dollar Coins, 2007
___ C-048 Box Containing 960 $50 Liberty Dollar Coins, 2007
___ C-051 Box Containing 960 $50 Liberty Dollar Coins, 2007
___ C-054 Box Containing 960 $50 Liberty Dollar Coins, 2007
___ C-055 Box Containing 960 $50 Liberty Dollar Coins, 2007
___ C-060 Box Containing 960 $50 Liberty Dollar Coins, 2007
___ C-062 Box Containing 960 $50 Liberty Dollar Coins, 2007
___ C-070 Box Containing 960 $50 Liberty Dollar Coins, 2007
___ C-177 Tray Containing 320 $50 2007 Liberty Dollar Coins
___ C-179 Tray Containing 320 $20 2007 Liberty Dollar Coins
___ C-180 Tray Containing 320 $20 2007 Liberty Dollar Coins
#65. To: Pinguinite (#61)
You present nothing new here. Crypto is new and it has more maturing to do
#66. To: Pinguinite (#61)
My obvious point is that crypto cannot be taken from someone via the dictates of the government.
#67. To: Pinguinite (#62)
Sigh..... And here I thought we were talking about the merits and safety of dollars vs crypto. So.... People who deposited dollars in a bank account but lost their money in a particular way don't count as having lost their dollars due to a failure of the custodian of dollars themselves. Crypto is worse, you say, because the custodian of the crypto lost the crypto in a different way. So, crypto is much worse than dollars. Okay, got it.
#68. To: A K A Stone, Pinguinite (#67)
Everyone lost their little computer numbers. That can't happen with dollars.
#69. To: Tooconservative (#68)
#70. To: A K A Stone (#66)
My obvious point is that crypto cannot be taken from someone via the dictates of the government.
Are you an anarchist?
#71. To: A K A Stone (#65)
You present nothing new here. Crypto is new and it has more maturing to do
Money shouldn't have to mature.
#72. To: Pinguinite (#61)
Crypto is new and it has more maturing to do
Fraud has existed in regards to dollars and credit cards, but you make it sound like only crypto is vulnerable in this way.
My obvious point is that crypto cannot be taken from someone via the dictates of the government.
Which easily demonstrates that crypto is MORE secure than even physical possessions, doesn't it?
#73. To: Pinguinite (#62)
Sigh..... And here I thought we were talking about the merits and safety of dollars vs crypto.
Crypto is worse, you say, because the custodian of the crypto lost the crypto in a different way.
Freely and voluntarily? Are you shitting me? There is no "freely and voluntarily" when you are dragged against your will into a courtroom and given a choice of which hell you want to go through.
The legal system is no doubt where your profession lies and you stand by it and defend it like it's your only child.
Okay fine, but then you come on and bash crypto likes it's the worst thing that's ever been created because people have gotten hurt with it.
And one more point on this: No one is forced to participate in crypto. Anyone buying, trading, exchanging or sitting on crypto does so as a matter of free choice.
So don't you dare try to demonize crypto as victimizing people who had a choice and then stand proudly by a legal system that has caused injury to innocent people, even sending them to their deaths for murders for which they were later exonerated.
Then the USSC has outlived its usefulness.
But it is apparent from the facts that the conviction of Nothaus related to Liberty dollars was because his coins and redeemable bills stated a value in dollars. Many similar silver rounds have been produced over the years as any visit to any bullion dealer can prove, but the only the Liberty dollars attracted legal trouble.
The Indictment alleged that the Liberty Dollar coins were to be introduced into the U.S. economy and meant to compete with U.S. currency in violation of federal law. According to the Government, the Defendant sought to have his Liberty Dollar coins accepted by merchants (and distributed by merchants) in the place of U.S. currency in order to make a profit for the Defendant and those associated with his Liberty Dollar Organization.
Agent Walsh testified:
"The Liberty Dollar structure was based on the moving average of the spot price of silver. So when the 30-day moving average of the spot price of silver was a certain level . . . if that spot price was less than $8, then . . . the Liberty Dollar was minted with $10 on the front of it. But once that average went over $8, it was minted with $20 on the front of it."
"The problem occurs when these coins that they're distributing in currency leave the pyramid of the people who are educated about the Liberty Dollar Organization and they distribute them by making change with no further information to unsuspecting people in those businesses. They could end up with a 10, 20 or even 50 dollar coin that's worth half, or in some cases less than what the coin is marked as."
I guess that makes the Liberty Dollar coins I still have collectors items!
#74. To: Tooconservative, A K A Stone (#68)
What about the 82yo woman in the thread you posted who lost her life savings and committed suicide?
I think the banks should be held accountable to reimburse all victims of electronic transfer theft of money held in trust in those banks. It is not the victims' fault if the banks have made it so easy to steal the money of depositors.
“They told her she had won a large cash prize, and all she had to do was pay the taxes and fees,” Angela Stancik, Jones’ granddaughter, explained to lawmakers.
#75. To: nolu chan, Pinguinite, Deckard, A K A Stone (#74)
TOKYO, July 18 (Reuters) - Japan’s government is leading a global push to set up an international network for cryptocurrency payments, similar to the SWIFT network used by banks, in an effort to fight money laundering, a person familiar with the plan said on Thursday.
#76. To: nolu chan (#73)
Freely and voluntarily? Are you shitting me? There is no "freely and voluntarily" when you are dragged against your will into a courtroom and given a choice of which hell you want to go through.
Yes, freely and voluntarily. You made a choice of your own free will and you swore under penalty of perjury that was so.
I do not bash crypto as the worst thing ever created. I bash claims that crypto is safe or invulnerable.
It is not. It is very risky and well understood by few.
I dare. I dare. Get down off your high horse and stop shoveling that shit. In defending your absurdly pie in the sky claims about crypto, you invariably try to change the subject. INVESTING IN CRYPTO IS DANGEROUS.
Again. Stop with the bullshit.
The court opinions quoted at my #50 and #64 make perfectly clear that your repeated claim is bullshit. The Court made unerringly clear that von Nuthaus was placing his counterfeit coins into commerce in competition with the U.S. dollar.
You should keep your collection outside the United States. Recall, as quoted at my #50 and #64, the Court decided, "NOW, THEREFORE, the Court, pursuant to its Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law in its Memorandum and Order of November 10, 2014, its Memorandum and Order of December 1, 2014, and 18 U.S.C. § 492, ORDERS that the following properties are contraband and that no person or entity, other than the United States, may have a property right or interest in them."
#77. To: Tooconservative (#75)
Some fresh crypto news today.
It remains unclear how the cryptocurrency network would work.
#78. To: Pinguinite (#77)
#79. To: Tooconservative (#78)
I suspect Japan is proposing the monitoring of any conversion of traditional currency to crypto.
So you might have laws that people can only buy/sell bitcoin from a legit and verified bank account in the current SWIFT system. Or else you're assumed to be a drug-dealing terrorist whose hobby is molesting children. And you go to prison.
#80. To: Pinguinite (#79)
It won't work. Not in the long run.
This scenario would completely undermine the idea of a decentralized system of transfer. If I cannot xfer my crypto *directly* to any party I want, such as making a payment to someone in Australia, but instead must go to a trackable exchange and convert it to US dollars, then send a wire or paypal payment to the party in Australia, after which that party can convert the US dollars back to bitcoin by an exchange, then bitcoin has completely lost its utility value.
#81. To: Pinguinite (#76)
Freely and voluntarily? Are you shitting me? There is no "freely and voluntarily" when you are dragged against your will into a courtroom and given a choice of which hell you want to go through.
Every case should go through trial.
#82. To: nolu chan (#81)
#83. To: Pinguinite (#82)
This thread is not about me. Or not supposed to be.
Is that what you think my comments about plea deals are, a whining about what happened to me? It's not.
What I went through was nothing compared to what others have gone through, like those falsely accused of drug possession. Maybe one day you'll be falsely accused of a crime and given the choice of confessing to it in exchange for a lessor punishment so you'll know what it's like to experience it.
No, I am correct. That little PoP mechanism is just there to make people like you feel like the system works perfectly, as designed
The issue we deal with is inherent in the criminal law and its administration, because guilty pleas are not
But life is about experiencing things and learning. I did that and continue to do that, and unlike you, apparently, I've made mistakes in life from time to time and continue to do so. But I have no regrets about doing what I believe is right, neither now nor in the past or future.
Should I care what your opinion is of me? Even you don't even care what your opinion is on the 4th Amendment in regards to civil asset forfeiture because it's the USSC's opinion that counts.
Here you are, the great Nolu Chan, master of law research, who demonstrates a complete inability to make independent moral decisions. He has no ability to judge moral right vs wrong **AT ALL**.
Maybe you are offended at my comparisons of the legal system to a religion. You shouldn't be. It's completely accurate, at least in your mind. What is a priest but a human link between the common person and a divine god? What is a judge but a link between the common person and the divine law?
I'm still guessing you are a sitting judge.
#84. To: nolu chan (#83)
We have no divine law. We have man's law, and man's courts. We have courts of law, not courts of morality. We do not have Ecclesiastical courts. A judge has nothing to do with divine anything.
#85. To: nolu chan (#83)
As ~95% of cases are resolved with a plea agreement, taking all cases to trial would require 20 times the resources to process.
#86. To: watchman (#84)
Do witnesses place their hand on a Bible before testifying? Do they promise to tell the truth "so help me God"? Is the hand on the Bible something from the past that is no longer used?
The court's interest in administering its precise form of oath must yield to Ward's First Amendment rights. To begin with, there is no constitutionally or statutorily required form of oath. Federal Rule of Evidence 603 requires only that a witness "declare that the witness will testify truthfully, by oath or affirmation administered in a form calculated to awaken the witness' conscience and impress the witness' mind with the duty to do so."
#87. To: Pinguinite (#85)
Could you say "shit" a few more times please? Granted I used it first here but not to that scale. Thanks.
Yes, this thread is supposed to be about crypto, which you deemed as "dangerous" because people supposedly didn't know much about it.
You cite hacks on crypto as evidence of it's worthlessness while ignoring the market prices that say otherwise.
I pointed out that at least one is not forced to deal with crypto as they are forced to deal with the legal system sometimes in spite of not breaking any laws.
Apparently, you take offense when the legal system itself stands accused of injuring people.
You think the legal system is working perfectly
the fact that these pleas are always, always coerced.
It seems you refuse... REFUSE to admit that even a single injustice has ever occurred in the American judicial system.
By definition. Yes, that's a religious position, no less so than someone denying their version of God would ever make a mistake.
Yes it would. That's precisely the point. It would ensure the state would only prosecute things that are truly offenses against the people *it serves* instead of creating a money making legal industry that has made the land of the free have the highest incarceration rate in the world.
You hate crypto.
The free market isn't supposed to have a choice in the matter. Fine, we get that too.
You are not a capitalist. You think the gov should dictate business terms and also take people's money on suspicion of criminal behavior without having to prove it and that that's okay because the 9 robed high priests in DC have consulted their divine oracles and declared it so.
And somehow, morality has nothing to do with it, which I guess is pretty evident on its face, isn't it? When you deal with law you need to check your morality at the door.
I guess you'd fit in great with any tyrannical regimed country. But who cares?
You have no moral compass and by your own admission, your opinion doesn't count anyway.
and by your own admission, your opinion doesn't count anyway.
#88. To: nolu chan (#87)
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