Like I said before the Clintons have too much dirt on the political hierarchy and that's why they blatantly get away with convictable crimes.

Can you say "1,000+ missing "raw" FBI background files on political people and their families"?

The FBI politely ASKED Bubbette! to return them when she left the WH,and she said "No",and walked away with them,

And she had no legal authority to even view them,never mind possess them.

What sort of government replaces the non-working nightmare we have now all depends on if the globalists or the nationalists win the dust up that follows.

I don't know that history shows us any example at all of an oppressive, native government being overthrown and replaced with one that truly cherishes rights and liberties. In the case of the US revolution, what was deposed was a foreign monarchy over a land that was largely untamed where self sufficiency was a requirement of survival.

Maybe there have been a few cases of oppressive dictatorships being brought down, but whether they were cases where general freedoms were restored, taxes repealed, and government bureaucracy was significantly scaled back, I don't know. People just have a natural tendency to take control of all that is around them, and even when revolutions occur, it's usually not for the purpose of giving, but of taking.

Maybe there have been a few cases of oppressive dictatorships being brought down, but whether they were cases where general freedoms were restored, taxes repealed, and government bureaucracy was significantly scaled back, I don't know. People just have a natural tendency to take control of all that is around them, and even when revolutions occur, it's usually not for the purpose of giving, but of taking.

History is full of examples. Kicking the Catholic Church out of ruling authority all over Europe is one prime example.

Removing monarchies from power all over Europe is another.

The nation created by the America Revolution is another.

Then there are examples due to losing wars,like when Japan lost WW-2 and we forced the Japanese to form another type of government with the Emperor only being a figurehead,and forcing the Nazi's out of power in Germany.

Then there is the example of the west,primarily America,forcing the communists into bankruptcy that resulted in the total collapse and replacement of the communist system there.

Right at this moment the whole west seems to be going through a reverse phase as we are not only allowing medieval jihadists to come in to destroy our nations,we are even paying them for doing so,

The French revolution deposing it's monarchy was a disaster for the French, and monarchies are not necessarily bad in any event, though it depends entirely on the monarch. I know England had, I think it was one of the King James's for about 3 years but he did such a poor job the English basically fired him and he accepted peaceful and not uncomfortable exile, though maybe my facts aren't quite right on that. Certainly people living under a monarch in the past have had, in sum, more rights and less taxation than present day USA.

But the problem with revolutions is that the rebels that take control invariably do just that, imposing their values on the population just freed from the values of the previous government. And if the kingpin rebel doesn't take control, then some underling more ambitious will cut him down and replace him. But even well meaning people will cause harm by trying to do good. It's a One Ring to Rule Them All type thing. Power corrupts.

So if/when the US fed apparatus collapses, it would create a vacuum of power that any new government would quickly fill. It's one of the reasons I see the proper future of the USA being a breakup into perhaps 6-8 different countries. It's the only way to dissolve the huge black hole in DC sucking up all that's good in the country. Decentralization/outsourcing is already a corporate reality and I think it needs to become a political reality, and I think technology will help make that happen, in time.

Decentralization/outsourcing is already a corporate reality and I think it needs to become a political reality, and I think technology will help make that happen, in time.

Politically it is all about centralizing,and thanks to today's ability to handle data,it will be virtually impossible for a revolution to happen again,ever.

The first,and most important thing they are going to do is eliminate cash and create a digital debit and credit system that contains ALL of every individual on Earth's entire history.

Piss off some government flunky or just be known to run your mouth about "nonsense" like individual liberties,and you are toast. There will be no running and hiding from the authorities because there will be no cash and all of your digital assets will have disappeared the instant some minimum wage government flunkie was ordered to delete your personal ID number.

You won't even be able to buy a cup of coffee at the convenience store where you dialed the toll-free number to tell the authorities where to come and pick you up to take you to the salt mines because people that don't exist don't have bank accounts or ID numbers. The ONLY thing you can do for free is call to turn yourself in.

Beware the cashless society.

Yeah,he was murdered during a robbery. That's why he wasn't robbed.

It is not necessarily correct to conclude that Rich was not robbed because his wallet, phone, and watch were not taken. It is possible that the most valuable possession on his person, and the only thing of interest, was a thumb drive with gigabits of data.

There will be no running and hiding from the authorities because there will be no cash and all of your digital assets will have disappeared the instant some minimum wage government flunkie was ordered to delete your personal ID number.

Even with digital money, control will not necessarily reside with the government. Bitcoin is a decentralized currency that no government, central bank or other entity, governmental or non-governmental, can control. It's not possible to delete a bitcoin wallet. At least not until quantum computing becomes a reality, and then someone will make a quantum currency.

Of course govs will create their own digital currency which would/could be as you describe. But Bitcoin has real market worth that would compete with any electronic debit currency.

Bitcoin is a decentralized currency that no government, central bank or other entity, governmental or non-governmental, can control.

Government can quite easily prohibit any and all corporate entities from engaging in any bitcoin transaction. You can be a bitcoin millionaire and not be able to buy a cup of coffee.

Government can quite easily prohibit any and all corporate entities from engaging in any bitcoin transaction. You can be a bitcoin millionaire and not be able to buy a cup of coffee.

Thanks, yukon clone. We really needed your authoritarian view about how great any government *is.*

Government can quite easily prohibit any and all corporate entities from engaging in any bitcoin transaction. You can be a bitcoin millionaire and not be able to buy a cup of coffee.

Market forces would cause exchange services to arise. Corps could buy and sell through such exchanges, which would set gov coin prices to match current bitcoin value.

The possibilities are rather endless with the cat and mouse situation that might be created. I'm sure if it was logistically possible to outlaw bitcoin, it would have been done so by now.

It is not necessarily correct to conclude that Rich was not robbed because his wallet, phone, and watch were not taken. It is possible that the most valuable possession on his person, and the only thing of interest, was a thumb drive with gigabits of data.

I'd say it's more likely than just "possible" that is EXACTLY what happened.

He wasn't murdered by random by someone who couldn't even be bothered to steal his money or jewelry. Murderers don't work for charity.

But Bitcoin has real market worth that would compete with any electronic debit currency.

No it won't and can't because there won't be anywhere you can legally spend it. What good is money to you that you can't use?

Government can quite easily prohibit any and all corporate entities from engaging in any bitcoin transaction. You can be a bitcoin millionaire and not be able to buy a cup of coffee.

BINGO!

Once money goes digital,we are all slaves.

Corps could buy and sell through such exchanges, which would set gov coin prices to match current bitcoin value.

The possibilities are rather endless with the cat and mouse situation that might be created.

A corporation is "[a]n artificial person or legal entity created by or under the authority of the laws of a state." Black's Law Dictionary, 6th Ed.

If the government is challenged by bitcoin, the response can be to make the penalty for any infringing corporation to be dissolved. The corporate entity would cease to exist. WalMart could not do business on a mass scale in illegal digital currency on a down low basis where they would not be caught. Corporations would not touch the crap.

The NSA could shut down such a currency at will. The corporate world cannot depend on a currency that could be drained dry like Mt. Gox.

Once money goes digital,we are all slaves.

India has been moving to a cashless, digital currency.

I would not want any part of that, but the world can observe how it turns out.

No it won't and can't because there won't be anywhere you can legally spend it. What good is money to you that you can't use?

Bitcoin is information, and "spending" consists of trading information. You can legally "spend" bitcoin anywhere Freedom of Speech exists.

Once money goes digital,we are all slaves.

No, not so fast.

Cryptocurrency, like many other things, can be used by either the forces of evil or forces of niceness (to quote Get Smart). As I said, if it were logistically/legally possible to outlaw bitcoin, it would probably have been done by now.

The NSA could shut down such a currency at will. .

Since bitcoin is decentralized, that would be quite a task. Bitcoin is based on BlockChain technology, which is a redundant database distributed throughout the net. The authority for who has how much bitcoin is essentially by popular consensus among all nodes (databases) in the blockchain as a whole. So if you managed to fool one node or even several nodes into saying you were a bitcoin billionaire, once other nodes failed to agree, the errant nodes would correct the error, and you'd be poor again.

Nuclear war could take out the entire western hemisphere, and blockchain nodes in the eastern hemisphere would carry on registering bitcoin transactions. Or vice versa.

I suppose the only conceivable way to kill bitcoin would be with a virus that would be tuned only to attack blockchain nodes, the virus scheduled to wipe out nodes at a universally set time. But even with that, it's only a hope that all nodes would be infected by the appointed hour, and even then, there's the potential for backup nodes.

If the government is challenged by bitcoin, the response can be to make the penalty for any infringing corporation to be dissolved. The corporate entity would cease to exist.

You seemed to have missed my point.

Say that happened and Walmart only dealt in "legal" digital currency. I have bitcoin and want something from Walmart but they don't take bitcoin. Fine. I'll exchange my bitcoin for state sanctioned currency with some third party exchange vendor, and then I can buy from Walmart. With automation, the transaction could take all of an extra 5 nanoseconds.

Corporations would not touch the crap.

They don't have to. Technology trumps the law, in this case.

India has been moving to a cashless, digital currency.

I would not want any part of that, but the world can observe how it turns out.

Indeed we will. Digital currency is coming as part of the exponentially increasing growth of technology. It can't be stopped as a matter of "natural" technological progression. While digital currency will certainly be alluring for governments that see it as a means to greater control (something it appears we both agree is undesirable) I theorize acclimation of the populace to use of digital money will have the unexpected side effect of opening the doors to much more widespread acceptance of decentralized currency as well, hense my response to your hypothetical scenario with Walmart. In fact, since exchanges of currency will be possible to complete while standing in front of a cashier, countries themselves will start to experience much more competition between themselves. Stores could accept any currency the spender happens to have whether it's pounds, yen, euro's, rupee's or... bitcoin. Or if not bitcoin, then fine, exchange bitcoin for something else while people behind you in line wait a few seconds more.

But countries that have failing digital currencies may end up eventually seeing their currency fall to disuse in favor of foreign currencies even within their own borders. Digital currency won't be the authoritarian wet dream some may be expecting.

Bitcoin is information, and "spending" consists of trading information. You can legally "spend" bitcoin anywhere Freedom of Speech exists.

As for U.S. law and your creative interpretations of it, remind me again about why you emigrated to Ecuador.

Only the U.S. government has authority to issue legal currency within the United States. Make any phony crap and issue it as currency and you get prosecuted.

Bitcoin is considered property and not legal tender in any U.S. jurisdiction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_currency

In 2013, Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), a bureau of the US Treasury, in contrast to its regulations defining currency as "the coin and paper money of the United States or of any other country that [i] is designated as legal tender and that [ii] circulates and [iii] is customarily used and accepted as a medium of exchange in the country of issuance", also called "real currency" by FinCEN, defined virtual currency as "a medium of exchange that operates like a currency in some environments, but does not have all the attributes of real currency". In particular, virtual currency does not have legal tender status in any jurisdiction.[2]

[...]

The IRS decided in March 2014, to treat bitcoin and other virtual currencies as property for tax purposes, not currency.[11][12]

[...]

A cryptocurrency is a digital currency using cryptography to secure transactions and to control the creation of new currency units.[21] Since not all virtual currencies use cryptography, not all virtual currencies are cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrencies are generally not legal tender. Ecuador is the first country attempting a government run digital currency -no cryptocurrency; during the introductory phase from Christmas Eve 2014 until mid February 2015 people can open accounts and change passwords. At the end of February 2015 transactions of electronic money will be possible.[22][23]

https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/ecuador-bans-bitcoin-favor-own-national-cryptocurrency/

Ecuador Bans Bitcoin In Favor Of Own National Cryptocurrency

Venzen Khaosan on 27/07/2014

On the 23rd of July, the government of Ecuador effectively banned bitcoin, along with all other cryptocurrencies, reports the PanAm Post. The legislation forms part of a reform of the country’s monetary and financial laws. The bill was approved by 91 members of parliament, with 22 votes against and 3 abstentions. President Rafael Correa, who introduced the reform bill, will sign it into law.

[...]

Say that happened and Walmart only dealt in "legal" digital currency. I have bitcoin and want something from Walmart but they don't take bitcoin. Fine. I'll exchange my bitcoin for state sanctioned currency with some third party exchange vendor, and then I can buy from Walmart. With automation, the transaction could take all of an extra 5 nanoseconds.

There will be no such thing as currency. ONLY digital credits and debits,all ran through a government money exchange.

And don't even try to say the bankers will never allow this to happen because they are the ones behind it.

In fact, since exchanges of currency will be possible to complete while standing in front of a cashier, countries themselves will start to experience much more competition between themselves. Stores could accept any currency the spender happens to have whether it's pounds, yen, euro's, rupee's or... bitcoin. Or if not bitcoin, then fine, exchange bitcoin for something else while people behind you in line wait a few seconds more.

There will be no exchange rates. One World Government,Inc will control digital banking and 1 credit will have the same purchasing power in New Delhi that it does in Berlin.

As for U.S. law and your creative interpretations of it, remind me again about why you emigrated to Ecuador.

Because I like it better. I'll also remind you that a common tactic employed by those losing a debate is to resort to insults. You should be above that.

Only the U.S. government has authority to issue legal currency within the United States. Make any phony crap and issue it as currency and you get prosecuted.

Prosecution is only for imitating US legal tender currency, otherwise known as counterfeiting. Any community wanting to use poker chips as money is free to do so, so long as no representation made about the poker chips being US issued currency.

Bitcoin is considered property and not legal tender in any U.S. jurisdiction.

In particular, virtual currency does not have legal tender status in any jurisdiction.[2]

You bolded the part about currency having "legal tender status". But what is "legal tender"? Correct me if I'm wrong, but currency that is "legal tender" means (at least in the USA) that if you offer payment having that status and the receiver refuses to accept it, the debt is considered paid. In other words, legal tender laws force people to accept crap money as something of real value. Currency is given such status when it has no intrinsic value on its own, as currency with intrinsic value, such as gold and silver does not require legal tender status.

So quite naturally, bitcoin will never, ever, ever have legal tender status. Ever. If someone doesn't want it, they suffer no penalty for refusing it. But even so, bitcoin still is a marketable commodity, albeit a virtual one.

And, by the way, FINCEN doesn't make federal law anyway. And neither does the IRS.

Ecuador Bans Bitcoin In Favor Of Own National Cryptocurrency

Meaning what, exactly? That I could go to jail because I have access to bitcoin which exists solely as data in redundant databases worldwide, And I happen to be walking down the street in Ecuador? Do you think Ecuador law calls for imprisoning anyone who has *access* to bitcoin?

Did you know that you can get a bitcoin debit card? What you do is open an account at an international vendor. They send you a plastic debit card. You deposit bitcoin in your debit card account. And then when you use your card at any point of sale worldwide, or an ATM, the transaction goes through and your account is deducted the equivalent amount of bitcoin, including service fees, of course. So in this case, bitcoin doesn't even enter Ecuador jurisdiction. The exchange between bitcoin and the national currency (US Dollars) takes place in the country having the bitcoin debit card service. So Ecuador cannot do squat (it's not unusual for stupid laws to be passed in Latin America). Did you hear that President Maduro in Venezuela wants to ban lines of people that extend out of bakeries? Apparently the country's food shortage is embarrassing so this is his way of making people not hungry.

But this is what I meant about technology trumping law. This is reality today. Check out wirex: https://wirexapp.com/

There will be no exchange rates.

Top 40 sites for exchanging bitcoin. https://www.bestbitcoinexchange.io/

One World Government,Inc will control digital banking and 1 credit will have the same purchasing power in New Delhi that it does in Berlin.

Not so sure how easy that will work out. It's one of the things dogging the Euro. In any event, right now investors xfer wealth between fiat currencies as worldwide political and market conditions change, and this helps prop up all currencies. For example, when people lose confidence in the Euro, they sell Euros and buy US dollars. Then when things don't look good for the USD, they sell dollars and buy, say Japanese Yen.

But if there's only one world currency, then it won't be possible to flee to other currencies. So instead, they'll flee to commodities like oil, corn and gold. So in the end, even a one-world currency will suffer fluctuations in real value, arguably even moreso than happens today with competing national currencies.

There will be no exchange rates.

Top 40 sites for exchanging bitcoin. https://www.bestbitcoinexchange.io/

It's not all that complex,and I honestly can't understand why you don't "get it".

Is it because you don't WANT to "get it"?

Just exactly what do YOU think the words "One World Government" means?

As for U.S. law and your creative interpretations of it, remind me again about why you emigrated to Ecuador.

Because I like it better. I'll also remind you that a common tactic employed by those losing a debate is to resort to insults. You should be above that.

Give up with that crap already. You documented it all online and I have copies of your posts and you know it.

Your stated legal arguments were legal nonsense, just as your current legal arguments are delusional.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

http://www.cjmciver.org/cgi-bin/lwanread.cgi?2004-09-19 [can no longer access at link]

In your article on The Trial, you stated:

* If I proceed, I've got a 50/50 chance of winning, but I'm being handed a sure 'win' of sorts -- in the form of no criminal record -- on a silver platter.

At that moment the expatriation argument seemed to weigh heaviest of all things. This whole 'justice' system is a joke and I had the opportunity to make it all go away.

I looked at the judge and in what might be my most infamous moment, said 'I'll take it'.

[...]

I'm intrigued, and plan to visit this place -- I'll call it Oz -- and see for myself what it's like, because in my personal situation, with no wife, no kids, and a skill where geography means nothing, I actually have little practical need to stay in America. If learning a new language is the biggest obstical, I can overcome it. I have family that I love and very good friends that are very dear to me here, but beyond that, it seems all the land of the free has to offer me is continued second rate citizenship which culminated with criminal charges on May 17th. Is that actually going to change? The famed retort 'If you don't like America, why don't you leave' isn't just a sarcastic comment anymore. Beyond being a suggestion, it might be a good idea.

When you present your wackaloon views of the law to police or courts, it does not end well. You presumed you can present your nutbaggery to the police and act like a jerk and not face consequences.

What you proved is that you have a right to express your views on the law, and when you act on your misguided views, the police have the right to put your butt in jail. When the rubber met the road, you pleaded guilty, and you had no case to proceed with other than fringe tax protester gobbledygook.

As for your LWAN (Living Without A Number) delusion, you had a Social Security Number all the time, just as you have one now. Once you have one, it stays with you, delusional tax protester gobbledygook notwithstanding. Nor do your delusions entitle you to drive without a valid license, or with a suspended license, without consequences.

Regarding the law, you have a penchant to state things as fact which are directly contrary to actual law or opinions of the U.S. Supreme Court. You are entitled to your opinion even if it is delusional and has no basis in law. Others are entitled to state actual law.

As you discovered, acting on your delusions may entitle you to a jail cell.

And you made clear that you decided to leave the U.S. because you felt all the country had to offer you was continued second rate citizenship, and the best way to make the U.S. justice system leave your life would be for you to leave the country.

Lawyer strategy: When the law is on your side, pound on the law. When the facts are on your side pound on the facts. When neither is on your side, pound on the table.

It's not all that complex,and I honestly can't understand why you don't "get it".

Is it because you don't WANT to "get it"?

Just exactly what do YOU think the words "One World Government" means?

Maybe I don't get it. But I suspect you don't either. We're not communicating very well today, are we?

We're not communicating very well today, are we?

We don't seem to be.

Maybe a better explanation is that a One World Government was the dream of Stalin,Hitler,and every other dictator in history.

How open do you think Stalin or Hitler would have been to an underground economy not under their control that was fueled by bitcoins?

How open do you think Stalin or Hitler would have been to an underground economy not under their control that was fueled by bitcoins?

Black markets are never liked by those in control. But they nevertheless exist when market forces are sufficient to create them and the law is insufficient to prevent them from arising, and that is the case with bitcoin.

Black markets are never liked by those in control. But they nevertheless exist when market forces are sufficient to create them and the law is insufficient to prevent them from arising, and that is the case with bitcoin.

We are in the digital age now,bubba. You,or all people should be able to understand the implications. You work in the field.

There will be NO black markets because THERE WILL BE NO ACTUAL MONEY. Only digits on a computer screen that can be transferred from one GOVERNMENT account to another GOVERNMENT account.

The CLOSEST you will be able to come to your fantasy of a black market is giving a neighborhood kid a ham for cutting your lawn. You won't be able to give him any money BECAUSE YOU WON'T HAVE ANY MONEY TO GIVE. ALL you will have is debits and credits on an account monitored and controlled by Big Massa Gubbermint.

If you try to pay the kid with credits,the system will take note of the credits and tax him on them.

We are in the digital age now,bubba. You,or all people should be able to understand the implications. You work in the field.

Indeed I do, which is why I've advocated the position I have. I've taken the time to study cryptocurrency not long ago so I know more than just what one might surmise from a single article. But I guess I've done a poor job of explaining.

Yes, Bitcoin is digital. Yes, it works over the internet which can be monitored and even recorded by big brother. But it's also encrypted like many other things so the gov doing the recording will hardly be able to tell bitcoin transactions from ordinary credit card purchases. There is only one way to kill bitcoin and that is to kill the entire internet. But if that's done, gov controlled money will also be impossible. We'll be back to the 1970's.

I agree with you that one world gov is bad. But even if that comes and it presents a one-world, centrally controlled currency, I predict decentralized cryptocurrency like bitcoin will be there to compete.

You seem to have forgotten the discussion was about digital current, not me. You should learn to lose with at least a little bit of grace instead of resorting to insults and attacking with issues not raised.

Lawyer strategy: When the law is on your side, pound on the law. When the facts are on your side pound on the facts. When neither is on your side, pound on the table.

No, it was about the power of the government.

You were babbling your sovereign citizen nonsense about how the government lacks power to enforce its laws against your sovereign citizen observations. I will not waste my time with your legal babble. The Federal government has enough power to regulate currency.

You pushed the babble of a tax fraudster. He was sent for a second stretch at Club Fed for fraud, and his son followed. The business was shut down by the Federal government and barred by permanent injunction from selling its bogus products regarding the law.

You decided you had the right to drive without a valid license. You tried your sovereign citizen nonsense with the local cops on a traffic stop for driving at night without headlights, was arrested for no valid license, and criminally convicted upon your plea of guilty.

You decided that the way for you to get out from under the sheer power of the local fuzz of Maryland was to retreat to Ecuador. But you still want to tell me that the Federal government is powerless to do much of anything in the face of your proclamations of bogus law.

As for your load of crap that you tried to unload on me that you went to Ecuador "because [you] like it better," that is contradicted by your own contemporary writings.

When the law is on your side, argue actual laws. When the facts are on your side, argue the facts. And when you have no real argument, make up sovereign citizen nonsense and proclaim the lack of power of the Federal government. Or the lack of power of the state of Maryland. But do it from Ecuador, and not in a U.S. courtroom, or to a cop. That ends predictably.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnSd-E3Hb3Y

Judge Hysterically Owns a Sovereign Citizen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aptvDqvt5M4

Sovereign Citizen in Court on Trial for No Valid Registration -- GUILTY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Dvcd4Yzqjs

Sovereign Citizen: The Sitcom - Gettin' Tazed

No, it was about the power of the government.

It was at the point of discussion about bitcoin where you suddenly decided to issue a personal attack instead of discussing the issue of the legality of bitcoin. If you think I said something about cryptocurrency that wasn't accurate, then the proper response, assuming you choose to respond at all, which is, of course optional on your part, would be to refute it, not issue a personal attack.

I am not the one that turned the discussion from bitcoin to me. That was you who did that. I suppose I should be flattered that you consider me so important.

Since you didn't post any legal material refuting my statement about it being legal for a community to use poker chips as money instead of US legal tender, and given that is your practice to do so, I think it's safe to assume you searched but found no such material.

Legal Tender laws create an obligation only on the receiver of legal tender, not the person who tenders. If two people make an exchange of maple leaves for real goods or services, it's not a violation of legal tender law. Counterfeit laws prohibit creating something that purports to be legal tender US currency. It is not against the law to make rounds of metal of whatever sort so long as no representation is made that they are legal US currency.

Now on the issue of cryptocurrency, I am a software professional and I have studied cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. So while you likely know more about so-called case law and such than me, I likely know more about Information Technology issues than you do, including bitcoin and cryptocurrency. That you despise me as greatly as you do doesn't change that. I suggest you grow up and get used to that fact. Once you do, you'll be amazed at what it's like to carry on objective discussions like an adult.

[nc #44] No, it was about the power of the government.

[Pinguinite #45] It was at the point of discussion about bitcoin where you suddenly decided to issue a personal attack instead of discussing the issue of the legality of bitcoin.

No, I maintained the sheer power of the government to extinguish bitcoin.

[Pinguinite #17] Even with digital money, control will not necessarily reside with the government. Bitcoin is a decentralized currency that no government, central bank or other entity, governmental or non-governmental, can control. It's not possible to delete a bitcoin wallet. At least not until quantum computing becomes a reality, and then someone will make a quantum currency.

[nc #18] Government can quite easily prohibit any and all corporate entities from engaging in any bitcoin transaction. You can be a bitcoin millionaire and not be able to buy a cup of coffee.

[Pinguinite #20] I'm sure if it was logistically possible to outlaw bitcoin, it would have been done so by now.

[nc #25] If the government is challenged by bitcoin, the response can be to make the penalty for any infringing corporation to be dissolved. The corporate entity would cease to exist. WalMart could not do business on a mass scale in illegal digital currency on a down low basis where they would not be caught. Corporations would not touch the crap. The NSA could shut down such a currency at will. The corporate world cannot depend on a currency that could be drained dry like Mt. Gox.

[Pinguinite #27] Bitcoin is information, and "spending" consists of trading information. You can legally "spend" bitcoin anywhere Freedom of Speech exists.

[Pinguinite #29]

Since bitcoin is decentralized, that would be quite a task. Bitcoin is based on BlockChain technology, which is a redundant database distributed throughout the net. The authority for who has how much bitcoin is essentially by popular consensus among all nodes (databases) in the blockchain as a whole. So if you managed to fool one node or even several nodes into saying you were a bitcoin billionaire, once other nodes failed to agree, the errant nodes would correct the error, and you'd be poor again.

Nuclear war could take out the entire western hemisphere, and blockchain nodes in the eastern hemisphere would carry on registering bitcoin transactions. Or vice versa.

I suppose the only conceivable way to kill bitcoin would be with a virus that would be tuned only to attack blockchain nodes, the virus scheduled to wipe out nodes at a universally set time. But even with that, it's only a hope that all nodes would be infected by the appointed hour, and even then, there's the potential for backup nodes.

In the real world, millions were siphoned off Mt. Gox, the whole thing went bust, nothing was recovered. Crypto currency offers no protection whatever if a seller is a fraud, or your Mt. Gox goes bust.

You fail to acknowledge the forks that have occurred by accident, or address the capability of the NSA to intentionally create more forks.

As the SHA1 hash has been broken, you do not address your full faith and confidence in SHA256. The list goes on. I will humor you with some seperate posts addressing Bitcoin issues and deficiencies.

[nc #31]

As for U.S. law and your creative interpretations of it, remind me again about why you emigrated to Ecuador.

Only the U.S. government has authority to issue legal currency within the United States. Make any phony crap and issue it as currency and you get prosecuted.

Bitcoin is considered property and not legal tender in any U.S. jurisdiction.

[Pinguinite #34]

[nc] As for U.S. law and your creative interpretations of it, remind me again about why you emigrated to Ecuador.

Because I like it better. I'll also remind you that a common tactic employed by those losing a debate is to resort to insults. You should be above that.

[nc #37] you made clear that you decided to leave the U.S. because you felt all the country had to offer you was continued second rate citizenship, and the best way to make the U.S. justice system leave your life would be for you to leave the country.

[Pinguinite #38] You seem to have forgotten the discussion was about digital current, not me.

[nc #44] No, it was about the power of the government. You were babbling your sovereign citizen nonsense about how the government lacks power to enforce its laws against your sovereign citizen observations. I will not waste my time with your legal babble. The Federal government has enough power to regulate currency.

[Pinguinite #45] It was at the point of discussion about bitcoin where you suddenly decided to issue a personal attack instead of discussing the issue of the legality of bitcoin. If you think I said something about cryptocurrency that wasn't accurate, then the proper response, assuming you choose to respond at all, which is, of course optional on your part, would be to refute it, not issue a personal attack.

You were making yet another of your delusional sovereign citizen claims that the government lacks the power to do whatever it is that you feel impinges upon your freedom to do whatever you please. The government has no such lack of power. When the government demonstrated such power to you personally, you published at length about your infantile, self-destructive actions, stated your only alternative was to leave the country, published your intent to go on a shopping tour of South or Central America for a place to go, and that was before you had seen Ecuador.

There is no current issue of the legality of bitcoin. It is legal as property. If the price of your bitcoin (investment property) appreciates at all, and you buy a cup of coffee and exchange your bitcoin property for the coffee, you have a capital gain which is required to be reported to the IRS at tax time (under U.S. law). That is true for each and every such transaction, however small the gain.

If the value of your bitcoin (investment property) depreciates drasticly, say 50%, and your 100K becomes 50K, you run up against a $3,000 limit on property losses for single and married filers. If it were money your loss claim would be bigger... but Bitcoin is not money.

[Pinguinite #45] I am not the one that turned the discussion from bitcoin to me. That was you who did that. I suppose I should be flattered that you consider me so important.

You turned the discussion from Bitcoin to your delusional sovereign citizen observations about the law and the power of the government.

[Pinguinite #45]Since you didn't post any legal material refuting my statement about it being legal for a community to use poker chips as money instead of US legal tender, and given that is your practice to do so, I think it's safe to assume you searched but found no such material.

Legal Tender laws create an obligation only on the receiver of legal tender, not the person who tenders. If two people make an exchange of maple leaves for real goods or services, it's not a violation of legal tender law. Counterfeit laws prohibit creating something that purports to be legal tender US currency. It is not against the law to make rounds of metal of whatever sort so long as no representation is made that they are legal US currency.

It appears you do not understand the meaning of the word money. Personal property is not money.

Black's Law Dictionary, 6th Ed.

Money. In usual and ordinary acceptation it means coins and paper currency used as circulating medium of exchange, and does not embrace notes, bonds, evidence of debt, or other personal or real estate.

No, since I did not entertain another discussion of one of your delusional sovereign citizen infantile excursions into fantasy land, it is not safe to assume that I have neither found or already abundantly knew of such material. Your opinions on U.S. law are so delusional that any exposition would be embarrassing and humiliating to a normal person. I did not want to waste my time, knowing that nothing that can be said would make any difference. It would be like an attempt to educate a doorknob.

Your claim about money is precisely analagous to your prior delusional crap about not needing a valid license to drive, and your detailed publishing of your presumed, but hopelessly skewed, knowledge of the law.

Rounds of metal and poker chips are not money. If you create rounds of metal, with a likeness of Ron Paul on them, and circulate them as money in competition with real money, you may get a criminal conviction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_von_NotHaus

Bernard von NotHaus is the creator of the Liberty Dollar and co-founder of the Royal Hawaiian Mint Company, in Hawaii, U.S.A. He created the Free Marijuana Church of Honolulu. Von NotHaus was convicted of counterfeiting in 2011, allegedly for the purpose of domestic terrorism.

According to the evidence introduced during his 2011 federal criminal trial in connection with his involvement with the Liberty Dollar, von NotHaus was the founder of an organization called the National Organization for the Repeal of the Federal Reserve and Internal Revenue Code, commonly known as NORFED and also known as Liberty Services. The FBI claimed that NORFED's purpose was to mix Liberty Dollars into the current money of the United States and that NORFED intended for the Liberty Dollar to be used as current money in order to limit reliance on, and to compete with, United States currency

[...]

In connection with the Liberty Dollar business, a federal grand jury brought an indictment against von NotHaus and three others in May 2009 accusing him of counterfeiting U.S. currency. Von NotHaus was arrested on June 6, 2009 and entered a plea of not guilty on July 28.

In at least one interview, von NotHaus had been quoted as saying: "We never refer to the American Liberty as a coin.... The word ‘coin’ is a government-controlled term. This is currency that is free from government control.”

On March 18, 2011, after a 90-minute jury deliberation, von NotHaus was found guilty on various counts, including the making of "counterfeit coins" (resembling legal tender coins). Attorney for the Western District of [North Carolina], Anne M. Tompkins, described Bernard von NotHaus and the Liberty dollar as "a unique form of domestic terrorism" that is trying "to undermine the legitimate currency of this country." The Justice Department press release quotes her as saying: “While these forms of anti-government activities do not involve violence, they are every bit as insidious and represent a clear and present danger to the economic stability of this country".

According to the Associated Press:

Federal prosecutors successfully argued that von NotHaus was, in fact, trying to pass off the silver coins as U.S. currency. Coming in denominations of 5, 10, 20, and 50, the Liberty Dollars also featured a dollar sign, the word "dollar" and the motto "Trust in God," similar to the "In God We Trust" that appears on U.S. coins.

Von NotHaus appealed his conviction. Reemphasizing his contempt for the U.S. dollar, the appeal stated:

...if anything is clear from the evidence presented at trial, it is that the last thing Mr. von NotHaus wanted was for Liberty Dollars [to] be confused with coins issued by the United States government...His intention – to protest the Federal Reserve system – has always been plain. The jury's verdict conflates a program created to function as an alternative to the Federal Reserve system with one designed to [deceive] people into believing it was the very thing Mr. von NotHaus was protesting in the first place...the Liberty Dollars was not a counterfeit and was not intended to function as such. The verdict is a perversion of the counterfeiting statutes and should be set aside.

When asked about the government's motive for accusing him of terrorism, von NotHaus scoffed, "This is the United States government. It's got all the guns, all the surveillance, all the tanks, it has nuclear weapons, and it's worried about some ex-surfer guy making his own money? Give me a break!"

On Nov 11th, 2014 Judge Voorhees denied von NotHaus' Motion for Acquittal. On December 2, 2014 he was sentenced to 6 months house arrest, with 3 years probation. In an email he stated that his probation has been terminated early and he is now truly free. Termination of probation was formally granted December 9, 2015 by U.S. District Judge Richard L. Voorhees:

It took the jury all of 90 minutes to reach a unanimous verdict of guilty.

Your knowledge of the actual law is abysmal, or you just like to say make believe nonsense, knowing it is make believe nonsense.

[Pinguinite #45] Now on the issue of cryptocurrency, I am a software professional and I have studied cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. So while you likely know more about so-called case law and such than me, I likely know more about Information Technology issues than you do, including bitcoin and cryptocurrency.

Yeah, yeah. I spent some years doing absolutely nothing but software design and coding myself. It was so far back, Windows did not exist, but MS-DOS and Z-DOS did.

I am glad you have studied cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. I have been familiar with hashing and asynchronous encryption for about 30 years. I worked with online and offline encryption systems 50 years ago.

Your claims that the government is powerless against the anonymity of Bitcoin merely demonstrates your infantile naivete. It ranks up there with others' belief that the Swiss would never give up the identities behind numbered accounts. When it comes to raw power, the U.S. government has plenty. You can make believe it does not until you become the focus of its attention. Then you can take your standup act to Ecuador.

Your lack of imagination about Bitcoin is breathtaking.

The U.S. Government can overtly, or covertly, create thousands of competing crypto-currencies.

The Government can create its own cryptocurrency and create it's own Mt. Gox. It can make Bitcoin less attractive than its own product by restrictive regulations not applicable to its own product.

The U.S. Government has an extraordinary ability to print money. It could pump and dump Bitcoins driving the value up and down. If you can do that, and know in advance when the value will go up and down, there's some Bitcoin to be made in them thar hills. It is unregulated. A source with enough resources can destroy Bitcoin.

The tax regulations make its use extremely onerous, at least for those who care about the law. At a tax audit, some poor bastard will experience little success with sovereign citizen excuses.

That's like the nutbags in the videos telling cops they do not need a valid license and they know the law, and I'm not getting out of the car, and don't you break my window, ... and don't tase me bro. Then they get tased and become a howling Youtube sensation.

[Pinguinite #17] Bitcoin is a decentralized currency that no government, central bank or other entity, governmental or non-governmental, can control.

And on June 1, 2017 it was reported that "China's three largest bitcoin exchanges are allowing customers to withdraw bitcoins from their accounts," and "OKCoin China resumed withdrawals for traders."

When they can stop and resume withdrawals at will, I would consider that a modicum of control. If all my Bitcoin property is in there, that's awful. And there is nowhere to file a complaint but a rant on Youtube or on a blog.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-01/bitcoin-surges-back-above-2450-after-china-eases-exchange-controls

Bitcoin Surges Back Above $2450 After China Eases Exchange Controls

by Tyler Durden
Jun 1, 2017 8:37 AM

Bitcoin has retraced over half its losses from last week's tumble, rallying back above $2450 overnight after news that China's three largest bitcoin exchanges are allowing customers to withdraw bitcoins from their accounts.

As CoinTelegraph reports, on May 31, local Chinese Bitcoin and cryptocurrency news source cnLedger reported that OKCoin China resumed withdrawals for traders.

[...]

Bitcoin taxation is broken. Here’s how to fix it.

An exemption for small gains would take most of the headache out of using digital currencies like Bitcoin.

By Jerry Brito / April 12, 2017

We recently described what a bill creating a federal safe harbor for non-custodial uses of cryptocurrency should look like, and we’re now advocating for just such a bill in Congress. And now that it’s tax-filing season, today we’re proposing a simple legislation to create an exemption from taxation small personal gain on digital currency transactions. Here’s how we’d write such a cryptocurrency tax bill.

First, let’s define the narrow problem we want to address. While there are several things that could be improved with how the IRS treats cryptocurrency taxation and reporting, probably the simplest issue to focus on is the tax treatment itself.

In its March 2014 guidance, the IRS announced that cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are treated as property, which means gains from sale or exchange are taxed as capital gains rather than ordinary income. This is good because capital gains rates are generally lower than tax rates on ordinary income. However, unlike traditional government-issued currencies, property does not enjoy a de minimis exemption.

This is in contrast to how foreign currencies are treated, which do enjoy an exemption. Say you buy 100 euros for 100 dollars because you’re spending the week in France. Before you get to France, the exchange rate of the Euro rises so that the €100 you bought are now worth $105. When you buy a baguette with your euros, you experience a gain, but the tax code has an de minimis exemption for personal foreign currency transactions, so you don’t have to report this gain on your taxes. As long as your gains per transaction are $200 or less, you’re good to go.

Such an exemption does not exist for non-currency property transactions. This means that every time you buy a cup of coffee, or an MP3 download, or anything else with bitcoin, it counts as a taxable event. If you’ve experienced a gain because the price of Bitcoin has appreciated between the time you acquired the bitcoin and the time you used it, you have to report it to the IRS at the end of the year, no matter how small the gain. Obviously this creates a lot of friction and discourages the use of Bitcoin or any cryptocurrency as an everyday payment method.

[...]

http://www.investopedia.com/university/definitive-bitcoin-tax-guide-dont-let-irs-snow-you/

Bitcoin IRS Tax Guide For Individual Filers

By Ryan Selkis
Updated March 24, 2017 — 10:10 AM EDT

This tutorial takes an in-depth look at the coming tax consequences of IRS Notice 2014-21 for the U.S. Bitcoin industry.

While much has been written about the IRS tax guidance (first introduced March 2014) on virtual currencies, few have done comprehensive analyses of the plethora of record-keeping and enforcement challenges that will arise as a result of the agency's decision to treat Bitcoin as property rather than currency. Diverse stakeholders ranging from consumers, merchants, miners and Bitcoin service providers (all of whom may also be considered "investors" at various times) must now grapple with complex and unclear tax reporting requirements in the coming months - even though more clarifications and changes from the agency seem inevitable following the "public comment" period this spring.

We'll kick things off by outlining what Joe Consumer should discuss with his tax adviser in advance of filing his personal tax returns on April 15. For the sake of our article (and round numbers), we will assume that Joe is married and that he and his wife made a combined $100,000 of taxable income in 2016.

With that in mind, how should Joe report trading gains and losses for Bitcoin and any of his other alt-coin investments? How about purchases he made with Bitcoin?

What about the funds he lost in his trading account at the now-defunct Mt. Gox exchange - can those be written off? And how about that gift he gave to Dorian Nakamoto's fundraiser or the tips he received for his blog posts?

We'll attempt to tackle the basics for Joe Consumer, but the best synopsis may be this: Talk to a tax expert as soon as possible, even if you are one yourself.

Trading Gains & Losses

Property, Not Currency

The most widely reported aspect of the IRS ruling on Bitcoin has to do with its treatment as property. This is a favorable ruling for most investors given Bitcoin's stellar performance to date, as accrued long-term gains and losses will be taxed at the taxpayer's applicable capital gains rate (15% in Joe's case) rather than ordinary income rates (25% for Joe). For many early Bitcoin "miners" and investors, this constitutes a massive difference in marginal rates. That said, active traders who have racked up short-term capital gains may still be taxed at ordinary income rates.

Investors with trading losses, on the other hand, might not be so happy with the ruling. It will be much more difficult to write off bad Bitcoin bets now that they are considered property rather than currency. The IRS limits the amount of property losses (net capital losses, to be specific) that can be claimed on personal tax returns to $3,000 per year for both married and single filers, a limit that hasn't been raised since 1978. For these unfortunate folks, large short-term trading losses will need to be carried forward, in some cases for many years. Trading losers would have been much better off if they could have written off "foreign currency" losses against their ordinary income.

And this is the most basic application of the IRS guidance. Buckle up folks, because the rest of this article may blow your minds, not to mention demonstrate the dire need for the IRS to conform certain areas of the tax code to the new world's peer-to-peer structure. The full nuance of Bitcoin's property tax treatment is complex, but let's try to break it down piece by piece.

http://www.investopedia.com/university/definitive-bitcoin-tax-guide-dont-let-irs-snow-you/definitive-bitcoin-tax-guide-chapter-2-bitcoin-commerce-taxable-events-ecommerce-taxation.asp

Bitcoin Tax Guide: E-commerce Taxation

By Ryan Selkis

Under Notice 2014-21, the IRS claims capital gains and losses will depend on whether a "virtual currency is a capital asset in the hands of a taxpayer." Yet since there is no way for consumers to earmark their Bitcoin wallets as "non-capital" accounts, this really means that if Bitcoin is held in a wallet for any time period, it can be viewed as an investment like a stock or bond. This would mean that almost every time Joe used Bitcoin to purchase something as small as a cup of coffee at his trendy urban coffee shop, he would realize a gain or loss. For long-term holders like Joe, who had experienced a 10- or 100-fold increase in their bitcoins' value, they might incur a 30-cent capital-gain tax on their daily $2 cup of coffee.

This is the real tax-reporting boondoggle, which could threaten widespread consumer adoption of Bitcoin. There is no exemption for "de minimis" property gains or losses as there is with foreign currencies. So while Joe can buy euros for a trip to Paris, and then cash them out at a 5% gain during his return voyage, he doesn't need to worry about reporting a dime of that gain until he's hit $200 in total gains. On the other hand, according to IRS property rules, Joe should be ready to record a 30-cent capital gain and aggregate his records (via Form 1099-B) for every single cup of coffee he buys.

The complexity quickly begins to spiral out of control from there. What happens when he is settling up with his friends to pay the bar tab? Is Joe able to select which specific wallets he uses for his coffee purchases so that it's easier for him to separate his trading gains and his consumption? Would it be considered a wash sale if Joe bought more bitcoins after spending all of his assets on patio furniture at Overstock (Nasdaq:OSTK) and stocking stuffers at Gyft (both of which accept Bitcoin as payment)?

Some have suggested it is unlikely that the IRS has the resources to enforce these new policies, and that the guidelines are not intended to penalize "consumers." Indeed, even Keith Aqui, author of the IRS notice, suggested to the Wall Street Journal that the agency merely meant to discourage tax evasion on large purchases. Exempting de minimis Bitcoin transactions from reporting would limit onerous and unnecessary tax-reporting requirements, while still preserving the IRS's ability to collect taxes from larger Bitcoin investors who have been buying cars and condos with their investment gains. But that would also take an act of Congress, not an IRS clarification. So don't hold your breath.

Still, the fact remains that anyone who holds Bitcoin for any length of time can be considered an investor under the IRS guidelines. Consequently, the guidance appears to promote Bitcoin's use by consumers who use "instant conversion" tools that buy bitcoins at the moment they are needed for a transaction (e.g. international remittance) rather than those who hold Bitcoin in a checking-account style wallet. These "instant buy" tools might be the consumer complement to widely available merchant solutions, which allow businesses to instantly convert Bitcoin purchases to U.S. dollars.

Many consumer advocates, including the Tax Foundation, have called the guidance "inappropriate" with respect to reporting requirements, and some believe that this will dissuade many from using virtual currency altogether. But if there is a chance that the purchasing power in Joe's Bitcoin "checking account" doubles next year, will he really mind paying taxes on those gains? If reporting (and perhaps withholding) software materializes to seamlessly track his spending and transactions, maybe not.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-03-02/bitcoin-reaches-parity-gold

Bitcoin Reaches Parity With Gold

by Tyler Durden
Mar 2, 2017 10:02 AM

[...]

The volatility – or to be precise, the downside risk – makes it difficult for Bitcoin to be more widely adopted as money. What speaks for Bitcoin is that it has shown stellar performance over its short lifespan, but this stellar performance comes with considerable downside risk. A merchant accepting Bitcoin as payment is exposed to this downside risk unless he instantly exchanges Bitcoins back to currency following the transaction. Even though a cycle takes about 6 minutes in theory, exchanging Bitcoin to currency actually takes about one hour to confirm the transaction and another hour to confirm the price, during which at the very least the merchant is exposed to the downside volatility. Holding Bitcoins permanently might hold huge upside, but that also comes with intolerable downside risk for a merchant. After all, merchants should spend their time and energy with what they are best at (selling goods) rather than trading currencies and Bitcoin.

Another claim we don’t agree with is that Bitcoin is as free of counter-party risk as gold. What we have seen with Ethereum, another nascent cryptocurrency, is that these virtual currencies ultimately have a master key. With Ethereum, that key is controlled by a council that decides its future inflation rate; with Bitcoin, that key is controlled by Gavin Andresen, an engineer based in Massachusetts. There’s no guarantee that they won’t change the source code for the Bitcoin blockchain in the future, and when you “own” a Bitcoin you simply refer to the blockchain - a distributed ledger that tells you what and how much you own. In this regard, we don’t agree that Bitcoin does not have custodial or counter-party risk; the blockchain itself is the fat tail.

This means that for now, gold remains the only global currency in which individuals and corporations can transact with no time delay, with price volatility comparable to that of major currencies yet without counter-party risk, and one that has been proven as a store of value for thousands of years.

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION (Release No. 34-80206; File No. SR-BatsBZX-2016-30)

March 10, 2017

Self-Regulatory Organizations; Bats BZX Exchange, Inc.; Order Disapproving a Proposed Rule Change, as Modified by Amendments No. 1 and 2, to BZX Rule 14.11(e)(4), Commodity-Based Trust Shares, to List and Trade Shares Issued by the Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust

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http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-03-10/bitcoin-crashes-below-1000-after-sec-rejects-etf

Bitcoin Crashes Below $1000 After SEC Rejects ETF

by Tyler Durden
Mar 10, 2017 5:09 PM

After much anticipation (and a spike to record highs earlier today), The SEC has decided to reject the Winklevoss application for a Bitcoin ETF.

The SEC premise appears to be the unregulated nature of the underlying:

Based on the record before it, the Commission believes that the significant markets for bitcoin are unregulated.

Therefore, as the Exchange has not entered into, and would currently be unable to enter into, the type of surveillance-sharing agreement that has been in place with respect to all previously approved commodity-trust ETPs—agreements that help address concerns about the potential for fraudulent or manipulative acts and practices in this market - the Commission does not find the proposed rule change to be consistent with the Exchange Act.

https://www.scribd.com/document/182863849/Chicago-Fed-Bitcoin-A-Primer-pdf#from_embed

Chicago Fed Letter

Bitcoin: A primer

by François R. Velde, senior economist

[...]

Bitcoin is a fiduciary currency

Fiduciary currencies—in contrast with commodity-based currencies (such as gold coins or bank notes redeemable in gold)—have no intrinsic value, and derive their value in exchange either from government fiat or from the belief that they may be accepted by someone else. They are inherently fragile; government orders can be ignored or doubted, and a currency that has value only because of the belief that it will have value may have no value at all (for instance, if I believe that no one will accept it, I will not accept it either).

The term “mining” may lead one to think that bitcoin is not fiduciary. Producing one bitcoin per day at current levels of difficulty requires a machine worth about $3,000 and about a dollar’s worth of electricity per day. If the machine is depreciated over five years, the cost of producing one bitcoin is about $2.50. But once created, the bitcoin has no value other than in exchange, contrary to a gold coin.

Bitcoin’s viability as currency

Can bitcoin truly rival or even replace existing currencies—particularly in the form of cash? A dollar bill in my hand cannot be anywhere else at the same time, my ownership of it is undoubted, and it can be exchanged immediately and finally. The many ingenious features of bitcoin try to emulate these properties of cash, but do so at some costs. One prominent cost is the loss of anonymity. Possession of the virtual currency must be linked to the unique identifier of the wallet. Admittedly, there is no limit on the number of wallets one can own and there are ways to make the wallet hard to trace back to its owner, but these require additional efforts. Another cost of using bitcoin is in the speed of the transaction. At a minimum, one must wait ten minutes for the proposed transaction to be included in the block chain, and for large amounts it is customary to wait for six blocks, or one hour. These times are much slower than those to complete electronic retail transactions in most other currencies (e.g., a few seconds to charge a credit card either online or at a physical retail location), not to mention the times to make large financial transactions on standard networks.

Why this delay to complete bitcoin transactions? It is rooted in the decentralized nature of the bitcoin network (and its reliance on a sort of majority voting), which is both its most ambitious feature and its main vulnerability. The confirmation that the bitcoin is not being spent twice must await validation by the network, requiring at least ten minutes (although confirmation might be skipped for small transactions). Moreover, there have been a few instances of “forks,” moments when part of the network accepted one new block as valid while another part rejected it and accepted a different block. These incidents happened for accidental reasons, but a fork could someday be the result of malicious action. It is generally thought that it would be too expensive for a single malicious user (or group of malicious users) to take over more than half of the network; but if bitcoin were to grow significantly in value, this calculation could change.

One well-known fork that emerged in March 2013 was due to nodes using two different versions of the bitcoin protocol.4 This incident reminds us that the bitcoin protocol is based on open-source software. Bitcoin is what bitcoin users use. The general principles of bitcoin and its early versions are attributed to an otherwise unknown Satoshi Nakamoto;5 improvements, bug fixes, and repairs have since been carried out by the community of bitcoin users, dominated by a small set of programmers. Although some of the enthusiasm for bitcoin is driven by a distrust of state-issued currency, it is hard to imagine a world where the main currency is based on an extremely complex code understood by only a few and controlled by even fewer, without accountability, arbitration, or recourse.

The role of the state

A fiduciary currency like bitcoin is useful only insofar as others accept it broadly. As a matter of theory, this broad acceptance need not rely on the state, and history certainly offers several examples of currencies used without state support, oftentimes because the state-sponsored currency was proving deficient. But throughout most of Western history, the state has involved itself in money. At a minimum, the state has used money as a coordinating device, usually supporting its value by accepting it in the payment of taxes. The state has also concerned itself with money because one main function of money is to free a debtor from his or her obligations, tying money to an essential state function, the administration of justice. That is why the U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power “to coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures.” Bitcoin is free of the power of the state, but it is also outside the protection of the state. How likely is bitcoin to remain so if it gains wide acceptance and the incentives to hijack it grow accordingly?

Fraud concerns

[...]

Bitcoin is indeed free from government (so far) but has turned out unlike anything Hayek imagined. It is not issued by a private enterprise operating in a competitive environment, disciplined by the market to maintain the stable value of its currency. The bitcoin network is an automaton, issuing currency at a predictable rate, perfectly incapable of providing “good money” in Hayek’s sense, i.e., a currency of stable value.

[...]

Conclusion

So far, the uses of bitcoin as a medium of exchange appear limited, particularly if one excludes illegal activities. It has been used as a means to transfer funds outside of traditional and regulated channels and, presumably, as a speculative investment opportunity. People bet on bitcoin because it may develop into a full-fledged currency. Some of bitcoin’s features make it less convenient than existing currencies and payment systems, particularly for those who have no strong desire to avoid them in the first place. Nor does it truly embody what Hayek and others in the “Austrian School of Economics” proposed. Should bitcoin become widely accepted, it is unlikely that it will remain free of government intervention, if only because the governance of the bitcoin code and network is opaque and vulnerable. That said, it represents a remarkable conceptual and technical achievement, which may well be used by existing financial institutions (which could issue their own bitcoins) or even by governments themselves.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Ulbricht

[excerpt]

Ross Ulbricht

Ross William Ulbricht (born March 27, 1984) is a former darknet market operator, best known for being convicted of creating and running the Silk Road website until his arrest. He was known under the pseudonym "Dread Pirate Roberts".

Ulbricht was convicted of money laundering, computer hacking, conspiracy to traffic fraudulent identity documents, and conspiracy to traffic narcotics in February 2015. He is currently serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. The conviction and sentence went to appellate court, but the appeal was denied on May 31, 2017.

[...]

Silk Road, arrest and trial

Main article: Silk Road (marketplace) § Arrest and trial of Ross Ulbricht

"The Dread Pirate Roberts" attributed his inspiration for creating the Silk Road marketplace as "Alongside Night and the works of Samuel Edward Konkin III." As early as 2009 Ulbricht had been contemplating the idea of building an online black market that would use Tor and bitcoin to evade law enforcement. Tor is a protocol which encrypts data and routes internet traffic through intermediary servers which anonymize IP addresses before reaching a final destination. By hosting his market as a Tor site, Ulbricht could conceal its IP address. Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency; while all bitcoin transactions are recorded in a log, the blockchain, if users can avoid linking their identities to their online "wallets" they can conduct transactions with considerable anonymity.

Ulbricht began work on developing his online marketplace in 2010 as a side project to Good Wagon Books. He also sporadically kept a diary during the operating history of Silk Road; in his first entry he outlined his situation prior to launch, and predicted he would make 2011 "a year of prosperity" through his ventures. Ulbricht may also have included a reference to Silk Road on his LinkedIn page, where he discussed his wish to "use economic theory as a means to abolish the use of coercion and aggression amongst mankind" and claimed "I am creating an economic simulation to give people a first-hand experience of what it would be like to live in a world without the systemic use of force." To author Nathaniel Popper, the creation of Silk Road was an act of "sheer desperation" after Ulbricht exhausted most of the nest egg he had out of college on his failed businesses. Ulbricht moved to San Francisco prior to his arrest.

Ulbricht was first connected to "Dread Pirate Roberts" by Gary Alford, an IRS investigator working with the DEA on the Silk Road case, in mid-2013. In October 2013, Ulbricht was arrested and accused by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of being the "mastermind" behind the site. Ulbricht was taken into custody at the Glen Park branch of the San Francisco Public Library.

To prevent Ulbricht from encrypting or deleting data on the laptop he was using to run the site as he was arrested, two agents pretended to be quarreling lovers. When they had sufficiently distracted him, one of the agents took his computer away and inserted a USB flash drive that cloned all the data on the hard drive. Agent Chris Tarbell presented Ulbricht the warrant for his arrest.

Ulbricht was charged with money laundering, computer hacking, conspiracy to traffic narcotics, and procuring murder. The charge of procuring murder was removed from the indictment although the evidence was factored into Ulbricht's sentence. Ulbricht was convicted of all the remaining charges after a jury trial that concluded in February 2015. He was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole on 29 May 2015. His lawyers submitted an appeal on 12 January 2016, centered on claims that the prosecution illegally withheld evidence of DEA agents' malfeasance in the investigation of Silk Road, for which they were convicted. The oral hearing for the appeal was 6 October 2016.. On May 31, 2017, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit denied Ulbricht's appeal, and affirmed the judgment of conviction and life sentence, in a written opinion authored by the Honorable Gerard E. Lynch, United States Circuit Judge.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road_(marketplace)#Arrest_and_trial_of_Ross_Ulbricht

Silk Road (marketplace)

Silk Road was an online black market and the first modern darknet market, best known as a platform for selling illegal drugs. As part of the dark web, it was operated as a Tor hidden service, such that online users were able to browse it anonymously and securely without potential traffic monitoring. The website was launched in February 2011; development had begun six months prior. Initially there were a limited number of new seller accounts available; new sellers had to purchase an account in an auction. Later, a fixed fee was charged for each new seller account.

In October 2013, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) shut down the website and arrested Ross William Ulbricht under charges of being the site's pseudonymous founder "Dread Pirate Roberts". On 6 November 2013, Silk Road 2.0 came online, run by former administrators of Silk Road. It too was shut down, and the alleged operator was arrested on 6 November 2014 as part of the so-called "Operation Onymous”.

Ulbricht was convicted of eight charges related to Silk Road in U.S. Federal Court in Manhattan and was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.

The prosecutor believed that none of the six contracted murders-for-hire occurred. One charge of procuring murder is to be dealt with in a separate pending trial in Maryland; the other five were never filed.

He is currently serving his life sentence at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York.

[...]

Arrest and trial of Ross Ulbricht

Ulbricht was indicted on charges of money laundering, computer hacking, conspiracy to traffic narcotics, and attempting to have six people killed. Prosecutors alleged that Ulbricht paid $730,000 to others to commit the murders, although none of the murders actually occurred. Ulbricht ultimately was not prosecuted for any of the alleged murder attempts.

The FBI initially seized 26,000 bitcoins from accounts on Silk Road, worth approximately $3.6 million at the time. An FBI spokesperson said that the agency would hold the bitcoins until Ulbricht's trial finished, after which the bitcoins would be liquidated. In October 2013, the FBI reported that it had seized 144,000 bitcoins, worth $28.5 million, and that the bitcoins belonged to Ulbricht. On 27 June 2014, the U.S. Marshals Service sold 29,657 bitcoins in 10 blocks in an online auction, estimated to be worth $18 million at current rates and only about a quarter of the seized bitcoins. Another 144,342 bitcoins were kept which had been found on Ulbricht's computer, roughly $87 million. Tim Draper bought the bitcoins at the auction with an estimated worth of $17 million, to lend them to a bitcoin start-up called Vaurum which is working in developing economies of emerging markets.

[...]

On March 15, 2015, director/screenwriter Alex Winter debuted at the South by Southwest Film Festival a movie based on Silk Road. Deep Web gives the inside story of the arrest of Ross Ulbricht.

In a letter to Judge Forrest before his sentencing, Ulbricht stated that his actions through Silk Road were committed through libertarian idealism and that "Silk Road was supposed to be about giving people the freedom to make their own choices" and admitted that he made a "terrible mistake" that "ruined his life".

On May 29, 2015, Ulbricht was given five sentences to be served concurrently, including two for life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. He was also ordered to forfeit $183 million. Ulbricht’s lawyer Joshua Dratel said that he would appeal the sentencing and the original guilty verdict. On May 31, 2017, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit denied Ulbricht's appeal, and affirmed the judgment of conviction and life sentence, in a written opinion authored by the Honorable Gerard E. Lynch, United States Circuit Judge.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(anonymity_network)

Tor (anonymity network)

Tor is free software for enabling anonymous communication. The name is derived from an acronym for the original software project name "The Onion Router". Tor directs Internet traffic through a free, worldwide, volunteer network consisting of more than seven thousand relays to conceal a user's location and usage from anyone conducting network surveillance or traffic analysis. Using Tor makes it more difficult for Internet activity to be traced back to the user: this includes "visits to Web sites, online posts, instant messages, and other communication forms". Tor's use is intended to protect the personal privacy of users, as well as their freedom and ability to conduct confidential communication by keeping their Internet activities from being monitored.

Onion routing is implemented by encryption in the application layer of a communication protocol stack, nested like the layers of an onion. Tor encrypts the data, including the next node destination IP address, multiple times and sends it through a virtual circuit comprising successive, randomly selected Tor relays. Each relay decrypts a layer of encryption to reveal only the next relay in the circuit in order to pass the remaining encrypted data on to it. The final relay decrypts the innermost layer of encryption and sends the original data to its destination without revealing, or even knowing, the source IP address. Because the routing of the communication is partly concealed at every hop in the Tor circuit, this method eliminates any single point at which the communicating peers can be determined through network surveillance that relies upon knowing its source and destination.

An adversary might try to de-anonymize the user by some means. One way this may be achieved is by exploiting vulnerable software on the user's computer. The NSA had a technique that targets a vulnerability – which they codenamed "EgotisticalGiraffe" – in an outdated Firefox browser version at one time bundled with the Tor package, and in general, targets Tor users for close monitoring under its XKeyscore program. Attacks against Tor are an active area of academic research, and are welcomed by the Tor Project itself. However, Tor was not only developed for a time in the early 2000s by individuals who "were on contract from DARPA and the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory", but since its inception the bulk of its funding has come from the federal government of the United States.

History

The core principle of Tor, "onion routing", was developed in the mid-1990s by United States Naval Research Laboratory employees, mathematician Paul Syverson and computer scientists Michael G. Reed and David Goldschlag, with the purpose of protecting U.S. intelligence communications online. Onion routing was further developed by DARPA in 1997.

The alpha version of Tor, developed by Syverson and computer scientists Roger Dingledine and Nick Mathewson and then called The Onion Routing project, or TOR project, launched on 20 September 2002. The first public release occurred a year later. On 13 August 2004, Syverson, Dingledine and Mathewson presented "Tor: The Second-Generation Onion Router" at the 13th USENIX Security Symposium. In 2004, the Naval Research Laboratory released the code for Tor under a free license, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) began funding Dingledine and Mathewson to continue its development.

In December 2006, Dingledine, Mathewson and five others founded The Tor Project, a Massachusetts-based 501(c)(3) research-education nonprofit organization responsible for maintaining Tor. The EFF acted as The Tor Project's fiscal sponsor in its early years, and early financial supporters of The Tor Project included the U.S. International Broadcasting Bureau, Internews, Human Rights Watch, the University of Cambridge, Google, and Netherlands-based Stichting NLnet.

From this period onwards, the majority of funding sources came from the U.S. government.

In November 2014 there was speculation in the aftermath of Operation Onymous that a Tor weakness had been exploited. A representative of Europol was secretive about the method used, saying: "This is something we want to keep for ourselves. The way we do this, we can’t share with the whole world, because we want to do it again and again and again." A BBC source cited a "technical breakthrough" that allowed the tracking of the physical location of servers, and the number of sites that police initially claimed to have infiltrated led to speculation that a weakness in the Tor network had been exploited. This possibility was downplayed by Andrew Lewman, a representative of the not-for-profit Tor project, suggesting that execution of more traditional police work was more likely. However, in November 2015 court documents on the matter generated serious ethical security research as well as Fourth Amendment concerns.

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https://theintercept.com/2015/07/01/nsas-google-worlds-private-communications/

XKEYSCORE

NSA's Google for the World's Private Communications

Morgan Marquis-Boire, Glenn Greenwald, Micah Lee
The Intercept
July 1 2015, 9:49 a.m.

[excerpt]

One of the National Security Agency’s most powerful tools of mass surveillance makes tracking someone’s Internet usage as easy as entering an email address, and provides no built-in technology to prevent abuse. Today, The Intercept is publishing 48 top-secret and other classified documents about XKEYSCORE dated up to 2013, which shed new light on the breadth, depth and functionality of this critical spy system — one of the largest releases yet of documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

[...]

XKEYSCORE for hacking: Easily collecting user names, passwords and much more

XKEYSCORE plays a central role in how the U.S. government and its surveillance allies hack computer networks around the world. One top-secret 2009 NSA document describes how the system is used by the NSA to gather information for the Office of Tailored Access Operations, an NSA division responsible for Computer Network Exploitation (CNE) — i.e., targeted hacking.

Particularly in 2009, the hacking tactics enabled by XKEYSCORE would have yielded significant returns as use of encryption was less widespread than today. Jonathan Brossard, a security researcher and the CEO of Toucan Systems, told The Intercept: “Anyone could be trained to do this in less than one day: they simply enter the name of the server they want to hack into XKEYSCORE, type enter, and are presented login and password pairs to connect to this machine. Done. Finito.” Previous reporting by The Intercept revealed that systems administrators are a popular target of the NSA. “Who better to target than the person that already has the ‘keys to the kingdom?’” read a 2012 post on an internal NSA discussion board.

This system enables analysts to access web mail servers with remarkable ease.

The same methods are used to steal the credentials — user names and passwords — of individual users of message boards.

Hacker forums are also monitored for people selling or using exploits and other hacking tools. While the NSA is clearly monitoring to understand the capabilities developed by its adversaries, it is also monitoring locations where such capabilities can be purchased.

Other information gained via XKEYSCORE facilitates the remote exploitation of target computers. By extracting browser fingerprint and operating system versions from Internet traffic, the system allows analysts to quickly assess the exploitability of a target. Brossard, the security researcher, said that “NSA has built an impressively complete set of automated hacking tools for their analysts to use.”

Given the breadth of information collected by XKEYSCORE, accessing and exploiting a target’s online activity is a matter of a few mouse clicks. Brossard explains: “The amount of work an analyst has to perform to actually break into remote computers over the Internet seems ridiculously reduced — we are talking minutes, if not seconds. Simple. As easy as typing a few words in Google.”

These facts bolster one of Snowden’s most controversial statements, made in his first video interview published by The Guardian on June 9, 2013. “I, sitting at my desk,” said Snowden, could “wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge to even the president, if I had a personal email.”

[...]

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tailored_Access_Operations

Tailored Access Operations

The Office of Tailored Access Operations (TAO) is a cyber-warfare intelligence-gathering unit of the National Security Agency (NSA). It has been active since at least circa 1998. TAO identifies, monitors, infiltrates, and gathers intelligence on computer systems being used by entities foreign to the United States. The NSA terms these activities "computer network exploitation".

TAO is reportedly "now the largest and arguably the most important component of the NSA's huge Signals Intelligence Directorate (SID)[7] (SIGINT), consisting of more than 1,000 military and civilian computer hackers, intelligence analysts, targeting specialists, computer hardware and software designers, and electrical engineers."

A document leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden describing the unit's work says[not in citation given] TAO has software templates allowing it to break into commonly used hardware, including “routers, switches, and firewalls from multiple product vendor lines". According to The Washington Post, TAO engineers prefer to tap networks rather than isolated computers, because there are typically many devices on a single network.

[...]

Organization

TAO's headquarters are termed the Remote Operations Center (ROC) and are based at the NSA headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland. TAO also has expanded to NSA Hawaii (Wahiawa, Oahu), NSA Georgia (Fort Gordon, Georgia), NSA Texas (San Antonio, Texas), and NSA Colorado (Buckley Air Force Base, Denver).

Since 2013, the head of TAO is Rob Joyce, a 25-plus year employee who previously worked in the NSA's Information Assurance Directorate (IAD). In January 2016, Joyce had a rare public appearance when he gave a presentation at the Usenix’s Enigma conference.

In the Remote Operations Center, 600 employees gather information from around the world. Their motto is "Your data is our data, your equipment is our equipment - anytime, any place, by any legal means."[citation needed]

Data Network Technologies Branch: develops automated spyware

Telecommunications Network Technologies Branch: improve network and computer hacking methods

Mission Infrastructure Technologies Branch: operates the software provided above

Access Technologies Operations Branch: Reportedly includes personnel seconded by the CIA and the FBI, who perform what are described as "off-net operations," which means they arrange for CIA agents to surreptitiously plant eavesdropping devices on computers and telecommunications systems overseas so that TAO's hackers may remotely access them from Fort Meade. Specially equipped submarines, currently USS Jimmy Carter, are used to wiretap fibre optic cables around the globe.

Virtual locations

Details [citation needed] on a program titled QUANTUMSQUIRREL indicate NSA ability to masquerade as any routable IPv4 or IPv6 host. This enables an NSA computer to generate false geographical location and personal identification credentials when accessing the Internet utilizing QUANTUMSQUIRREL.

http://www.coindesk.com/who-broke-the-sha1-algorithm-and-what-does-it-mean-for-bitcoin/

Who Broke the SHA1 Algorithm (And What Does It Mean for Bitcoin)?

Feb 25, 2017 by Corin Faife

The cryptography world has been buzzing with the news that researchers at Google and CWI Amsterdam have succeeded in successfully generating a 'hash collision' for two different documents using the SHA1 encryption algorithm, rendering the algorithm 'broken' according to cryptographic standards.

But what does this mean in plain language, and what are the implications for the bitcoin network?

Hash collisions

As laid out in a recent CoinDesk explainer, a hash function (of which SHA1 is an example) is used to take a piece of data of any length, process it, and return another piece of data – the 'hash digest' – with a fixed length.

One way that hash functions are used in computing is to check whether the contents of files are identical: as long as a hash function is secure, then two files which hash to the same value will always have the same contents.

However, a hash collision occurs when two different files hash to the same value.

Given the mathematical laws that govern hash functions, it is inevitable that hash collisions will occur for some values of input data (because the range of data you could put into the hash function is potentially infinite, but the output length is fixed).

For a secure hash function, the probability of this should be so small that, in practice, it is not possible to make a sufficient number of calculations to find it.

The significance of the Google/CWI team's results is in the fact that they were able to create a hash collision by finding a much more efficient method – 100,000 times more efficient in fact – than simply guessing every possible value of data.

It's the efficiency of this method that means SHA1 is now officially broken. (These results are outlined in more depth on SHAttered.io, with an explanation of systems affected.)

The SHA1 bounty

On 23rd February, a sharp-eyed Redditor on the /r/bitcoin page made a post pointing out that a long-standing bounty for discovering just such a SHA1 collision has now been claimed.

The bounty – aimed to discover vulnerabilities in the algorithm – was originally announced by cryptography researcher Peter Todd in a post on the Bitcoin Talk forum in September 2013, but remained unclaimed until this week.

The challenge consisted of a script, written by Todd, which would allow anyone to move the bitcoins from the bounty address to an address of their choice if they could submit two messages which were not equal in value, but resulted in the same digest when hashed.

In addition to Todd, other contributors also donated to the bounty fund, raising a total of 2.5 bitcoins.

According to the researcher, the timing of the claim – slightly after publication of the collision attack – suggests that it was a third party who had read the Google team's research and made use of the results, rather than one of the original researchers, that took the reward.

Todd said:

"If it was the authors themselves, we would have expected the bounty to be claimed just prior to the announcement being published. As it happened, that wasn't the case."

Ramifications for bitcoin

It's important to stress that the cryptography underpinning the bitcoin network, which makes use of the more secure SHA256 algorithm, is not directly affected by the discovery.

But, besides enriching the mystery bounty recipient, the SHA1 collision vulnerability does pose a concern for the bitcoin development community, since its Git version control system uses SHA1 to generate the hash digest for commits.

"The consequences aren't that we have to stop using Git immediately," Todd said, "but it will make it more important to review other people's work, because a third party could try to push a malicious commit in."

The vulnerability here is that an attacker could theoretically create two different versions of a code commit that would appear to be the same when hash values were compared – though for now, given the vast number of computations still needed to find a collision, it's highly unlikely that could happen.

As well as SHA1, Todd has placed similar bounties on the RIPE MD160 and SHA256 hash functions – both of which are necessary for the integrity of the bitcoin standard, and would therefore be calamitous for the network if compromised.

Todd concluded:

"If you claim that bounty, you better go spend your bitcoins pretty quick."

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/02/bitcoin-is-broken-heres-a-simple-plan-to-fix-it/283624/

Bitcoin Is Broken—Here's a Simple Plan to Fix It

It doesn't work as a currency, but it could help build the financial architecture of web payments. Here's how.

Matthew O'Brien Feb 5, 2014

Reuters

Nerds love Bitcoin, and they think you should too.

Actually, they think you will. They think it's the payments system, if not the currency, of the future. Something that will end Paypal, not the Fed. A way to send anything to anyone online for little to no fees. But mostly, they think Bitcoin is a technical marvel—because it is. Though that doesn't make it an economic marvel. At least not yet.

Netscape founder and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen is one of those nerds. He thinks Bitcoin is a game-changing technology on the scale of the PC and the Internet. In his telling, all were discounted as techie playthings, and all went on—or will go—to so fundamentally change how we live that we can't imagine life without them. There's something to that, but it's not enough on it's own. As I put it before, every big idea starts out sounding crazy, but not every crazy-sounding idea ends up being big. Some of them end up being ... Segway. That said, Bitcoin does hold a lot of promise, and it could change how we pay for things. But it's not there yet.

Here's why it could be big, why it isn't, and how it could in seven steps.

1. It's called the double-spending problem. Say I send you money online. You can't tell whether I've sent the exact same money to somebody else too. It's just too easy for me to copy the money's digital information, and use it more than once. Maybe I'm honest. But maybe I'm not, and I'm "paying" you with a dollar that's already been spent.

2. That's where financial institutions come in. They sit in the middle of every online transaction, and confirm that, yes, this money hasn't been spent before. These intermediaries add trust to the system, but this trust doesn't come cheap: They typically charge 2.5 percent per transaction.

3. Bitcoin's genius is it confirms transactions with a decentralized network of people who don't charge fees instead of financial institutions that do. Who are these people doing something for nothing? Well, they're Bitcoin miners, and they're not actually working for free—they're getting paid with new bitcoins.

For the uninitiated, Bitcoin is a virtual currency with a strictly limited supply that only grows at a slow, preset rate. Basically digital gold. And like actual gold, the only way to get new bitcoins is to "mine" them—but by solving computationally-taxing math problems, not with a pick and pan. In this case, though, the invisible hand is plenty easy to see. Solving these math problems doesn't just win new bitcoins for individual miners. It verifies all Bitcoin transactions for the entire network.

4. So why do people bother mining for bitcoins? Well, the question answers itself: because it's profitable, and they expect it to be even more so if Bitcoin keeps going up in value. This last point is critical. Bitcoin mining has become incredibly competitive the last few years—just look at the supercomputer fortresses in Iceland that use geothermal power and Arctic air for cooling—and that competition drives down margins. That means miners are really counting on Bitcoin to continue its journey to infinity and beyond, to keep rising forever.

5. When the price of money goes up, the price of everything else goes down. It's called deflation, and it's death for an economy. People put off buying things when they'll cost less tomorrow than today. Companies put off investing when their customers put off buying. And people who borrowed money are stuck trying to pay debts that don't change with wages that do—and have fallen.

But Bitcoin's deflationary bias is a feature, not a bug. It's why miners want to mine, and why there are no transaction fees. In other words, Bitcoin can't work as a technology without deflation. The question is whether Bitcoin can work as a currency with it.

Probably not. At least not when there's this much deflation. You can just how much there's been in the chart below from Peter Coy. It shows how much prices would have had to fall in 2013 if they'd been set in bitcoins instead of dollars.

[chart omitted]

https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/BitcoinCPI.png

Now, to be fair, prices aren't set in bitcoins, and never will be. As Joe Weisenthal points out, it doesn't matter how much prices fall in bitcoins as long as prices are set in dollars—it won't hurt the real economy. But what about the Bitcoin economy? Will Bitcoin deflation hurt it? Almost certainly.

6. It's called Gresham's Law, and it's a simple idea: Bad money drives out the good. It dates back to when rulers would literally debase their currencies by reducing the amount of precious metals in coins, but kept the face values the same. (That's how inflation used to work). The government, of course, would try to collect all the old coins to burn them down, and make new ones. But it couldn't always, and this would create a two-tiered money system. There were old coins with more silver and gold, and new coins with less. So people would hoard the old, more valuable coins, and spend the new, less valuable ones.

It's the same with bitcoins and dollars. Why spend a currency that might go up in value ten or a hundred times—or more!—when you can spend one that won't? People don't. The only time people do use bitcoins is when they can't use dollars (or euros or yuan)—when they want to do something illegal. Things like buying drugs, gambling online, and evading capital controls. Indeed, 60 percent of all Bitcoin activity happens on the gambling site Satoshi Dice.

Other than that, people just hold on to their bitcoins; 64 percent are in accounts that have never been used. Which makes sense, if you think of Bitcoin as a dotcom stock instead of as a currency. It's not like people would use Facebook stock to buy things if they could do that instead of using dollars.

7. Bitcoin would be a clear step forward as a payments system if people actually used it to pay for things. But they don't. The people who have bitcoins don't use them, and the people who don't have them don't want them. Indeed, a new survey from The Street finds that 79 percent of people have never used a cryptocurrency, and never want to.

But there's an easy fix. Just ask yourself why sellers are so happy to accept Bitcoin. It's not just that there are no fees. It's that merchants can instantly turn their bitcoins into dollars thanks to startups like Bitpay. Sure, that means paying a fee, but it's lower than what they'd have to pay the credit card companies—and it means they don't have to worry about Bitcoin's incredibly volatile value.

Bitcoin needs the same thing for buyers. It needs a company that can immediately turn a buyer's dollars into bitcoins and then immediately turn a seller's bitcoins back into dollars—all for a lower fee than traditional intermediaries charge. You wouldn't have to worry about buyers not being willing to spend their bitcoins, because it wouldn't be their bitcoins. Nobody would even realize they were using bitcoins: buyers would pay with dollars and sellers would get dollars back. In other words, Bitcoin would stop trying to be a currency and start being a financial architecture. Of course, it would take a lot of bitcoins to make this work, but it would work if you had them.

Bitcon's killer app is a Bitcoin monopoly.

#1, I do not have to answer to you for my life's choices of where to live or the reason(s) I have for whatever my choice may have been in the past, is in the present, or may be in the future. I did not make my geographic location an issue on this thread. You did, intending to use it as a personal insult against me, as though doing so would support your arguments about bitcoin or whatever. But as any adult would tell you, that doesn't work. If you have a case or argument to make, then you should address the points without resorting to personal attacks.

In case it's not apparent, I don't know where you live and I don't care, as I know that where you chose to live has nothing to do with the views you have. So you should learn from my example.

#2, Bitcoin may have it's technical flaws. It would not be surprising, though the free market pricing usually takes that into account, and that market's opinion of bitcoin has been rising substantially of late. But that was not the issue we were discussing. The point I made was simply that technology would trump any laws attempting to ban bitcoin, as any such prohibitions would be relatively easy to circumvent, such as the now existent wirex service that allows you to have a debit card with bitcoins but which can be used for any visa/mastercard purchase worldwide.

#3) Whether the IRS considers bitcoins money or property is completely immaterial. Tax consequences of bitcoin are completely immaterial. At least to me. I never made any representations about that.

#4) Obviously Gresham's Law applies. People would prefer to use the intrinsically less valuable currency, which is why USD is currently preferred over bitcoin. But again, I never claimed otherwise.

#5) The case against Liberty Dollars, Your own post states:

On March 18, 2011, after a 90-minute jury deliberation, von NotHaus was found guilty on various counts, including the making of "counterfeit coins" (resembling legal tender coins).

This supports my claim that using poker chips for "money", should a community choose to do that, is not a violation of legal tender laws so long as the poker chips are not represented as US currency. The only reason for the conviction was that the jury was convinced that Liberty Dollars were intended to be passed off as legal tender coins. This conviction supports what I said, not what you said. You were simply happy to report the conviction of NautHous.

It's apparent you simply have an emotional hatred of bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general, and that my statement about laws failing to stop it set you off and erroneously gave you the impression that I believed bitcoin to be a utopian currency. While I do think the decentralized blockchain technology behind it is genius, that does not mean it's without flaws. If nothing else causes bitcoin to fall, quantum computing will destroy it, along with all other internet encryption, but of course, quantum-based encryption would usher a new quantum currency. If you really are a computer professional, you should understand how technology is growing exponentially, and is impacting all aspects of life, and it will impact the law no less than anything else.

[Pinguinite #58] It's no wonder why they call you Nolu Spam.

Oh, your poor dear. Let's face it. Nolu Spam will always be a better name than inmate.

[Pinguinite #45] If you think I said something about cryptocurrency that wasn't accurate, then the proper response, assuming you choose to respond at all, which is, of course optional on your part, would be to refute it, not issue a personal attack.

First you say a personal attack should not be used (not that I made one), then you say the proper response was to respond to your inanity, then when you get what you asked for, you issue a personal attack, demonstrating why I said giving a full response would be a waste of time.

[Pinguinite #58] #1, I do not have to answer to you for my life's choices of where to live or the reason(s) I have for whatever my choice may have been inthe past, is in the present, or may be in the future.

How true. But when your current statement flies in the face of past statements you published at the relevant time, I am free and fully justified in pointing out, with your own words, that you are merely trying to revise history. It is called rebuttal by prior inconsistent statement.

[Pinguinite #58] I did not make my geographic location an issue on this thread. You did, intending to use it as a personal insult against me, as though doing so would support your arguments about bitcoin or whatever. But as any adult would tell you, that doesn't work. If you have a case or argument to make,then you should address the points without resorting to personal attacks.

You were giving your creative opinions on U.S. law. You have a history of publishing such creative opinions. You come from a history where two associates went to prison for peddling fraudulent legal nonsense, and you went to jail for practicing you claimed belief that you did not need a valid driver's license. You published your nonsense at length. When you attempt to shovel more of the same sort of manure about U.S. law, relating your history as you published it is fair game. You could always try to clean up your act.

You drove a car with a five year expired license, drove after dark without headlights, and got pulled over. One would think this was not a propotious moment to be a jerk, inviting additional difficulty. Here is your description of that you proceeded to do.

Around 9:30 PM, I climbed into my car and drove off down Main Street. It was after dark and a bit rainy but the streetlights were quite ample to light the way. Someone ahead flashed headlights, and I realized mine were off. I turned them on. No problem.

About a half mile ahead, disco lights behind me. I pulled over, but so did they. Why was I being stopped? Been almost 5 years since the last one but I knew the drill. I pulled out my tape recorder, and reminded myself -- again -- that driving on a suspended license would probably get me arrested. Suspended, because I never did pay that pesky fine from 5 years ago, and suspension is how Maryland's DMV deals with such callousness, even if the license had already expired. [five years ago]

The officer approached -- a sherriff deputy. 'You know why I stopped you, don't you?'

'I have no idea'. I didn't. We were about a half mile from when I had turned my lights on and that I'd driven less that 2 blocks with them off had already been forgotten. Getting pulled over for that is unheard of.

'No headlights. License and Registration, please.'

I had registration, but of course no license. It took me a moment to get my act together. These incidents never do come when you expect them. Never when it's convenient. The deputy seemed a bit impatient in the rain. All I could come up with is just doing things by the book. Don't volunteer anything. Give and do only what is demanded and ordered. [nc - Buy a new book.]

'If you are requesting them, I'm denying that request'. After all, he was conducting an investigation of me and I had a right to not voluntarily help him compile his case. Besides, if I cooperated too much, he'd find out Maryland had me down for 'suspended'.

Not surprisingly, he called for backup and it seemed in no time there were about 5 more police cars behind him and another across the street. They were easy to count, because everyone of them had red disco lights lighting up the block. [Perhaps you were just a cop favorite.]

'Get out of the car'. Okay, that sounded like an order to me. I got out, still holding my tape recorder. In these situations, having an accurate record of what transpires is important to preserve my rights, particularly since I had no witnesses around.

He led me behind my car, in front of his cruiser. Numerous uniforms stood all around me. 'I'm recording this conversation, sir'. Recording a traffic stop secretly got one person in trouble, even though it was a recording of a police officer who purely engaged in harassment. I'd no desire to be secretive anyway. Let's keep everything above board.

'Turn it off. You need my permission to record me and you don't have that.'

'If I turn it off, I won't respond to any questions'. Without the recording, I won't have any record of exactly what transpires, and then it will simply be a matter of my word against his as to what transpired. Don't I have a right to have a witness present in the form of the tape recorder. [nc - You do not have a right to carry a tape recorder in hand.]

'Turn it off or have it confiscated.'

Sounded like an order. When a guy with a gun tells you to do something, it's best to do it. 'I'm turning it off'. I did so, even though I firmly believed this officer had no lawful authority whatsoever to deny me a record of the events, and placed it in my car.

'What's your name?'

Didn't really sound like an order. Sounded like a question, and questions are not orders. Just like when police ask if they can search your car. That's a request and no one has to comply with police requests. Not knowing the difference between a request and a demand has gotten people in trouble.

Motorists and passengers ignorantly complying with such requests, even when they believe they are orders, are not permitted to claim 4th or 5th Amendment violations when contraband is found in such circumstances. That 'case law' or 'case history' as I prefer to call it clearly established a burden upon motorists to understand the difference between a request and a demand, and the determining factor is simply what the officer says. Surely, I'm no more duty bound to notify the officer that it was his requests I wasn't responding to than police are duty bound to explain to motorists what things they need not volunteer. That's fair.... right?

Since it was not an order, I could or should have the option to say nothing, and since he deprived me of an audio record of my response, I decided it was was within my rights to stay mum.

'You're under arrest. You have the right to remain silent....'. [nc - You learned the power of the government agent unamused by your tired act] How ironic. He ran though the familiar Miranda just like they do in the movies. 'Do you understand these rights?'

'No, it seems I don't.'

As he made a valid traffic stop, he had the authority to search your vehicle.

He had the right to your identity, your license, registration and insurance. He had the right to have you exit it the car. He had the right to have you put down your recording device.

[Pinguinite #58] In case it's not apparent, I don't know where you live and I don't care, as I know that where you chose to live has nothing to do with the views you have. So you should learn from my example.

I learned from your example. Acting like a jerk with a cop when you are clearly in the wrong ends up with you in a cell. I prefer not to be locked up or charged and convicted. You wrote about it as if you were the hero of the story. It is clear you did not learn much. At least you learned to take a plea when your case was hopeless.

I have about a 20 year history of things posted online. They are fair game. You posted all about your plans to expatriate, your plans to shop for a place to do so, and that you found that place in Ecuador. I published the country you live in long after you had repeatedly published that information to the world. Please feel free to tell what country I live in. It is the United States.

Your published writings established a direct link between your views and your expatriation. Your prior inconsistent statements are fair game to challenge your revised history.

[Pinguinite #58] #2, Bitcoin may have it's technical flaws. It would not be surprising, though the free market pricing usually takes that into account, andthat market's opinion of bitcoin has been rising substantially of late. But thatwas not the issue we were discussing. The point I made was simply that echnology would trump any laws attempting to ban bitcoin, as any such prohibitions would be relatively easy to circumvent, such as the now existent wirex service that allows you to have a debit card with bitcoins but which can be used for any visa/mastercard purchase worldwide.

There you go again, demonstrating why a substantive response to you was a waste of time and like trying to educate a doorknob.

Under U.S. law, Bitcoin as property is subject to regulations that do not apply to money.

[Pinguinite #58] The point I made was simply that technology would trump any laws attempting to ban bitcoin, as any such prohibitions would be relatively easy to circumvent

That is the sort of shit that the Kotmair's went to prison for. You blathered that you did not need a valid license to drive and went to jail.

Some poor bastard getting an IRS audit tells the IRS that he did not have to report capital gains on his investment property (bitcoin) because he knows the law because he reads it on the internet, as published by Pinguinite. That sounds like the start of a story that does not end well.

You always have a way to circumvent the law. Your reader should know that if they believe the shit you shovel, they should be prepared to leave the country or pack a toothbrush.

How about trying to address how to COMPLY with the law, rather than just saying you have a way to circumvent the law. Saying that your profession of bogus law, and your advocacy of circumventing the actual law, led you to flee the United States, is not a personal attack but a warning and necessary information for those reading your line of crap. Your reader should know straight up that you advocate circumventing (or breaking or ignoring) the law, that you went to jail for doing so, and your associates went to prison.

[Pinguinite #58] #3) Whether the IRS considers bitcoins money or property is completely immaterial. Tax consequences of bitcoin are completely immaterial. At least to me. I never made any representations about that.

Oh, it's immaterial to you if people believe your crap and the tax implications are immaterial as long as you do not tell your reader.

[Pinguinite #58] #4) Obviously Gresham's Law applies. People would prefer to use the intrinsically less valuable currency, which is why USD is currently preferred over bitcoin. But again, I never claimed otherwise.

Get it thorugh your thick head: Bitcoin is not currency. It is not money. It is property. Keep saying it until it sinks in.

As I quoted in my #45, and you are unable to refute - Bitcoin is not spent for everyday purchases. It is spent for illegal stuff, like to satisfy your penchant of circumventing the law. At the time of writing the source article, 60% was being spent on a gambling site.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/02/bitcoin-is-broken-heres-a-simple-plan-to-fix-it/283624/

Bitcoin Is Broken—Here's a Simple Plan to Fix It

It doesn't work as a currency, but it could help build the financial architecture of web payments. Here's how.

Matthew O'Brien Feb 5, 2014

Reuters

[...]

5. When the price of money goes up, the price of everything else goes down. It's called deflation, and it's death for an economy. People put off buying things when they'll cost less tomorrow than today. Companies put off investing when their customers put off buying. And people who borrowed money are stuck trying to pay debts that don't change with wages that do—and have fallen.

But Bitcoin's deflationary bias is a feature, not a bug. It's why miners want to mine, and why there are no transaction fees. In other words, Bitcoin can't work as a technology without deflation. The question is whether Bitcoin can work as a currency with it.

Probably not.

[...]

Why spend a currency that might go up in value ten or a hundred times—or more!—when you can spend one that won't? People don't. The only time people do use bitcoins is when they can't use dollars (or euros or yuan)—when they want to do something illegal. Things like buying drugs, gambling online, and evading capital controls. Indeed, 60 percent of all Bitcoin activity happens on the gambling site Satoshi Dice.

Other than that, people just hold on to their bitcoins; 64 percent are in accounts that have never been used. Which makes sense, if you think of Bitcoin as a dotcom stock instead of as a currency. It's not like people would use Facebook stock to buy things if they could do that instead of using dollars.

7. Bitcoin would be a clear step forward as a payments system if people actually used it to pay for things. But they don't.

[Pinguinite #58] #5) The case against Liberty Dollars, Your own post states:

On March 18, 2011, after a 90-minute jury deliberation, von NotHaus was found guilty on various counts, including the making of "counterfeit coins" (resembling legal tender coins).

This supports my claim that using poker chips for "money", should a community choose to do that, is not a violation of legal tender laws so long as the poker chips are not represented as US currency. The only reason for the conviction was that the jury was convinced that Liberty Dollars were intended to be passed off as legal tender coins. This conviction supports what I said, not what you said. You were simply happy to report the conviction of NautHous.

You merely strive to prove my point that it is not possible to educate a doorknob.

You can make believe you do not comprehend the meaning of the word money, but it does nothing to bolster your claim of knowing U.S. law.

Money is currency. Contrary to your bogus crap about legal tender laws (uncited and unquoted), poker chips can not be used as money, and as money, they are unlawful. A one ounce silver round is legal. A one ounce silver round (or poker chip) which you claim to be money can get you a criminal conviction.

As I stated at #46:

Black's Law Dictionary, 6th Ed.

Money. In usual and ordinary acceptation it means coins and paper currency used as circulating medium of exchange, and does not embrace notes, bonds, evidence of debt, or other personal or real estate.

No, since I did not entertain another discussion of one of your delusional sovereign citizen infantile excursions into fantasy land, it is not safe to assume that I have neither found nor already abundantly knew of such material. Your opinions on U.S. law are so delusional that any exposition would be embarrassing and humiliating to a normal person. I did not want to waste my time, knowing that nothing that can be said would make any difference. It would be like an attempt to educate a doorknob.

Your claim about money is precisely analagous to your prior delusional crap about not needing a valid license to drive, and your detailed publishing of your presumed, but hopelessly skewed, knowledge of the law.

Rounds of metal and poker chips are not money. If you create rounds of metal, with a likeness of Ron Paul on them, and circulate them as money in competition with real money, you may get a criminal conviction.

Bitcoin and poker chips are property, not money. Call them money, or give them too much resemblance to money, and you may acquire a criminal conviction.

A reader who depends on your blather about U.S. law, or how to circumvent U.S. law, should understand the source from which this blather emanates, and the possible consequences.

[Pinguinite #58] It's apparent you simply have an emotional hatred of bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general, and that my statement about laws failing to stop it set you off and erroneously gave you the impression that I believed bitcoin to be a utopian currency.

Your excuse making sounds like a cross between Hillary Clinton and Kathy Griffin.

I have no emotional hatred of bitcoin or cryptocurrency. There is some genius in the idea. I have a disdain for deliberately false arguments that can get believers in legal or tax difficulties, and I have a disdain for a position that knowingly relies upon circumventing the law and which withholds that information from the reader. Your crap will give no comfort whatever to some gullible reader who finds himself in a nasty tax audit.

You present bitcoin, TOR and SHA256 as ensuring that one's identity is unattainable. It may not be obtainable by Joe Curious, but the power of the government has been demonstrated. Ross Ulbricht, the founder of Silk Road, is an example of one who did not remain so anonymous. He is doing two life terms.

You asked me to point out any flaws in your nonsense about Bitcoin. Now you attempt to run and hide and obfuscate.

[Pinguinite #58] While I do think the decentralized blockchain technology behind it is genius, that does not mean it's without flaws. If nothing else causes bitcoin to fall, quantum computing will destroy it, along with all other internet encryption, but of course, quantum-based encryption would usher a new quantum currency.

There is nothing like instant bullshit. Just add water and you have bullshit.

GOVERNMENT Quantum computers could destroy Bitcoin before was any chance whatever for them to be generally available to the public. Anyway, what's the jurry? Just think of the big database of names users of TOR ard Bitcoin are making via their usage for illegal shit.

Only a fool thinks that TOR keeps one anonymous from the NSA and the other agencies with access to the shared data. What keeps most users anonymous is that they have not attracted enough attention to distinguish them from the other 300 million and become the focus of a determined government effort. It is not the powerlessness of the government to give you an anal probe.

[Pinguinite #58] If you really are a computer professional, you should understand how technology is growing exponentially, and is impacting all aspects of life, and it will impact the law no less than anything else.

I did not say I am a computer professional. I am retired, left the computer field decades ago (except for making some of my own computers), and I am well aware of how fast the technology changes.

Somewhat off topic, but I found a recent FR announcement unintentionally amusing:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3557844/posts

[excerpt]

ANNOUNCEMENT: We have installed a new SHA-256 secure server certificate on our freerepublic.com domain and we have a NEW donate link: https://freerepublic.com/donate/

FR is now more secure than ever! Google, Firefox, et al, were flagging our old SHA-1 secure server as "not secure" even though our certificate was paid-up, still valid, still in force and our secure server was still encrypting our donation transactions as securely as always to the SHA-1 standard.

FR seems to remain blissfully unaware that the SHA-1 hash was broken. At my #56, I linked the quoted the article that spread the news in February: "The cryptography world has been buzzing with the news that researchers at Google and CWI Amsterdam have succeeded in successfully generating a 'hash collision' for two different documents using the SHA1 encryption algorithm, rendering the algorithm 'broken' according to cryptographic standards."

PGP with Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange and Digital Signatures utilized hashing. Asychronous Encryption occurs where one key is used to encrypt the file and a different key is used to decrypt the file. You publish your public key online. I encrypt with your public key. Even I cannot decrypt the encrypted version I create and sent to you. You use your private key, known to and possessed only by you to decrypt the file. The Digital Signatures are used to prevent a Man-in-the-Middle attack. PGP was developed in 1991, well before Bitcoin.

[Pinguinite #34] And, by the way, FINCEN doesn't make federal law anyway. And neither does the IRS.

Where do you get this insane bullshit? The majority of U.S. law is administrative law, published by the administrative agencies of the executive branch in implementing the statutory laws of Congress.

Tell your nonsense to the IRS at an audit.

http://law.richmond.libguides.com/c.php?g=129566&p=1552476

RICHMOND SCHOOL OF LAW

Federal Tax Research

A selective list of titles intended to provide some of the more useful sources for researching tax law

Regulations are laws made by an executive branch agency under the authority of a statute passed by Congress. Regulations are first published in the Federal Register. The Treasury Department issues three types of administrative regulations: proposed, temporary and final. Temporary regulations are issued to provide guidance to tax payers on new tax provisions. They do not require a comment period and are effective immediately upon publication. Final and temporary regulations are first published as Treasury Decisions, which are recognized by a four digit citation, i.e. T.D. 8860 and a description of the purpose and content of the new regulation. Upon codification, regulations are assigned a prefix corresponding to the type of tax provision as indicated.

1        Income Tax
20 	Estate Tax
25 	Gift Tax
26 	Generation Skipping Tax
31 	Employment Tax
301 	Procedural Tax
601 	IRS Procedural Rules

[...]

What law is not changed, remains in effect. Technological advances do not change the statutory law, Congress does. Agencies change the regulatory law after Congress changes the statute law.

https://www.fincen.gov/what-we-do

United States Department of the Treasury

FinCEN

Financial Crimes Enforcement Network

What We Do

FinCEN is a bureau of the U.S. Department of the Treasury. The Director of FinCEN is appointed by the Secretary of the Treasury and reports to the Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence. FinCEN’s mission is to safeguard the financial system from illicit use and combat money laundering and promote national security through the collection, analysis, and dissemination of financial intelligence and strategic use of financial authorities.

FinCEN carries out its mission by receiving and maintaining financial transactions data; analyzing and disseminating that data for law enforcement purposes; and building global cooperation with counterpart organizations in other countries and with international bodies.

FinCEN exercises regulatory functions primarily under the Currency and Financial Transactions Reporting Act of 1970, as amended by Title III of the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 and other legislation, which legislative framework is commonly referred to as the "Bank Secrecy Act" (BSA). The BSA is the nation's first and most comprehensive Federal anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing (AML/CFT) statute. In brief, the BSA authorizes the Secretary of the Treasury to issue regulations requiring banks and other financial institutions to take a number of precautions against financial crime, including the establishment of AML programs and the filing of reports that have been determined to have a high degree of usefulness in criminal, tax, andregulatory investigations and proceedings, and certain intelligence and counter-terrorism matters.

The administrative laws have the force of law.

Your misstating of the law is, and has always been, dangerous. I would like to hear how you would COMPLY with the law, not how you can CIRCUMVENT it.

Your misstating of the law is, and has always been, dangerous.

You flatter me.