When you say bitcoin doesn't have them, you just mean bitcoin is currently making it possible for you to commit tax fraud, right?
Bitcoin hasn't magically changed the laws of the world, it's not freeing anyone from restrictions. If you're using it in a manner to avoid taxes, launder money, fund terrorists or whatever, that's still just as illegal as if you were doing it with a briefcase of cash or gold.
Would you say the same thing about technology that allowed people to defy apartheid, evade slavery, escape genocide, concentration camps, blasphemy laws, execution for cowardice in war because they won't kill and die for a bandit with a pretty title, not have to sit at the back of the bus due to the colour of their skin, or any of the other thousands of examples of the egregious and obvious abuse of political power throughout recorded history?
Anyone opposing those things was breaking the law. The law is not as important as you imagine. Cryptocurrencies enormously erode the ability of the state to enforce tax law, this is a simple fact. The world may not like it, the world may not even realise it, but this is the state of reality now. Throwing up objections in the form of laws is beside the point entirely.
I truly do not understand people who in light of the history of the abuse of political power can honestly expect "it's against the law" alone to be taken as a serious objection to anything.
> Under "Operation Choke Point," the DOJ and its allies are going after legal but subjectively undesirable business ventures by pressuring banks to terminate their bank accounts or refuse their business. The very premise is clearly chilling—the DOJ is coercing private businesses in an attempt to centrally engineer the American marketplace based on it's own politically biased moral judgements. Targeted business categories so far have included payday lenders, ammunition sales, dating services, purveyors of drug paraphernalia, and online gambling sites.
Bitcoin on the other hand doesn't care about these things.
That specific article is spreading FUD and perpetuating a hoax. There's no evidence whatsoever that Ms. Presley's case is related to the DoJ.
>Bitcoin on the other hand doesn't care about these things.
Bitcoin certainly has made itself quite a reputation for being the currency of choice for scammers, hackers, drug dealers, online gamblers, and child pornographers. Merchants who consider accepting BTC might care about those things.
> That specific article is spreading FUD and perpetuating a hoax. There's no evidence whatsoever that Ms. Presley's case is related to the DoJ.
Who cares if that particular case was tied to Operation Chokepoint? The fact that Operation Chokepoint is real and really targeting perfectly legal businesses should be enough!
> Bitcoin certainly has made itself quite a reputation for being the currency of choice for scammers, hackers, drug dealers, online gamblers, and child pornographers. Merchants who consider accepting BTC might care about those things.
The US dollar is still more popular for those sorts of things, AFAIK. Maybe some merchants will be dissuaded from accepting it for a while by those things. The question is whether enough merchants won't be dissuaded for Bitcoin to reach a critical mass of acceptance and use.
As someone who sells a lot of digital goods, the main appeal of Bitcoin for me is the complete elimination of chargeback fraud. It's just as good a tool for avoiding malicious intent as it is for enabling it.
The nearly non-existent transaction fees are worth mentioning as well.
By providing you an alternative store of value that isn't controlled by a handful of people in government.
Look at Zimbabwe Dollars or the Weimar Republic. There's no reason that can't happen in any other country and Bitcoin provides an alternative to government issued currencies or any other currency.
There's no reason that can't happen elsewhere, but there are a lot of reasons that it doesn't. Hyperinflation is actually a pretty rare event, which is why we keep seeing the same two examples over and over - and stated as if they had come out of the blue in what seemed to be a well-functioning economy, rather than being the result of extreme political conditions.
Ironically enough, the old Deutschmark is still traded in parallel in Germany, and since it's no longer issued or subject to exchange-rate fluctuations it's inadvertently acquired some of the characteristics people like about Bitcoin. To put things in perspective, there are more DM in Germany than there is global market cap of Bitcoin: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230437380...
Because I'm not even 30 and it's happened in some country at five times in my lifetime - that I'm aware of. Yugoslavia, Brazil, Argentina, Zimbabwe, Venezuela. I guess if you stay away from the ends of the alphabet you'll be fine. The US and Canada better watch out.
I suppose I should have said 'hyperinflation resulting in economic collapse', but I think my point stands. Look at your examples - except for Argentina, all your examples involve war or de facto dictatorship.
I think it is unusual relative to the number of countries in the world and the time involved. There's a list here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflatio I count 21 examples in the last 50 years, of which half were directly corrleated with the collapse of the Soviet Union and most of the rest were in Latin America, a region with a long history of poor governance.
Of course Bitcoin can function as a hedge or a store of value, like gold historically has. But the majority of people who extol it for this purpose as in the developed world and the US in particular, where the probability of hyperinflation is very low. The closest we've come to a crisis of that kind in recent years is Cyprus, and (again) that's a place with an unusual political problem.
Getting all your money stolen seems to feel better when it's due to the completely fair and transparent rules of the system than when it's due to the clueless bungling of the Man.
