[kamjam]

Technically true, but we still have the governments to weigh in and try to crush this. Unless they can monetize from BitCoin, they will find a way to kill it - blaming it on funding organized crime and terrorism. "Real world" currency is just too important for them to loose control of it.

[alskdjfhg]

Yesterday's congressional hearing made me surer than ever that bitcoin is actually an FBI/ CIA/ NSA/ whoever -made honeypot.

Think about it. Bitcoin is robust enough that it could have only been developed with the resources offered by a government, the currency records all transaction histories, and we still have absolutely no idea of who this Satoshi Nakamoto guy is, assuming he's not some government taskforce. Didn't it strike anybody as odd that the same congress and government that normally takes an extreme luddite stance was so enthusiastic about Bitcoin? They can hardly wrap their heads around things like Google Glass and net neutrality, and yet they're absolutely pandering over Bitcoin.

Something isn't right here.

[dublinben]

I think it makes perfect sense if the government types think they can apply all the existing laws to Bitcoin transactions. Money laundering, tax evasion, fraud, theft, etc. are all still illegal, even if you use Bitcoin to carry them out.

[XorNot]

I doubt it. Reports of the original code suggest it was terrible (I've not seen it) with a lot of bugs.

Of course on that note, if it was developed by the government - who cares? So was Tor.

[pjc50]

I've actually changed from thinking "financial services law will destroy this" to "this will become like the War On Drugs: ubiquitous illegality, especially evasion of exchange controls, witholding taxes, and foreign income reporting requirements".