Funds held by banks are also not safe from seizure requests made by governments

So in other words it is for drug dealers and criminals.

It's a scam. It isn't anything but numbers on a computer. Utterly worthless. It is good for predators to take advantage of suckers though.

That is the way I see it.

Free market cypto cannot be printed ad infinitum.

I know it is just nothing based on nothing.

Pinguinite: Free market cypto cannot be printed ad infinitum.

---

A K A Stone: I know it is just nothing based on nothing.

Sounds just like the US Dollar, to me.

Except the dollar is accepted everywhere.

At what rate? You don't internationally travel very much, do you?

CRYPTO CURRENCY - THEFT AND LOSS

[Pinguinite #5] Hacking is an admitted and understood potential problem for any holder of crypto. To be clear, this is not a problem for the crypto blockchain which is the place where crypto holdings are actually recorded. This is instead a problem with the keys to the blockchain which are not on the blockchain but held privately in "wallets" which is not really an accurate description of how crypto works.

That the crypto may have functioned perfectly is no consolation for those whose virtual fortune has disappeared.

[Pinguinite #5] These keys must be kept secure and the hacking of crypto has always involved accessing these keys or otherwise causing these keys to be used by a hacker to transfer funds on the blockchain. In every case, therefore, hacking has been possible because of security failures related to the keys, which is the responsibility of individual parties that either hold the keys or produced 3rd party wallets, and not the responsibility of the blockchain or crypto as a whole.

This sweeping claim is evidently not accurate. People who had invested with Quadriga CX found out the hard way with the sudden death of founder GerGerald Cotten. Cotten died and nobody else seemed to know how to access the virtual fortune. There was no hack, nor any irresponsible parties. The virtual fortune is still safe with Gerald Batten who is not talking. Five years later, customers are still left in limbo.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47203706

Quadriga: The cryptocurrency exchange that lost $135m

By Jessica Murphy
BBC News, Toronto
17 February 2019

When the 30-year-old founder of a Canadian cryptocurrency exchange died suddenly, he took the whereabouts of some C$180m ($135m; £105m) in cryptocurrency to his grave. Now, tens of thousands of Quadriga CX users are wondering if they will ever see their funds again.

In 2014, one of the world's biggest online cryptocurrency exchanges - MtGox - unexpectedly shut down after losing 850,000 Bitcoins valued at the time at nearly $0.4bn (£0.3bn).

Its meltdown shook investors in the volatile emerging marketplace - but the calamity at the Tokyo-based company proved a boon for a new Canadian online cryptocurrency exchange.

"People like the fact we're located in Canada and know where their money is going," Quadriga CX founder Gerald Cotten said at the time.

Some five years later, Cotten's sudden, untimely death has left thousands of his customers scrambling for information about their own missing funds.

"We don't know whether or not we're going to get our money back," Tong Zou, who says he is owed C$560,000 - his life savings - told the BBC.

"There's just a lot of uncertainty."

This month, Quadriga - which had grown to become Canada's largest cryptocurrency exchange - was granted temporary bankruptcy protection in a Canadian court.

The firm said it had spent the weeks since Cotten's death trying desperately to "locate and secure our very significant cryptocurrency reserves".

[...]

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

[Pinguinite #5] But your dollars held in a bank are not protected against debasement or inflation, which is a loss of purchasing power.

While it is true that inflation or deflation causes a loss of purchasing power for money stored in a bank, or even stored in yourr wallet or under your mattress, it is also true that crypto is unregulated and subject to wild fluctuations if value, the likes I have never seen occcur with U.S. currency in my lifetime.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_cryptocurrency_crash

2018 cryptocurrency crash

The 2018 cryptocurrency crash (also known as the Bitcoin crash and the Great crypto crash was the sell-off of most cryptocurrencies from January 2018. After an unprecedented boom in 2017, the price of bitcoin fell by about 65 percent during the month from 6 January to 6 February 2018. Subsequently, nearly all other cryptocurrencies also peaked from December 2017 through January 2018, and then followed bitcoin. The cryptocurrencies' market capitalization lost at least 342 billion US dollars in the first quarter of 2018, the largest loss in cryptocurrencies up to that date. By September 2018, cryptocurrencies collapsed 80% from their peak in January 2018, making the 2018 cryptocurrency crash worse than the Dot-com bubble's 78% collapse. By 26 November, bitcoin also fell by over 80% from its peak, having lost almost one-third of its value in the previous week.

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

[Pinguinite #5] But free market crypto protects against these potential losses in value.

I see nothing which would support this claim. A crypto currency has no intrinsic value and may devalue to zero. Paper currency could devalue to zero. If paper currency devalued to zero, there would be nobody to buy your virtual currency with real currency, and nobody would exchange anything of value for virtual currency.

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

[nolu chan #3] With crypto, primarily used by crooks, drug dealers, tax evaders, and others attempting to avoid the law, a successful hack means you are usually shit out of luck, with no legal recourse.

[Pinguinite #5] Obviously a demonizing statement. Cars, guns, baseball bats and knives are also used by crooks attempting to conduct illegal activities.

Cars, guns, baseball bats and knives are readily distinguishable as they were not created with the intent of evading law enforcement action.

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

[Pinguinite #5] Government is in bed with these institutions and objecting to crypto due to its independence neglects the interests of the American people and all holders of legal tender US dollars.

I have made no objection to crypto due to its independence. It cannot be a legal currency because that is unlawful. It is unregulated, and there is little legal recourse in case of loss. As an investment it is UNSAFE due to unregulated value fluctuation, and theft or loss.

It is not demonization to observe that crypto currency was created as a means to evade government regulation.

https://www.investopedia.com/news/beware-9m-are-lost-each-day-crypto-scams/

$9 Million Lost Each Day In Cryptocurrency Scams

By Shobhit Seth
Updated Jun 25, 2019

While you may be tempted to think that open-source, decentralized, anonymous cryptocurrencies are safe because they are free of control from a single authority and work in a transparent manner, the reality is, they are constant targets for scams, including digital theft, phishing, fraud, and hacking. (For more, see Beware of these Five Bitcoin Scams.)

In a recent finding by Bitcoin.com News, $1.36 billion worth of cryptocurrencies have been stolen by fraudsters during the first two months of 2018.

Fraud constituted the majority of virtual currency scams, at 30 percent. It was followed by hacking attempts (22 percent), theft and exit scams (17 percent each), and phishing (13 percent).

The biggest recent heist occurred at cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck Inc in late January, where hackers made off with almost $500 million in virtual tokens. (See more: Coincheck May Have Suffered The Worst Hack In Cryptocurrency History.)

Around the same time, Bitconnect, a cryptocurrency-lending scheme, shut down its operations and vanished, leading to an exit scam with an estimated loss of around $250 million.

And in February, an Italian crypto exchange called BitGrail reported that it was hit with a hacking attempt that led to a loss of nearly $195 million worth of customers' virtual tokens.

[...]

https://www.pymnts.com/blockchain/bitcoin/2017/bitcoin-cryptocurrency-value-lost/

Bitcoin’s Missing 23 Percent Problem

By PYMNTS
Posted on November 27, 2017

Its expected that 21 million Bitcoins will have been mined by 2040, but the amount available to spend and trade will be a lot lower, according to recent reports from Fortune.

In fact, between 2.78 million and 4 million Bitcoin have disappeared already, implying 17 to 23 percent are already gone, according to new research from digital forensics firm Chainalysis. Each Bitcoin is valued at approximately $8,500 as of Saturday, Nov. 25.

Researchers have long made guesses as to how much of the cryptocurrency is gone, but Chainalysis’ findings rely on an empirical analysis of blockchain, the underpinnings of Bitcoin. The results reflect Bitcoins that have been lost completely — in the process of taking coins out of circulation, hoarding coins, buying and selling coins and strategic investments, among other factors — not those stolen by hackers or other bad actors.

The research shows that going forward more Bitcoins will be lost, but the rate will slow compared to the past because the cryptocurrency is more valuable. The new research also raises the question of whether the missing coins are already priced into the value of Bitcoin.

[...]

https://www.wired.com/story/wired-lost-bitcoin/

How WIRED Lost $100,000 in Bitcoin

Author: Louise Matsakis
WIRED
security
05.28.18 07:00 am

Back in 2013, when you could still mine bitcoins at home, WIRED was sent a small, sleek mining device manufactured by the now-defunct Butterfly Labs. We turned on the Roku-looking machine in our San Francisco offices and allowed it to do its job. A small fortune was soon amassed, now worth around $100,000. Then, we lost the money. Forever.

Here's what happened to WIRED's 13 Bitcoins—and to the millions of others that have faced the same fate.

[...]

Throwing Away the Key

To deal in bitcoin, you need at least two different keys, one public and one private (newer security protocols allow you to add more private keys). Together, the combination of codes lets you trade Bitcoin without an intermediary like a bank. You can look up WIRED's public key to send us money, and then in theory, we could use our private key to access those funds—had we not destroyed it. It's extremely unlikely we could successfully guess the code: it's 64 digits long and no one remembers what it was.

No additional copies of the private key exist, at least according to the people who were there. "I didn't make a copy of the paper, or commit the 64 characters on it to memory," says Antonowicz, the technologist who set up the miner. The good news is that if someone did move the coins, the transaction would be public, allowing WIRED to see where they traveled to. In fact, you too can check out WIRED's lost Bitcoins right here.

In theory, we might be able to recover the Bitcoin wallet from the hard drive where it was stored, but even that wouldn't be much help. "There might have been a way to forensically recover the wallet—with the encrypted key—from my hard drive, but I shredded that particular drive years ago," says Antonowicz.

Plus, even if the wallet was resurrected, it's encrypted. Breaking that protection via brute force would take an unimaginable amount of time. There are three times more possible combinations than there are atoms in the observable universe, by Antonowicz's count.

"Originally I was going to say that the closest metaphor I have is that we dropped a car key somewhere in the Atlantic, but I think it's closer for me to say we dropped the key somewhere between here and the Alpha Centauri," says Antonowicz.

Recovering our bitcoins is essentially like trying to recover a photo album on a lost computer. Except not only did you get rid of the hard drive, you also protected the album in an encrypted folder with a 64-digit passcode that you threw away.

Still, we wanted to make sure there was absolutely no way to get the bitcoins back. WIRED's editor-in-chief, Nicholas Thompson, suggested that if we were able to recover the funds, they might go toward hiring a full-time cryptocurrency reporter. I reached out to the founder of Butterfly Labs, who didn't respond. I also contacted Mark Frauenfelder, a writer and the author of a WIRED article about how he recovered $30,000 worth of Bitcoin. He agrees we're screwed.

"If you lost your private keys I think it’s game over," he says. I also looked into a service that tries to crack cryptocurrency wallets via sheer brute force. But their services would be no help, since we don't have access to the hard drive itself. It looks like WIRED really did lose the money forever. The good news is we're far from alone.

Lost and Never Found

Chainalysis, a research firm that analyzes activity across different cryptocurrency markets, estimates that between 2.78 and 3.79 million, or between 17 and 23 percent of all bitcoins have been lost. That includes wallets believed to belong to Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious founder of Bitcoin who hasn't touched his estimated 1 million coins since 2011.

“The number of lost coins over time will drop,” says Michael Gronager, the CEO and co-founder of Chainalysis. He argues that's because there’s more awareness of Bitcoin’s enduring value, even if the price wildly fluctuates. He also says that even if Satoshi were to reemerge, his activity wouldn't significantly impact the market because he wouldn't likely spend a large sum of Bitcoin at once.

There are several ways you can lose Bitcoin. Like WIRED, you can simply lose track of your private key or your hard drive. One of the most famous cases of this is what happened to James Howells, an IT worker in London who lost 7,500 bitcoins, or around $56 million, when his laptop was thrown away in 2013. He reportedly wants to dig through five years of trash to unearth the computer. This is the most common way to lose Bitcoin; even Elon Musk tweeted that he forgot how to access a portion of a coin.

You can also lose bitcoins by running buggy code or making software mistakes, though these instances are more rare. Last year, for example, someone forgot to collect their mining reward and burned 12.5 coins. In another similar incident, someone may have accidentally swapped a processing fee with the value of the transaction, resulting in nearly 300 coins lost. One time, someone even sent 2,600 coins to an incorrectly configured address, burning them into nonexistence. All of these examples come from BlockSci, a tool developed at Princeton University for analyzing the Bitcoin blockchain.

It can be difficult to assess whether any given bitcoin is really lost for good. "It's actually pretty difficult to say for certain. A lot of what we do is look at the big picture," says Harry Kalodner a PhD at Princeton who helped develop BlockSci. He says part of the problem is that you can rarely determine whether someone is just holding onto their Bitcoin, or whether they've definitively lost access to it. Since Bitcoin isn't controlled by any single authority, there's no one who can simply close your account.

So what could WIRED have done, were we to do the whole thing again? Since 2013, Bitcoin has added a number of new, more sophisticated features. For one, we could have locked our coins away until a certain date. "One Bitcoin feature that's been added is that it now supports time-locked coins, that makes them completely un-spendable until a set point in the future," says Kalodner. Like, say, May 2018, when the editor-in-chief could really use some money to hire another reporter.

https://time.com/5625194/japan-cryptocurrency-remixpoint-hack/

A Hacked Japanese Cryptocurrency Exchange Just Lost $32 Million of Virtual Money

By Associated Press July 12, 2019

(TOKYO) — A Japanese cryptocurrency exchange has reported a hack causing the loss of 3.5 billion yen, or $32 million, worth of virtual money.

Tokyo-based Remixpoint, which runs the BITPoint exchange as well as travel, used car and energy businesses, apologized Friday, saying the losses were confirmed starting Thursday.

The reason for the losses, which include bitcoins as well as Ethereum, Ripple and other kinds of cryptocurrencies, is under investigation.

About two-thirds of the losses affected customers while the rest of the missing assets belonged to Remixpoint, the company said in a statement. All transactions have been halted.

[...]

At what rate? You don't internationally travel very much, do you?

I don't care what your problem is. Get some pesos if you don't like it here.

Terminology is not established in the industry, but a crypto that can be created at will is only of use if it is centrally controlled and created. "Tether" is one such type. I call them "tokens". Tether Limited is a company that creates them and issues them at a cost of $1 per Tether coin. They are much like digital versions of coupons that you could find in magazines and newspapers. Any number can be printed. The value of Tether depends solely on the credibility, reliability and honesty of Tether Limited. If that company reneges on their redemption promise of $1 per Tether, holders of Tether are SOL.

Bitcoin, and what I call "free market" crypto is not centrally controlled and therefore it's value does not hinge upon the existence or trust of any single entity or even country or set of countries. Any one part of the world could be devastated by meteors or nuke war, and free market crypto will not be destroyed. Anyone can seek to coin/mint/mine additional coins, but it is a race to solve each set of coins in sequence, so the creation of new coins is limited. This limits the supply of them, and limited supply imparts value. To win the race to mine more coins, computers much solve problems so complex that it comes at a usage cost to do so, not unlike how mining for gold comes with an investment cost.

So no, it's not simply numbers. It is numeric solutions. Bitcoin also comes with utility value in serving as a medium of exchange between 2 parties anywhere on the internet. This provides a finance solution that in some cases is superior to that offered by traditional banking services. Namely, lower cost, no paperwork, no need to involve intermediary banks and no political sanctions that could interfere with the transfer (which can be disadvantageous or advantageous depending on the perspective, but is always advantageous to the immediate parties desiring to do the transfer).

That the crypto may have functioned perfectly is no consolation for those whose virtual fortune has disappeared.

As though no one has ever lost dollar holdings? It most certainly has via banks, both in distant times and in more recent times. But cash is constantly being stolen. The currency itself does not provide a guarantee vs loss due to a variety of methods. Even when banks are robbed, there is a loss. Perhaps not to the account holders directly but do you think the replacement funds are simply printed into existence without consequence? Wealth transfer *always* occurs either through debasement of the currency via more printing, in which case all USD holder pay the fee, or taxpayers picking up the bill.

So it is not accuarate to say that always safe in USD form, even when on deposit.

[Pinguinite #5] These keys must be kept secure and the hacking of crypto has always involved accessing these keys or otherwise causing these keys to be used by a hacker to transfer funds on the blockchain. In every case, therefore, hacking has been possible because of security failures related to the keys, which is the responsibility of individual parties that either hold the keys or produced 3rd party wallets, and not the responsibility of the blockchain or crypto as a whole.

This sweeping claim is evidently not accurate.

It most certainly is accurate. Your citation reflects a case of keys not being securely protected, just as I stated they must be.

Cotten died and nobody else seemed to know how to access the virtual fortune. There was no hack, nor any irresponsible parties. The virtual fortune is still safe with Gerald Batten who is not talking. Five years later, customers are still left in limbo.

In this case, Cotten and/or the company with which he was associated, utterly failed to safeguard the private keys to this fortune. It was gross negligence on their part. They apparently entrusted them to a single man's memory which was one heartbeat away for oblivion. That key could have been safeguarded in any number of ways. Bitcoin, by design, can be secured with multiple keys such that of, say, 5 different keys any 3 or 4 would be needed to access the funds. This protects both against the loss of any single key as well as protects against any one party from absconding with the funds unilaterally.

As for the members, who entrusted this company, that is most unfortunate for them of course, though ultimately, it was the account holders who chose to trust an incompetent company, so some of that responsibility resides with them, and not with the fundamental design of bitcoin.

While it is true that inflation or deflation causes a loss of purchasing power for money stored in a bank, or even stored in yourr wallet or under your mattress, it is also true that crypto is unregulated and subject to wild fluctuations if value, the likes I have never seen occcur with U.S. currency in my lifetime.

It most certainly has. Though it's not accuarte to simply conclude it has been "volatile" without also mentioning the tremendous growth in value it has seen over the years. The very first official bitcoin transaction was made for 2 pizzas. The cost: 10,000 bitcoin, which is about $100,000,000 at today's prices. Bitcoin has seen about 6 or 7 booms and busts but has not died. Each boom has well surpassed the prior boom, such that *even* if anyone had invested in bitcoin at the *worst* possible time of each boom with the exception being the most recent of $20k, he would still be sitting on a very healthy return today. And even today, with BTC price at about 50% of it's all time high, prospects are not altogether dire for it rising again above 20k.

Of course, this valuation is in US dollars, which is not necessarily the best benchmark.

2018 cryptocurrency crash

The 2018 cryptocurrency crash (also known as the Bitcoin crash and the Great crypto crash was the sell-off of most cryptocurrencies from January 2018. After an unprecedented boom in 2017, the price of bitcoin fell by about 65 percent during the month from 6 January to 6 February 2018.

This citation is not even accurate in terms of "unprecedented". It has gone up and down by amounts that would rock any standard commodity market to its core, but it's been far more up than down, even taking into consideration the half dozen or so busts that it's seen. 2018 was just the latest bust and its not even the biggest bitcoin has seen. My information is 93% drawdown is the record, and it has bounced back from that. I first accepted bitcoin for payment when it was about $450. I've certainly not done poorly with that particular transaction.

[Pinguinite #5] But free market crypto protects against these potential losses in value.

I see nothing which would support this claim. A crypto currency has no intrinsic value and may devalue to zero. Paper currency could devalue to zero. If paper currency devalued to zero, there would be nobody to buy your virtual currency with real currency, and nobody would exchange anything of value for virtual currency.

The first part of your comment implies that a paper currency that devalues to zero would still constitute "real currency". It also implies that crypto currency could or would not be exchangable for goods and services directly. It seems your thinking implies that cyrpto as never able to qualify as a currency itself, that it MUST be first exchanged for some kind of paper currency. That is certainly not the idea with which most crypto currencies were designed.

The second part of your comment that "nobody would exchange anything of value" for virtual currency in a world where no paper currency exists I see as fallacious. Currency exists not because people believe currency itself has value -- it doesn't (the paper form, at least). Currency exists as a tool for society to exchange goods and services. It's an invention that serves that purpose. And as long as society is in need of exchanging goods and services, something -- anything -- that can serve as a money will do. True, crypto has no intrinsic value but neither does the USD. But crypto does score fairly high when weighed against all properties a quality money must have such as being finely divisible, non-degrading/unlimited storage life, in limited supply, and easy to store.

[Pinguinite #5] Obviously a demonizing statement. Cars, guns, baseball bats and knives are also used by crooks attempting to conduct illegal activities.

Cars, guns, baseball bats and knives are readily distinguishable as they were not created with the intent of evading law enforcement action.

It was principly designed to evade abuse by the government itself as previously cited in regards to the 2008 finance crisis as well as the continuing problem of escalating national debt. If one believes the government is completely benevolent, then yes, they might see crypto as having little moral benefit.

I have made no objection to crypto due to its independence. It cannot be a legal currency because that is unlawful. It is unregulated, and there is little legal recourse in case of loss. As an investment it is UNSAFE due to unregulated value fluctuation, and theft or loss.

It is unregulated, but along with that unmanipulated. I agree loss is a danger, but there is no method of value storage that is completely risk free. For those who consider crypto to be only a temporary storage of value, it can be viewed as risky. As one who works in software development and is cognizant of the ever growing impact that technology has in society and given my general distrust of government which I consider well validated, I view crypto as a tool that is both unstoppable and a moralizing force to right some of societies wrongs. That is my personal assessment.

It is not demonization to observe that crypto currency was created as a means to evade government regulation.

No, not to evade regulation. It was to evade theft of value as previously mentioned. If one does not see anything morally wrong with the 2008 bailouts, one may indeed see the development of crypto as having only nefarious, immoral purposes. But bitcoin would not have any value if it was only used by the relatively small criminal elements in the world. It would only have value if the general population starts to adopt it. And the general population is that entity that the government is morally bound to serve. It was never intended that the government would rule the general public.

Re: your links at this point, I'll only say that yes, hacking and criminal theft of crypto has occurred, as has happened with all forms of wealth. Your source of investopedia may well be biased, as I have found that traditional financial professionals are generally anti-crypto simply because it is contrary to everything about finance they have ever learned. Crypto is a new kid on the block, and none of us likes it when we our lifelong expertise is challenged.

Bitcoin’s Missing 23 Percent Problem

Yes some crypto has been lost. There is a hard drive in a land fill somewhere that was accidentally thrown away in the early bitcoin days when bitcoin was worth fractions of a penny. The rightful owner has offered a sizeable percentage to anyone who can think of a way to find it. But it's not really necessary as far as the economy goes. The smallest increment of bitcoin is worth about 1/100th of a penny. If bitcoin gose to $1 million per coin, the smallest increment would be worth 1 cent. That's small enough to serve monetary needs, and even if it weren't, software upgrades could divide it even further.

So no, it's not a "problem" for bitcoin as a whole.

"If you lost your private keys I think it’s game over,"

FTR, most wallets -- all I am familiar with -- translate your private key to a series of 12 or 24 ordinary words that are much more easily memorized. With those words memorized or recorded somewhere, in the correct order, one can recreate their wallet and restore full access to funds. That provides a recovery method even if all of your electronics were destroyed in, say, a house fire.

As though no one has ever lost dollar holdings? It most certainly has via banks, both in distant times and in more recent times. But cash is constantly being stolen. The currency itself does not provide a guarantee vs loss due to a variety of methods. Even when banks are robbed, there is a loss. Perhaps not to the account holders directly but do you think the replacement funds are simply printed into existence without consequence? Wealth transfer *always* occurs either through debasement of the currency via more printing, in which case all USD holder pay the fee, or taxpayers picking up the bill.

Pinguine you are grasping at straws to try to make your point.

Bitcoin which isn't a coin but a series of numbers in cyberspace has zero value. They will not replace your money like a bank would.

You treat it like it is no big deal if your preferred money system of the world is hacked and there is zero recourse to get your money back. But you are hung up on this pet theory of yours.

So it is not accuarate to say that always safe in USD form, even when on deposit.

Your money is always secure in a bank against theft up to 100 thousand per bank account.

Bitscamcoin zero.

It seems your thinking implies that cyrpto as never able to qualify as a currency itself, that it MUST be first exchanged for some kind of paper currency. That is certainly not the idea with which most crypto currencies were designed.

It is how they work though isn't it.

Side note. Facebook should be seized and dismantled if they go through with this libra scam.

anything -- that can serve as a money will do.

Even the mark of the beast huh. Ok. Take the mark under your skin in order to buy or sell. You would do that? Even thought the Bible warned you thousands of years ago?

It is unregulated, but along with that unmanipulated.

Come on you are not that naive.

The US, the European Union and China need to investigate who is behind the manipulation of bitcoin’s price.

And since I happen to know Donald Trump and I also happen to know that the president reads my column regularly, that’s what I’m suggesting right now. No need to even make a phone call.

As I’ve said before, bitcoin is nothing more than a confidence game. It’s worth nothing if people suddenly lose their confidence in this fake digital currency. It’s backed by nothing. It’s the definition of a con.

That’s why people who are propping up bitcoin lose their minds whenever someone like me writes anything negative about it. That’s what happened on Tuesday.

Thanks, folks, for all the e-mails and tweets. Keep them coming!

I’ll keep them handy because I am sure that every one of these writers will be thrilled to defend bitcoin in front of investigators from the Securities & Exchange Commission, the Justice Department, the IRS, Homeland Security and any other agency that will eventually get in on the action.

Just so you know, I didn’t start this latest skirmish with the bitcoin, uh, let’s call them “enthusiasts.”

Mario Draghi, head of the European Central Bank started it when he said recently: “Cryptocurrencies or bitcoins, or anything like that, are not really currencies — they are assets. A euro is a euro — today, tomorrow, in a month — it’s always a euro. And the ECB is behind the euro. Who is behind the cryptocurrencies? So they are very, very risky assets.”

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has said pretty much the same thing. “There are investor and consumer protection issues as well” with bitcoins, Powell told the House Financial Services Committee a year ago.

Powell also said cryptocurrencies are not real currencies because they have no intrinsic value.

–– ADVERTISEMENT ––

I’ve said the same thing when a bitcoin was selling for $20,000. And still was saying it when it plunged to $4,000. Its real worth: $0.

https://nypost.com/2019/05/22/bitcoin-manipulation-madness-calls-for- massive-investigation/

Yes some crypto has been lost. There is a hard drive in a land fill somewhere that was accidentally thrown away in the early bitcoin days when bitcoin was worth fractions of a penny. The rightful owner has offered a sizeable percentage to anyone who can think of a way to find it. But it's not really necessary as far as the economy goes. The smallest increment of bitcoin is worth about 1/100th of a penny. If bitcoin gose to $1 million per coin, the smallest increment would be worth 1 cent. That's small enough to serve monetary needs, and even if it weren't, software upgrades could divide it even further.

So no, it's not a "problem" for bitcoin as a whole.

Because you said so. Ok.

Bitcoin, and what I call "free market" crypto is not centrally controlled and therefore it's value does not hinge upon the existence or trust of any single entity or even country or set of countries. Any one part of the world could be devastated by meteors or nuke war, and free market crypto will not be destroyed. Anyone can seek to coin/mint/mine additional coins, but it is a race to solve each set of coins in sequence, so the creation of new coins is limited. This limits the supply of them, and limited supply imparts value. To win the race to mine more coins, computers much solve problems so complex that it comes at a usage cost to do so, not unlike how mining for gold comes with an investment cost.

So no, it's not simply numbers. It is numeric solutions. Bitcoin also comes with utility value in serving as a medium of exchange between 2 parties anywhere on the internet. This provides a finance solution that in some cases is superior to that offered by traditional banking services. Namely, lower cost, no paperwork, no need to involve intermediary banks and no political sanctions that could interfere with the transfer (which can be disadvantageous or advantageous depending on the perspective, but is always advantageous to the immediate parties desiring to do the transfer).

Strange.

ra·tion·al·i·za·tion /ÌraSH(Y)n(Y)lYÈz
SH(Y)n,ÌraSH(Y)n(Y)l+Èz
SH(Y)n/ noun 1. the action of attempting to explain or justify behavior or an attitude with logical reasons, even if these are not appropriate.

Funds held by banks are also not safe from seizure requests made by governments

So in other words it is for drug dealers and criminals.

Plenty of banks are used to launder drug money.

Banks Launder Billions of Illegal Cartel Money

Bank of America, Western Union, and JP Morgan, are among the institutions allegedly involved in the drug trade. Meanwhile, HSBC has admitted its laundering role, and evaded criminal prosecution by paying a fine of almost $2 billion. The lack of imprisonment of any bankers involved is indicative of the hypocritical nature of the drug war; an individual selling a few grams of drugs can face decades in prison, while a group of people that tacitly allow — and profit from — the trade of tons, escape incarceration.

They said they wanted to protect consumers during the banking crisis. However, what it did was eliminate the incentive for people to hold cash in their bank accounts from having a bunch of bank accounts, each with less than $100K in it.

And who really benefited from this? The biggest banks who, instead of seeing people move their savings over $100K out of their bank to split it up among two more banks. So the big bank would get to keep a lot more of these most desirable customers. And Congress, as usual, supported the big banks (who had caused the financial crisis) at the cost of the smaller banks.

And who really benefited from this? The biggest banks who, instead of seeing people move their savings over $100K out of their bank to split it up among two more banks. So the big bank would get to keep a lot more of these most desirable customers. And Congress, as usual, supported the big banks (who had caused the financial crisis) at the cost of the smaller banks.

That may be true. But it is also true that peoples money is even more secure.

If you account for inflation from when the 100 thousand dollar policy started. Is it about the same today in what a dollar is worth compared to the past?

I don't know.

www.in2013dollars.com/198...ars-in-2018?amount=100000

If you account for inflation from when the 100 thousand dollar policy started. Is it about the same today in what a dollar is worth compared to the past?

The goldbugs have an argument against fiat currency. They say that the government and big business have historically favored big investors and banks. And favored borrowers over savers. The goldbugs say the value of the money, whether backed by gold or not, can be measured simply in the cost of something a century ago as compared to the cost of the same quality of good today. They typically use the cost of a good men's suit, like a lawyer or businessman would choose. So they observe that a century ago, when the Federal Reserve was just really getting started and the dollar was still backed (imperfectly) by gold, a good men's suit cost $20. And today a comparable suit costs about $2,000. So they estimate that a dollar today is worth roughly 1% of what it was worth a century ago.

So your arguments against crypo aren't as strong when you recognize the "petrodollar tax". Namely, that the U.S. government, Wall Street, the Federal Reserve and big institutional investors have a known bias toward devaluing the currency over time while still trying to make it the one indispensable currency globally. Because seeing the dollar as indispensable is part of its power, despite its defects as the chosen currency of dollar manipulators and their cronies.

Bitcoin's value can similarly vary but a massively indebted government with its Wall Street cronies and investor class and borrowers et cetera will always be trying to force dollar values down, primarily to benefit the investor class. Since we have allowed federal debt to grow so large, it is virtually guaranteed that the federal government will favor dollar devaluation just so its own books can be (roughly) balanced. While continuing to run a trillion dollar deficit in 2020.

The dollar starts to look more and more like a plot by the Federal Reserve to keep the petrodollar as the indispensable currency while using monetary policy (interest rates) to favor the big banks, Wall Street, the investor class, and smaller borrowers and even the small fry like mortgage holders, all to keep that system intact. Even foreign governments and investors are tied into this system and the inevitable "tax" on all dollar holders that the deliberate institutional devaluation of the petrodollar necessarily entails.

That may be true. But it is also true that peoples money is even more secure.

Tell you what. Invest with me and I can guarantee that in thirty years your dollars will be worth 30% of what you invest with me.

Doesn't that sound like a really good investment plan for you? Just mail me a check already.

You see, this is a way to use monetary policy to reduce government (and private) debt, all at the expense of the entire economy. However, since we force the entire oil industry to conduct its business in petrodollars (and no country has yet really escaped the petrodollar system), then this constant devaluation is actually a subsidy that props up the value of a dollar.

Look back a few years, to the attempts to establish a different foreign currency like the euro or the Chinese yuan as an alternative to the petrodollar (because those foreigners were pissed at the constantly and deliberately devalued petrodollar at their expense and to the benefit of the American economy and, especially, the biggest American banks and investors and the federal government most of all with its huge ongoing debt crisis). We pulled out the stops and all that talk has amounted to nothing. Yet, some very serious players wanted to proceed. Like Saddam in Iraq looking to sell oil to the EU using a petro-euro or petro-franc.

Fast forward some years and Saddam is now gone, a nice object lesson to regional dictators. And the oil contracts Saddam had got invalidated and the contracts for Iraqi oil had to mostly be renegotiated, using the petrodollar of course. And in the meantime, America's fracking explosion has now made the petrodollar more hard to escape than ever since America is now the world's leading producer of natural gas and of oil and of gasoline.

Point out the defects of Bitcoin all you like. But don't pretend the dollar is perfect either. It has some serious defects as well.

Your money is always secure in a bank against theft up to 100 thousand per bank account.

Bitscamcoin zero.

I believe one of the recent hacks was actually insured against loss. And yes, there is no reason why crypto could not be so insured in the same way cars, houses and jewelry is insured.

Even the mark of the beast huh. Ok. Take the mark under your skin in order to buy or sell. You would do that? Even thought the Bible warned you thousands of years ago?

Crypto has no more in common with the Biblical "mark of the beast" than does dollars at this point.

Your credit card is just numbers too, isn't it? Worse yet, it has your name attached to those numbers. At least bitcoin doesn't conflate the two.

As I’ve said before, bitcoin is nothing more than a confidence game. It’s worth nothing if people suddenly lose their confidence in this fake digital currency. It’s backed by nothing. It’s the definition of a con.

If you want a currency that is actually backed by something, that's fine, but don't pretend the US dollar meets that requirement. You are pretty much left with the Swiss Frank, which is partially gold backed, and gold and silver itself. As I've conceded numerous times that crypto is not so backed, but neither is the dollar, I don't see the point of bantering that point further.

That’s why people who are propping up bitcoin lose their minds whenever someone like me writes anything negative about it. That’s what happened on Tuesday.

The people who lose their minds are those who can't admit the fact that bitcoin is almost 10 years old and has not gone away in spite of comparisons to tulip bulb mania. And that tulip bulb mania only lasted about 3 years in times of antiquity. And here in the modern age, bitcoin has done almost 10.

I’ll keep them handy because I am sure that every one of these writers will be thrilled to defend bitcoin in front of investigators from the Securities & Exchange Commission, the Justice Department, the IRS, Homeland Security and any other agency that will eventually get in on the action.

Congress has called for hearings about libra and has dragged FB execs to DC to discuss it. They insist it's important to talk about potential illicit use, money laundering, security, Know Your Customer and all those things before FB moves forward with it. It's because of DC's insatiable appitite for controlling money. But they didn't do that for bitcoin, and do you know why?

There are no execs to drag to DC to question!. There is no central party that controls bitcoin, and that's a good thing. Yes there is good and bad, but government control is just as bad, or worse, than any other potential illicit use of bitcoin you could name.

I believe there are many thing you don't trust the gov with stone. Why do you trust the monetary system with them?

Mario Draghi, head of the European Central Bank .... Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has said .....

But of course professional, lifelong bankers will hate bitcoin. They are oriented to central control of the monetary system and bitcoin is decentralized. What's not to hate?

I’ve said the same thing when a bitcoin was selling for $20,000. And still was saying it when it plunged to $4,000. Its real worth: $0.

https://nypost.com/2019/05/22/bitcoin-manipulation-madness-calls-for- massive-investigation/

If its real worth was truly zero, there would be no need to investigate.

Plenty of banks are used to launder drug money.

Good point!

The type of money is not the problem.

100000 in 1980 → $304741.30 in 2018 - Inflation Calculator

Sounds about right. So in about 40 years, the US dollar has lost 2/3rds of it's purchasing power.

I believe one of the recent hacks was actually insured against loss. And yes, there is no reason why crypto could not be so insured in the same way cars, houses and jewelry is insured.

So someone should take out an insurance policy in case their money disappears in cyberspace. That isn't comforting. I like it the way it is better. Pity to the poor person who couldn't afford to insure their money.

Should the government mandate that you have insurance on your "money" you know to protect us?

16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:

17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.

Hey that verse up there in the Bible could maybe make crypto more secure. Number everyone with a microchip. Then their microchip could identify them and make sure it isn't stolen money or an illegitimate transaction.

Uh Oh

9 And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand,

10 The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb:

11 And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name. No thanks

Sounds about right. So in about 40 years, the US dollar has lost 2/3rds of it's purchasing power.

That is the way it goes. People make more money today. So that is just the way it is.

Bitcoin would't change any of that.

I believe there are many thing you don't trust the gov with stone. Why do you trust the monetary system with them?

Because it works. Everyone in the world wants dollars. It makes Americans richer because everyone wants our money.

No one wants pesos.

I know it should be backed by gold. Or I used to know or think that. That could be bad too. Not enough gold. Gold theft from Fort Knox possibility.

Crypto has no more in common with the Biblical "mark of the beast" than does dollars at this point.

I agree crypto right now obviously isn't the mark of the beast. I disagree that they are equally unlike the mark of the beast.

There will be problems with Crypto. People will want help with the government. They will eventually use mark of the beast to make it secure. That is where I see it going long term from my perspective. With crypto type stuff who is to say you wont be locked out of your money somehow in the future if you are not compliant with governments wishes. Who knows maybe the CIA made Bitcoin. Or some government.

Tell you what. Invest with me and I can guarantee that in thirty years your dollars will be worth 30% of what you invest with me.

I worked in a grocery store in the 80's. Milk was $1.89 for the red topped vitamin D milk. !0 cents less for the Blue top and another for the watered down 1 percent.

Now I can get it for 99 cents or a buck 29. Computers are cheaper too.

Why am I telling you. Well you'll have to figure that out I don't have time to develop my thoughts in a manual for you to read.

Computers are cheaper too. And Dewalt power tools.

Look back a few years, to the attempts to establish a different foreign currency like the euro or the Chinese yuan as an alternative to the petrodollar

I'm glad the world prefers dollars. It makes us richer. It is to our advantage that we can print money and these other countries take it instead of our gold.

With crypto type stuff who is to say you wont be locked out of your money somehow in the future if you are not compliant with governments wishes.

That's just it, and the bottom line with crypto is that it is *decentralized*. That means no other party can lock you out of your funds. Not even the CIA. If someone gets a court order to turn over bitcoin funds, and the person doesn't want to do it, they may be held in contempt and put in jail but ultimately, if that person doesn't want to turn over the funds, then the funds cannot be taken from them. Contrast that to funds in a bank account where the gov can go straight to the bank and take your funds. If you don't understand that then you really don't even come close to understanding crypto currency at all. It is one of the best selling points. It is a free-market currency where no central power has a monopoly on it's creation OR usage. New currency creation is controlled by supply and demand forces. The more demand there is, the more/faster that is created. If demand drops off, then creation drops off as well.

In many respects, the US dollar could be a better match for the mark of the beast than crypto currency, as the gov CAN obstruct your usage of dollars.

Who knows maybe the CIA made Bitcoin. Or some government.

It wouldn't even matter, as I pointed out at the beginning of this thread because it is *open source* programming, meaning anyone can see the source code and inspect it for any kind of back door access. Now I say it absolutely was not created by the CIA but EVEN IF IT WAS, it wouldn't matter.

I'm glad the world prefers dollars. It makes us richer. It is to our advantage that we can print money and these other countries take it instead of our gold.

You realize you are talking like a banker, don't you?

That's just it, and the bottom line with crypto is that it is *decentralized*.

They can require isps to make you log in or cut them off.

There are lots of ways government can take control of it,

You realize you are talking like a banker, don't you?

We have a trade defecit. If we gave all those countries our gold for those goods we wouldn't have any gold left here. So that would suck.

There is only so much Gold.

I'm glad the world prefers dollars. It makes us richer. It is to our advantage that we can print money and these other countries take it instead of our gold.

While you, as a working joe American consumer, get a little more stability over the years from this scheme, it is fundamentally aimed at making you and countries overseas and all lenders poorer. Well, lenders other than the biggest banks who get their money virtually for free from the source, the Federal Reserve.

The petrodollar is a net loss for American consumers but it is a big win for the federal government, good for multinations, good for the Fortune 500 and Wall Street (the greatest beneficiaries as well as a group which makes it a policy to structure their businesses in such a way that they never pay any federal taxes). Its greatest merit is that it is a loss leader for foreigners who hold dollars as well which makes them even bigger losers than average American consumers from the fraud of the fiat petrodollar and the machinations of the Fed.

If you're going to heap some scorn on the cryptos, you need to reserve at least as much for the fiat dollar if you are to have any sort of coherent opinion on monetary policy and currency issues.

C'mon, Stone. The Federal Reserve policy is good for Wall Street, good for Goldman-Sachs, good for the biggest borrowers. And your last name isn't Rockefeller or Gates or Bezos or Soros or Koch or Zuckerman.

We have a trade defecit. If we gave all those countries our gold for those goods we wouldn't have any gold left here. So that would suck.

But that is not an argument against cryptocurrencies. You're merely supporting Nixon taking us off the gold standard as our gold reserves waned due to America being such an industrial powerhouse after WW II when Europe's and Asia's strongest industrial economies had been destroyed.

It's an empty argument anyway. They could have simply increased valuation of gold in the fiat exchange rate. So we could still have a gold-backed dollar today, no problem. But an ounce of gold would be worth $50,000 instead of a bit over $1,000.

Going off the gold standard was not the only solution available in 1973. Nixon also instituted wage and price controls, another very stupid move and also something he didn't have to do to deal with the economy.

And none of that has anything to do with cryptocurrency's value as a currency.

Maybe currency is too important to leave it in the hands of political scalawags in the District of Criminals.

They can require isps to make you log in or cut them off.

No they can't. WiFi is practically free, if not from home than from elsewhere. And as far as the gov is concerned, shutting down the internet would shut them down too. The gov is as addicted to the net as any family is, and actually moreso.

There are lots of ways government can take control of it,

Not with crypto there isn't. Even if the US gov could shut down all mining operations in the USA, crypto would still keep ticking in other countries. Crypto is borderless.

We have a trade defecit. If we gave all those countries our gold for those goods we wouldn't have any gold left here. So that would suck.

If we did that, then the ever increasing shortage of gold would make gold more valuable at home, and the imports would decrease on that basis and the trade deficit would end.

You are now advocating the position that the American people should exploit the working class in other countries, sending them printable dollars in exchange for real goods and services. In my view, that is international counterfeiting, no different from a domestic non-government counterfeiter that prints paper money illicitly representing real value. You are also advocating a permanent trade deficit which is ultimately unsustainable. That's not a boat I'm getting on.

That the crypto may have functioned perfectly is no consolation for those whose virtual fortune has disappeared.

As though no one has ever lost dollar holdings?

Can you identify where all customers of a bank lost all their deposited assets because the bank could not access them???

That happened in the Quadriga case where Quadriga CX founder Gerald Cotten died suddenly. The assets of the entire exchange were rendered inaccessible.

So it is not accuarate to say that always safe in USD form, even when on deposit.

I never made any such claim. To the contrary, I explicitly stated at #12, to which you purport to reply, that "it is true that inflation or deflation causes a loss of purchasing power for money stored in a bank, or even stored in your wallet or under your mattress," and that "paper currency could devalue to zero."

In the United States, in over two centuries, the count

Your straw man argument is a fail.

[Pinguinite #5] These keys must be kept secure and the hacking of crypto has always involved accessing these keys or otherwise causing these keys to be used by a hacker to transfer funds on the blockchain. In every case, therefore, hacking has been possible because of security failures related to the keys, which is the responsibility of individual parties that either hold the keys or produced 3rd party wallets, and not the responsibility of the blockchain or crypto as a whole.

[nolu chan #12] This sweeping claim is evidently not accurate.

It most certainly is accurate. Your citation reflects a case of keys not being securely protected, just as I stated they must be.

It is most certain that after five years, the customers still cannot access their assets, and that hacking or a security failure had nothing to do with it. The founder of the exchange died. The keys were so securely held that nobody has ever discovered a copy. Perhaps they were held in the most secure location, Gerald Cotten's brain. However the keys were secured, they remain secured, as do the assets. The numbers are still there, but they have been rendered useless and without value. The individual investors' only mistake was putting their assets in that exchange.

It is small consolation that the block chain and crypto continue to work, and the exchange remains locked out.

As for the members, who entrusted this company, that is most unfortunate for them of course, though ultimately, it was the account holders who chose to trust an incompetent company, so some of that responsibility resides with them, and not with the fundamental design of bitcoin.

You mean it is the customers' responsibility to understand block chain technology and asynchronous cryptography?

it's not accuarte to simply conclude it has been "volatile" without also mentioning the tremendous growth in value it has seen over the years.

It is accurate to call crypto volatile. The term indicates large swings back and forth. That is what crypto has done.

Of course, this valuation is in US dollars, which is not necessarily the best benchmark.

Of course, US dollars is the only legal currency in the United States. Things may be valued in crypto, but nobody has to accept it, and it cannot be marketed as currency or the marketer can be prosecuted and sent to prison.

It is not demonization to observe that crypto currency was created as a means to evade government regulation.

No, not to evade regulation. It was to evade theft of value as previously mentioned.

Righhht. The drugs dealers were concerned with inflation of the dollar, not with prosecution for income tax evasion and civil asset forfeiture of their ill gotten loot. They are really good guys with noble souls when you get to know them.

Of course, that was it. /s

FTR, most wallets -- all I am familiar with -- translate your private key to a series of 12 or 24 ordinary words that are much more easily memorized. With those words memorized or recorded somewhere, in the correct order, one can recreate their wallet and restore full access to funds.

If the owner or director of the exchange suddenly dies, and he takes his memorized key with him, the exchange cannot access the data. The customers have a learning experience.

The first part of your comment implies that a paper currency that devalues to zero would still constitute "real currency".

I have no idea why you believe worthless paper, devalued to zero, would continue to function as currency.

It also implies that crypto currency could or would not be exchangable for goods and services directly. It seems your thinking implies that cyrpto as never able to qualify as a currency itself, that it MUST be first exchanged for some kind of paper currency. That is certainly not the idea with which most crypto currencies were designed.

Crypto, Liberty Dollars, and any other invention which attempts to compete with the official currency is unlawful. If one attempts to pass off something as currency, which is not currency, one follows the footsteps of Bernard von Nothaus and goes to jail.

If crypto was created with the purpose of qualifying as a currency itself, in the United States it would be unlawful. It MUST be converted into official currency in order for anyone to be required to accept it. Like Monopoly money, you could exchange it for goods and services, provided somebody will accept it.

Any official currency is determined by the power of Congress, pursuant to Article I, Section 8 of the U.S Constitution (see Norman v. B & O R. Co., 294 U.S. 240, 302-04 (1935)), quoted in relevant part below. Make and declare your own counterfeit currency and you may go to jail. Currencies competing with the official currency are illegal.

https://www.leagle.com/decision/infdco20141112b90

See United States v. von Nothaus, NCWD (Statesville) 5:09-cr-00027-RLV, (10 Nov 2014), MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

I. BACKGROUND

On May 19, 2009, a federal grand jury sitting in the Western District of North Carolina returned a Bill of Indictment against Defendant and three co-defendants. (Doc. 3). This Order pertains only to Defendant von Nothaus. Defendant was charged with violating 18 U.S.C. § 371, conspiracy to violate 18 U.S.C. §§ 485 and 486, and substantive violations of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1341, 485, 486, and 2. On November 17, 2010, the grand jury returned a Superseding Bill of Indictment against the same group of defendants.2 (Doc. 103). This Superseding Indictment charged Defendant with violating 18 U.S.C. § 371, conspiracy to violate 18 U.S.C. §§ 485 and 486, and substantive violations of 18 U.S.C. §§ 485, 486, and 2, eliminating the charge under 18 U.S.C. § 1341.

Defendant's jury trial began in Statesville, North Carolina, on March 8, 2011. The Government rested its case after two days of evidence. The Court denied Defendant's motion to dismiss pursuant to Fed. R. Crim. P. 29. Defendant presented evidence for approximately four days, and rested on March 17, 2011. The Government offered testimony from one rebuttal witness. The jury began deliberations on March 18, 2011. After approximately two hours of deliberation, the jury found Defendant guilty on all counts in the Superseding Bill of Indictment. Following announcement of the jury verdict, the Court likewise denied Defendant's renewed Rule 29 Motion.

Defendant now moves for post-conviction relief pursuant to Rules 29, 33, and 34 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure.

[...]

The Superseding Bill of Indictment ("Indictment") alleged that between January 1998 and May 19, 2010, Defendant Bernard von Nothaus designed, created and minted coins called "Liberty Dollars," coins "in resemblance or in similitude" [or made to look like] of U.S. coins. The Indictment alleged that the Liberty Dollar coins were to be introduced into the U.S. economy and meant to compete with U.S. currency in violation of federal law. According to the Government, the Defendant sought to have his Liberty Dollar coins accepted by merchants (and distributed by merchants) in the place of U.S. currency in order to make a profit for the Defendant and those associated with his Liberty Dollar Organization.

[...]

The Government produced evidence during its case-in-chief that Liberty Dollar training materials [dated as early as 2006 and as late as 2007] expressly state that associates are not to "attempt to educate people about money when using Liberty Dollars." (3/8/11 Tr. 121-22). Special FBI Agent Andrew F. Romagnuolo ("Romagnuolo") explained that the FBI's concern was not the merchants voluntarily accepting the Liberty Dollar coin, but rather the folks receiving Liberty Dollar coins without being educated about the coin and its actual value:

The problem occurs when these coins that they're distributing in currency leave the pyramid of the people who are educated about the Liberty Dollar Organization and they distribute them by making change with no further information to unsuspecting people in those businesses. They could end up with a 10, 20 or even 50 dollar coin that's worth half, or in some cases less than what the coin is marked as.

(3/8/11 Tr. 34; 60, 75-76).

Although Defendant admits to most of the facts alleged, namely, that he designed, minted, marketed, sold, and used the Liberty Dollar coins in commerce, Defendant disputes that his purpose or intent was unlawful. The Defendant maintains that his purpose and intent was, and always has been, to promote use of a "local currency" or "private barter currency" and to repeal the Federal Reserve Act as opposed to attempting to compete with U.S. currency.

The jury verdict reflects that the fact finders accepted the Government's evidence and theory.

[...]

2. Constitutional Authority For Enactment Of 18 U.S.C. § 486

In Article I, Section 8, the United States Constitution specifies that Congress, within its enumerated powers, has the power to "coin money," "regulate [its] value," and to "provide for the punishment of counterfeiting." U.S. Const. Article I, Section 8.19 Congress also has the power to pass any laws "necessary and proper" to achieve those ends that are specifically enumerated. See U.S. Const. Article I, Section 8, cl. 18.20 (3/9/11 Tr. 130-31). Whether characterized as an enumerated power or as "necessary and proper" to any of the enumerated powers within Clauses 5 and 6, it is undisputed that Congress has the ability to enact comprehensive laws concerning the coinage of money, the value of money, and counterfeiting. See Norman v. B & O R. Co., 294 U.S. 240, 302-04(1935) (emphasizing "the broad and comprehensive national authority over the subjects of revenue, finance, and currency"); see also United States v. Yeatts, 639 F.2d 1186, 1190 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 452 U.S. 964 (1981) (citing U.S. Const. Art. I § 8, cl. 6 and cl. 18, rejecting constitutional challenge to conviction under 18 U.S.C. § 485 for counterfeiting of gold coins no longer in circulation as current coins; finding "Congress had a rational basis for protecting the integrity of non-current gold United States coins.").

The Constitution does not expressly state within Article I, Section 8, clause 5 that the Congressional power to coin money is "exclusive." See U.S. Const. Art. I § 8, cl. 5. Nonetheless, the exclusive power of Congress and the federal government can be reasonably inferred from the fact that in Section 10 of Article 1, the Constitution expressly prohibits States from coining money. See U.S. Const. Art. 1 § 10, cl. 1.

The Government's legal position that Congress has the constitutional power to enact laws to regulate matters of commerce, finance, and money finds significant support in our jurisprudence. (Doc. 201, 7-8, 12)(citing Norman v. B & O R. Co., 294 U.S. 240 (1935); and United States v. Marigold, 50 U.S. 560 (1850)). United States v. Marigold stands for the proposition that the United States, through Congress, is tasked with regulating commerce via the power to coin money found within Article I, Section 8, clause 5 of the Constitution.22 The Supreme Court described this power in terms of "the execution of an important trust invested by the Constitution. . . ." Marigold, 50 U.S. at 567. In Marigold, the Supreme Court explained in dictum:

The power of coining money and of regulating its value was delegated to Congress by the Constitution for the very purpose, as assigned by the framers of that instrument, of creating and preserving the uniformity and purity of such a standard of value; and on account of the impossibility which was foreseen of [or] otherwise preventing the inequalities and the confusion necessarily incident to different views of policy, which in different communities would be brought to bear on this subject. The power to coin money thus given to Congress, founded on public necessity, it must carry with it the correlative power of protecting the creature and object of that power.

Marigold, 50 U.S. at 567. Therefore, in the mid-1800's, Marigold anticipated that without the power to maintain uniformity and the value of a national money, different views of policy stemming from different communities might threaten to undermine a "constitutional currency." Id. at 567-68. Indeed, to hold otherwise would deny Congress the power to protect the value of federally issued currency, a currency backed by the United States.

Some years later, the Supreme Court weighed in again concerning the constitutional authority granted to Congress in this area. Norman v. B & O R. Co., 294 U.S. 240, 302-04 (1935). In relation to currency, and express congressional powers, the Supreme Court stated in Norman that "the source of [Congressional] authority was in all the related powers conferred upon the Congress and appropriate to achieve `the great objects for which the government was framed' —'a national government, with sovereign powers.'" Norman, 294 U.S. at 302-04 (quoting McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. 316, 4 Wheat. 316, 404-407 (1819); citing Knox v. Lee (Legal Tender Cases), 12 Wall. 457, 545 (1870)) (other internal citations omitted). Norman provides insight as to what types of laws could be "necessary and proper" to Article I, Section 8:

The Constitution 'was designed to provide the same currency, having a uniform legal value in all the States.' It was for that reason that the power to regulate the value of money was conferred upon the federal government, while the same power, as well as the power to emit bills of credit, was withdrawn from the states. The states cannot declare what shall be money, or regulate its value. Whatever power there is over the currency is vested in the Congress. . . . [T]he Congress is empowered 'to issue the obligations of the United States in such form, and to impress upon them such qualities as currency for the purchase of merchandise and the payment of debts, as accord with the usage of sovereign governments.' The authority to impose requirements of uniformity and parity is an essential feature of this control of the currency. The Congress is authorized to provide 'a sound and uniform currency for the country,' and to 'secure the benefit of it to the people by appropriate legislation.'

Norman, 294 U.S. at 303-04 (internal citations and quotation marks omitted). Both Norman and Marigold place a premium on the ability of Congress to promote a uniform "constitutional currency." The undersigned turns now to cases applying 18 U.S.C. § 486.

[...]

The Government cites Gellman for the proposition that individuals are likewise prohibited from competing with the United States currency while Defendant and Amicus question application to the individual as opposed to another sovereign. Whether the rationale set forth in Gellman is adopted or not, the Court finds that under the construction of Section 486 applied here, contemplating that if a coin is intended for use as current money then there is necessarily a deceptive quality about its design, Defendant's conviction on Count Three must be upheld. For the reasons set forth herein, the undersigned is of the opinion, and this Court so finds as a matter of law, that Congress indeed possesses the power to criminalize an individual's minting of coinage, whether in resemblance of U.S. coins or of original design, that is intended for use as current money.

Crypto, Liberty Dollars, and any other invention which attempts to compete with the official currency is unlawful. If one attempts to pass off something as currency, which is not currency, one follows the footsteps of Bernard von Nothaus and goes to jail.

You do know your modern goldbugs.     : )

Very few people now even know who he was after his legal troubles a decade back.

Can you identify where all customers of a bank lost all their deposited assets because the bank could not access them???

Am I allowed to go back to 1929, or more recently in other countries? I myself suffered an inability to access my funds for a period of time due to a bank failure in the state of Maryland circa 1984. I was refunded by the state insurance on the bank I recall FSLIC, but my funds were indeed mishandled and lost.

[nolu chan #12] This sweeping claim is evidently not accurate.

It most certainly is accurate. Your citation reflects a case of keys not being securely protected, just as I stated they must be.

It is most certain that after five years, the customers still cannot access their assets, and that hacking or a security failure had nothing to do with it. The founder of the exchange died.

We obviously disagree on the definition of "security failure". I define it as, in this context, a failure to preserve the private key to the crypto funds. They lost the key. That was a security failure and I'm completely comfortable classifying it as such. Perhaps you define "security" as when something is completely immune from access by unauthorized parties. If so, then yes, this company's losing of the private key was an overwhelming security "success". I don't define it that way, as losing access for any reason, whether because it was absconded by an unauthorized party or permanently buried in a desert the size of the solar system is just as bad. In fact it's worse as there's no prospect of recovery as there is with theft.

The keys were so securely held that nobody has ever discovered a copy. Perhaps they were held in the most secure location, Gerald Cotten's brain. However the keys were secured, they remain secured, as do the assets. The numbers are still there, but they have been rendered useless and without value. The individual investors' only mistake was putting their assets in that exchange.

I find your characterization of losing private keys as something other than a security failure to be disingenuous. Regardless, it is semantics. The company is what failed. I presume we could agree on that.

You mean it is the customers' responsibility to understand block chain technology and asynchronous cryptography?

Perhaps we could liken that to the responsibility of criminal defendants to understand the law and court procedures when they appear before a judge and offered a plea deal?

Crypto holders certainly should understand the basics of crypto and how to secure their crypto holdings, and they should similarly understand that companies they transfer control of their crypto to are similarly being trusted to know what they are doing.

It is accurate to call crypto volatile. The term indicates large swings back and forth. That is what crypto has done.

It's done far more "forth" than "back". Far, far more.

Of course, US dollars is the only legal currency in the United States.

More accurately, US dollars are the only "legal tender" currency" in the US, meaning that people are obligated by law to accept it as payment for goods and services. Your statement should not be inferred to mean that other forms of currency are forbidden as I do not believe that is the case. Only that other forms of currency do not carry penalties for failure to accept it.

That the US dollar requires a law obligating people to accept it is a statement unto itself as, if the dollar does have real value, then why is there a law required obligating people to accept it as payment?

Things may be valued in crypto, but nobody has to accept it, and it cannot be marketed as currency or the marketer can be prosecuted and sent to prison.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe it cannot be marketed as "dollars". Marketing it as "currency" is a bit more obtuse and it would surprise me if that term is in the law. But this is an area I concede you should have better access to than me.

Righhht. The drugs dealers were concerned with inflation of the dollar, not with prosecution for income tax evasion and civil asset forfeiture of their ill gotten loot. They are really good guys with noble souls when you get to know them.

I reject the presumption that those in government do not possess fraudulent and criminal motives. The FBI activities with Trump illustrate that well. Hillary Clinton. James Clapper lied to congress about the gov's survailance of the American citizenry. That these individuals violated the law does not incriminate the gov at a whole. That they went unprosecuted does.

Civil asset forfeiture is a violation of the 4th, plain and simple. Such is the nature of people and power. We always want more and the erosion of the Bill of Rights is an obvious example of that.

If the owner or director of the exchange suddenly dies, and he takes his memorized key with him, the exchange cannot access the data. The customers have a learning experience.

They should have a suing experience for the gross negligence of the company.

They should have a suing experience for the gross negligence of the company

I agree. It is negligent to deal in bitcoins.

That's just it, and the bottom line with crypto is that it is *decentralized*. That means no other party can lock you out of your funds.

Quadriga CX founder Gerald Cotten died suddenly and, five years later, all the customers remain locked out of their collection of bits and bytes.

Also, crypto does have inherent security weaknesses. A Lloyd's report in 2015 [Emerging Risk Report 2015, Innovation Series, Technology, BITCOIN, Risk factors for insurance] cited insider attacks, the 51% attack, and Sybil attacks, among others. Lloyd's also cited regulatory risks, specifically citing the Reserve Bank of India public warning to citizens of December 24, 2013, provided below.

https://www.rbi.org.in/Scripts/BS_PressReleaseDisplay.aspx?prid=30247

Date : Dec 24, 2013

RBI cautions users of Virtual Currencies against Risks

The Reserve Bank of India has today cautioned the users, holders and traders of Virtual currencies (VCs), including Bitcoins, about the potential financial, operational, legal, customer protection and security related risks that they are exposing themselves to.

The Reserve Bank has mentioned that it has been looking at the developments relating to certain electronic records claimed to be “Decentralised Digital Currency” or “Virtual Currency” (VCs), such as, Bitcoins, litecoins, bbqcoins, dogecoins etc., their usage or trading in the country and the various media reports in this regard.

The creation, trading or usage of VCs including Bitcoins, as a medium for payment are not authorised by any central bank or monetary authority. No regulatory approvals, registration or authorisation is stated to have been obtained by the entities concerned for carrying on such activities. As such, they may pose several risks to their users, including the following:

• VCs being in digital form are stored in digital/electronic media that are called electronic wallets. Therefore, they are prone to losses arising out of hacking, loss of password, compromise of access credentials, malware attack etc. Since they are not created by or traded through any authorised central registry or agency, the loss of the e-wallet could result in the permanent loss of the VCs held in them.

• Payments by VCs, such as Bitcoins, take place on a peer-to-peer basis without an authorised central agency which regulates such payments. As such,

• There is no underlying or backing of any asset for VCs. As such, their value seems to be a matter of speculation. Huge volatility in the value of VCs has been noticed in the recent past. Thus, the users are exposed to potential losses on account of such volatility in value.

• It is reported that VCs, such as Bitcoins, are being traded on exchange platforms set up in various jurisdictions whose legal status is also unclear. Hence, the traders of VCs on such platforms are exposed to legal as well as financial risks.

• There have been several media reports of the usage of VCs, including Bitcoins, for illicit and illegal activities in several jurisdictions. The absence of information of counterparties in such peer-to-peer anonymous/pseudonymous systems could subject the users to unintentional breaches of anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) laws.

The Reserve Bank has also stated that it is presently examining the issues associated with the usage, holding and trading of VCs under the extant legal and regulatory framework of the country, including Foreign Exchange and Payment Systems laws and regulations.

Ajit Prasad
Assistant General Manager

Press Release : 2013-2014/1261

If someone gets a court order to turn over bitcoin funds, and the person doesn't want to do it, they may be held in contempt and put in jail but ultimately, if that person doesn't want to turn over the funds, then the funds cannot be taken from them. Contrast that to funds in a bank account where the gov can go straight to the bank and take your funds.

Compared to sitting in jail until I give up the money, or having them go the bank and take the money, I would prefer to sit eternally in a jail cell, just to show them that they can't make me do something I don't want to do. /s

As a reasonable alternative, they can seize any of your property of value and auction it off to the highest bidder as partial payment.

Can you identify where all customers of a bank lost all their deposited assets because the bank could not access them???

Am I allowed to go back to 1929, or more recently in other countries?

You may go back to any point in history as long as you remain on topic. The question pertains to "all customers of a bank lost all their deposited assets because the bank could not access them???" Bankruptcy, where the assets are gone, does not apply. The assets have not been taken, but cannot be accessed, as in the case of Quadriga CX.

You mean it is the customers' responsibility to understand block chain technology and asynchronous cryptography?

Perhaps we could liken that to the responsibility of criminal defendants to understand the law and court procedures when they appear before a judge and offered a plea deal?

In a plea deal you are given an attorney who explains it to you, the Court explains the deal to you, and you must state to the Court that you understand the deal and its consequences, and that you enter into it freely and voluntarily.

Bitcoin does not provide a mathematician or geek who explains an Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA), a hash function, or a one way function, or a 51% attack or a Sybil attack. As it is unregulated, the user assumes the risk.

Of course, US dollars is the only legal currency in the United States.

More accurately, US dollars are the only "legal tender" currency" in the US, meaning that people are obligated by law to accept it as payment for goods and services.

I provided the U.S. Supreme Court on the matter:

The Constitution 'was designed to provide the same currency, having a uniform legal value in all the States.' It was for that reason that the power to regulate the value of money was conferred upon the federal government, while the same power, as well as the power to emit bills of credit, was withdrawn from the states. The states cannot declare what shall be money, or regulate its value. Whatever power there is over the currency is vested in the Congress. . . .

The SCOTUS usage is correct. The distinction is noticable in some other countries where some offcial currency is not legal tender, e.g., not all Bank of England pound notes are legal tender in Scotland.

That the US dollar requires a law obligating people to accept it is a statement unto itself as, if the dollar does have real value, then why is there a law required obligating people to accept it as payment?

Commerce.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe it cannot be marketed as "dollars". Marketing it as "currency" is a bit more obtuse and it would surprise me if that term is in the law.

Bernard von Nothaus had a learning experience when the Court stated,

The Court finds that Section 486 means exactly what it says, and that the language within Section 486 is, in fact, plain and unambiguous, with the possible exception of the phrase "intended for use as current money." To the extent deemed ambiguous, the Court construes the phrase "intended for use as current money" consistent with its "ordinary and plain meaning." See e.g., Yeatts, 39 F.2d at 1189 ("A basic canon of statutory construction is that words should be interpreted as taking their ordinary and plain meaning.") (internal citation omitted). "Current money" is defined by Black's Law Dictionary as "money that circulates throughout a country; currency." BLACK'S LAW DICTIONARY 1021 (7th ed. 1999). Commonly understood definitions of related terms such as "money," "currency," and "legal tender" all refer to United States-approved money. Applying plain meaning to the terms themselves, and considering that the thrust of § 486 is to penalize competition with U.S. currency, Section 486 is not meant to be applied unless actual U.S. currency is being competed with.

The Court also stated,

... it is the view of this Court that the phrase "intended for use as current money" speaks to the requisite statutory intent for conviction under § 486. The Liberty Dollar can be "intended for use as current money" even if the specific coin denominations are different.

A four dollar coin (or bill) intended for use as current money provides the requisite criminal intent.

And the Court also stated,

In other words, the difference between a private barter system and counterfeiting is intent.

If there is intent to compete with official U.S. currency, it ain't a private barter system.

I reject the presumption that those in government do not possess fraudulent and criminal motives.

I reject the notion that I said any such thing. Strawman argument fail.

Civil asset forfeiture is a violation of the 4th, plain and simple.

Under the First Amendment, you are entitled to make and repeat absurd statements of law.

Your pronouncement that civil asset forfeiture is unconstitutional lacks any basis in law. SCOTUS has ruled 9-0 that the civil asset forfeit laws may not impose excessive fines, but civil asset forfeiture was left in place and constitutional.