[mikeash]

If I buy Euros, am I not transmitting money? There's a difference between Bitcoin and power supplies, namely that the former is money and the latter is not. The law applies to currency.

Bitcoin advocates can't seem to make up their mind as to whether Bitcoin actually qualifies as "money". It's money right up to the point where the law starts talking about "money", then magically it's just some arbitrary good that's not actually a currency at all.

[oleganza]

Law may say what it wants. The reality is people trade things for things. Some other people define certain things as special and force you to comply based on their definitions. No one outside the legislative structures gives a rat's ass about those definitions. When you and me trade something for something, we don't care about someone's definitions, we only care about the value that we get in result. And your friends also don't care. Only people who have power to force you to comply use that power to play with words and mess with your mind.

[mikeash]

That's a fantasy. Here in reality, if you're operating a commercial enterprise, the way you operate depends greatly on what kind of item you sell. For example:

1. Hard liquor not for consumption on site: illegal to sell in Virginia, only the state can.

2. Firearms: highly regulated.

3. Food: must meet health department regulations.

4. Computer parts: fairly open, must still meet basic business licensing requirements, collect sales tax, etc.

You can talk about how things ought to be all you want, but all that matters here is how things are, and how things are appears to be that this Bitcoin operation falls under a certain category of law with which they are not compliant. The law is not written with Bitcoin in mind at all, so conspiracy theories about governments specifically targeting Bitcoin do not appear to have any basis.

[oleganza]

I agree there's no conspiracy against Bitcoin. I agree that in the view of particular people Bitcoin is money and they want it to be regulated according to their agenda.

What I don't agree is when people use made up definitions with straight face within a rational argument. It's not that you are wrong, it's that arguments like yours implicitly justify certain things as objective (e.g. differences between money and not-money).

In other words, Bitcoin services are being regulated not because Bitcoin is (or not) money, but because there are people with guns who want to control certain things in certain ways and use made-up definitions to justify their actions. When you use their definitions you just add up to global confusion and hide their lies.

And I'm not saying how things ought to be, I'm not suggesting what's good or bad. I'm saying that without honest clear terms we cannot easily decide for ourselves what's good or bad. Maybe it's good for someone to be controlled by people with guns. I just want to point out that there are guns and many people are afraid of them.

[mikeash]

Bitcoin is clearly money. The people who made it consider it to be, the people who use it consider it to be, and the people who want to regulate it consider it to be. This is no more made up than any other human terminology.