With the recent series of news on bitcoin, it seems like the media and gov is increasingly painting a picture of Bitcoin as a thing for selling drugs, people and terrorism. Bitcoin maximalists will cry victim but it's no use, everybody is HODLing, nobody is buying pizzas or taxi with it. Why would you with the ridiculous security, transaction costs and slow speed?

Knowing that anything that was remotely used to aid terrorism in the past has resulted in the hammer flying down as they did with LibertyReserve.

https://www.reuters.com/article/net-us-cybercrime-libertyres...

You don't even need to have terrorism, after 9/11, money laundering has only one purpose in the official's minds.

I think if you are operating a cryptoexchange, blatantly breaking the rules thinking oceans will protect you is a critical mistake, one which never seems to deter people from being thugs.

> With the recent series of news on bitcoin, it seems like the media and gov is increasingly painting a picture of Bitcoin as a thing for selling drugs, people and terrorism.

It's been like this since...2011? 2012?

But the issue with that is that, especially for drugs (legal and otherwise) the government has been a profoundly NEGATIVE influence over the market, and bitcoin allows and end-run around that because it doesn't control the organisation that is bitcoin (because it is an algorithm), and the government doesn't actually control shipping (because that would destroy globalism due to the increase in costs that would bring)

For illegal drugs, the government is a negative influence because of their propensity to cause massive actual harm to supposedly "correct" small problems (e.g. an addict's third strike resulting in forcing them into a life of crime).

For legal drugs, the government is enforcing the pricing power, and even the price differentiating power (same exact product, different pricing in US vs CA or EU or India, or ...), of the pharma industry, even in cases where it's ludicrous (which is mostly the US being 10x as expensive as somewhere else).

Funny how the government is always in favor of globalism, except where it would actually benefit the lower and middle classes. Having the ability to ship medicine across borders ... there is no more clear-cut case of globalism helping people. Yet the government is fighting hard to make it impossible in that case.

In the case where it's destroying the middle and lower classes, steel imports for example, or subsidized solar panels, the government is fighting to make it continue, and protecting foreign companies and people from the consequences of their cheating (e.g. government intervention preventing Chinese firms from getting sued for fraud after falsifying steel products, essentially selling low grade steel as high grade steel, even in cases where it compromises personal safety. Apparently now the same thing is happening with Japanese firms).

«everybody is HODLing, nobody is buying pizzas or taxi with it. »

Every single Bitcoin submission, an HN user like you will say this. But it's not true. Payments in bitcoins are sharply increasing. BitPay alone saw their payments volume grow by 328% yearly: https://blog.bitpay.com/bitpay-growth-2017/

Payments with bitcoin are too expensive to be practical. Hell, with credit card perks, credit card companies pay YOU to use their payment method. Crypto is the other way around.

Credit card companies aren't really paying you to use their cards. You're still paying the fees; it's just that they're being collected by the merchant.

Some merchants do offer discounts for going the debit/cash route. It’s usually in the 3% range and negating the 2% cash back popular credit cards provide, the 1% is rarely worth it to lose the consumer protection.

BitPay processes a lot of B2B payments which are typically in the multi-thousand dollars range. For that amount a user has no problems paying a ~$20 txn fee.

I can wire a hundred thousand bucks for $25 through my bank and it clears in an hour or so, quicker if I call them. And the recipient can immediately withdraw that as cash. This doesn't seem like a killer application of the tech, am I missing something other than the fact that banks aren't always open?

«banks aren't always open»

There you have it. In an always connected world, it's practically an anachronism to have to wait the "next business day" to send a wire when you missed the cutoff time of the day :-/

Plus: irreversibility of txns, escaping corrupt governments seizing funds, escaping inflation, etc.

Really ? Cause I can't. Can you explain which (European) bank allows this, because I don't know a single one, and I'd love to have this option available.

Really? I can transfer $20K with one click, $0 cost if im fine waiting for one of 6 daily Elixir sessions, ~$2 if I want Elixir express.

https://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/news-insights/insight...

I'm American, sorry :/

You have to trust the banks not to freeze the funds.

really an hour? maybe inside the country, internationally is days and more expensive of course depending of the bank, then you add the bank commission for having an account with them, all the paperwork, and all the time, you don't really own the money, the bank owns the money.

so, in the UK and EU things are pretty reasonable for electronic funds transfers. in the EU area SEPA instant (~10-20s) payments have been available since november this year between a limited number of member states, and should be rolling out to others during 2018. as for standard SWIFT style international payments, from the UK they should reach the destination the next day, although this will cost more - most banks have charges of tens of pounds. inter bank transfers inside the UK are free, and instant, even for large ones.

You're assuming they are used for "payments". If something doubles in value, the transaction fees melt away.

The most funniest part of this oft-repeated argument is that currently bitcoin blocks are full, the mempool of pending transactions is at record highs and people are happily outbidding each other in fees.

Though apparently no one is using it if you listen to the internet.

There's a massive dichotomy between the cryptographically provable transactions and commentary. Someone is obviously using bitcoin. It's at max capacity.

the argument that everyone is holding falls apart against the evidence that transaction fees are nearly 30 dollars. transaction fees are high because bitcoins are exchanging hands faster than the miners can process them.

In the end, governments can not tolerate widespread use of cryptocurrencies. They benefit too much from the ability to print money in sovereign currencies to lose control. They will use whatever excuse sticks - child porn, money laundering, aiding terrorism... whatever gets the public on board with new restrictions.

I believe that's why we've seen article after article lately about all the horrible people using bitcoins, plus scare stories about bubbles and how You'll Lose All Your Money. Concrete legal steps are on the way.

The governments have not yet fully cracked down, but they have tested the waters with a variety of methods. The fact that they have lost over and over again further increases the bitcoin value.

If a government were to really try to shut it down, there would be an immediate drop in crypto-currency value, but if the government was ultimately unsuccessful, the value would rocket up to even higher levels.

Every bitcoin "investor"/gambler makes these tradoffs.

They haven't started cracking down until recently because they figured there was a good chance cryptocurrrencies (bitcoin in particular) would collapse on their own or remain an insignificant niche. I think this year for the first time you have large governments which see bitcoin as a bona fide threat.

I'm kind of curious to see how this plays out - how far they're willing to go and whether or not, as you say, they're ultimately successful.

if being long on BTC is actually being seriously described as 'HODLing' then it's no wonder many banking and finance people find it hard to take seriously.

I like how the dirty coins are now magically clean, thanks for washing it for us, marshalls!

best bitcoin next to the ones that come straight from miners

Not a ridiculous point. I wonder if certain bitcoins could eventually be worth more than others simply because the chain of custody has gone through an official source.

Bitcoins don’t actually exist as separate entities, all that exists is a record of who transferred what amount to who.

US Marshalls should just set up a mixer

In goes tainted coins, out comes cleam coins

this is why Monero interests me: without a full transaction history on the block chain, there’s no such thing as “tainted” coins anymore

He plead not guilty and they already selling his forfeiture? Shame on them!!

If he wins I guess he can get the $8.5M.

What happens if the value of BTC goes up or down though during that time though? What will he be entitled to?

$8.5 million. Note that he isn't contesting the sale.

Hypothetically, assuming he did contest the sale and Bitcoin went up, they would have to give him back the amount of bitcoin that they sold, since technically Bitcoin is an asset and not a currency in the eyes of the government, correct?

I don't think so. If he contested it there'd be a hearing on the motion and either judge would allow the sale to go forward or he wouldn't. If the sale did go forward, and the defendant won at trial, he would still only get the $8.5 plus interest, regardless of what bitcoin prices did in the meanwhile.

I'm not sure what the legal standard is for this motion though.

Some more money for the war on drugs. Perhaps they'll win that war some day.