Saturday, April 5, 2014

FORBES: Libertarians Are Going to Hate Bitcoin

Kashmir Hill writes:
If I were working on a “Stuff Venture Capitalists Say”-style video about Bitcoin, two memes would top the list: “Bitcoin reminds me of the early Internet” and “Libertarians are going to hate this thing when it gets big.”...

I think most smart privacy-loving, government-limiting libertarian Bitcoin users are aware that the history of transactions in Bitcoin is open to scrutiny as it’s a critical component of how the cryptocurrency works. But perhaps this will indeed be annoying down the line if people get tied to their Bitcoin addresses, as might be more easily done for if they need to do a full reporting on their Bitcoin activities in order to pay their taxes....At a dinner this week hosted by the not-yet-publicly-launched Bitcoin service Circle, Hemant Taneja — whose firm General Catalyst is among those who have put $26 million into Circle — also said Bitcoin’s early supporters are going to be unhappy with the monetary Frankenstein they’ve created.

Taneja talked about the way governments around the world have to now figure out what to do about Bitcoin given that, much like the Internet itself, it transcends borders. He predicts that countries will come together to come up with cryptocurrency controls.

“It’s the irony of Bitcoin,” said Taneja. “It will lead to greater government cooperation to regulate money.”

I don’t sense a groundswell of libertarian hate for Bitcoin yet, but we’ll see.

I repeat, Bitcoin is not a libertarian solution to eliminating the Fed or fiat currencies in general.  In fact, it is difficult to understand the value of Bitcoin, at all, to libertarians.

5 comments:

  1. Ringo's Law applies to Bitcoin too.
    .
    sigh

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  2. Cryptocurrencies will enable greater monitoring, control, tax confiscation by monetary authorities. You even have people in this space that indicate either Bitcoin offshoots, or differing schemes are in the works so as to enable inflation (having bought off on the deflation is bad meme). And yes, this is the same hoopla being made by what in the beginning were slightly more anarchistic types in the Internet space, they are now being pushed aside by the incoming financing, govt. interests, CFR, etc. While I do not believe this compares to the Internet in scope or importance, the same movie is being re-run. So Bitcoin-crypto currency fans that thought they were ‘sticking it to the man,’ are in reality helping out TPTB get rid of cash and do something it would have taken many more years to do, namely institute an all digital payment scheme globally that will offer more control, and more manipulation. Sad part, you will not even realize it until you have been marginalized, then wonder what happened.

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  3. Bitcoin is the ultimate Trojan Horse. Like cash, it can be used as privately as one wants to.

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  4. Most criticisms of Bitcoin come from people who have never used it. This is understandable as it is difficult to use right now. Nevertheless, new tools will make it simple AND totally anonymous. It can be anonymous now but it requires a little effort.

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  5. This Libertarian loves Bitcoin - because I understand it.

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