[JSZZHlmumeUE]

The issue with money laundering in the real world isn't the technical difficulty. It's easy as pie to launder cash if you ignore the laws surrounding it.

I'd imagine that if Bitcon becomes prevalent, governments would ask you to "voluntarily" declare your "salary" wallet. And then if they spotted any sort of suspicious laundering-like activity happening from that wallet, they would very quickly obtain warrants and show up at your door asking for an explanation.

[oleganza]

Government would still have to set up a center of "approving" unknown money coming from other sources into local economy. These centers, as you can expect, will be massively bribed by everyone who needs to launder their tainted coins.

Also, governments will be much more limited in power when they can't print their money at will and do any "deficit spending".

[JSZZHlmumeUE]

unknown money coming from other sources into local economy

These centers actually exist even today. I personally know places where you can buy dollars using the local currency for something like a 10% discount on the market rate. They are obviously very shady and aren't used by anyone close to being respectable. If you use them and are big enough to matter, expect to be screwed over by law enforcement pretty much the instant they feel like getting you.

governments will be much more limited in power when they can't print their money at will

I believe printing money is actually a good thing. But let's not get into an economics argument here.

And governments can easily take over the bitcoin network tomorrow if they wanted to, simply because the ability of Intel, IBM, AMD/GF, NVIDIA and the big semiconductor manufacturers to build really efficient mining ASICs vastly outstrips that of everyone else. And companies like Intel have nothing to lose and everything to gain by keeping the US government happy if they requests come in from the top.

Again the analogy with cash is relevant. There is really very little technically difficult about printing counterfeit cash. I mean there's not even cryptography involved - it's just security by obscurity! The reason people don't do it is because governments clamp down on this activity very hard through law-enforcement mechanisms. Similarly, if the governments thought bitcoin was important enough to regulate, they'd be able to do it in an instant simply they have guns and we don't.

[badinker]

"I believe printing money is actually a good thing. But let's not get into an economics argument here."

This, is where I stopped reading.

[keeganpoppen]

This is where the comma should be in that sentence. (nowhere)

[eagsalazar2]

Very useless pov. Thanks for sharing. Nothing is more irritating in the middle of a good conversation than someone who rebuts by nitpicking grammar.

[icebraining]

"This is where I stopped reading ” is never good conversation.

[oleganza]

> I believe printing money is actually a good thing. But let's not get into an economics argument here.

You are confusing ethical argument with an economical one. I was talking economics, not ethics. Governments get a lot of power from ability to print money and censor transactions. Bitcoin removes these sources of power to a high degree regardless of whether it's good or bad. Like, when the internet got huge, moral question of whether people should be exposed to "evil books" or not becomes irrelevant. If one wants to read a book you think is not appropriate, he will do so anyway.

Governments printing ASICs to spam the network... That's the most expensive way to attack Bitcoin. If anyone ever gets to it, it simply means that BTC is already established in many places and widely used and very valuable. Governments would love to extract that BTC for their spendings instead of killing it. Like it happened with gold: in theory, gold is superior to printed fiat currency, but it isn't killed, it's confiscated and used as a hard currency among those who can afford keeping it secure: governments and banks, not you and me.

[JSZZHlmumeUE]

Like, when the internet got huge, moral question of whether people should be exposed to "evil books" or not becomes irrelevant. If one wants to read a book you think is not appropriate, he will do so anyway.

That's certainly an interesting perspective but it makes certain assumptions about what bitcoin will be used for that I'm not sure I agree with.

Governments printing ASICs to spam the network... That's the most expensive way to attack Bitcoin.

Not really, somebody estimated that getting ASICs to control 51% of the network would cost only a few hundred million dollars, which isn't much at all from a governmental point of view.

Also, as far semiconductor manufacturing goes - pretty much all of it is the non-recurring engineering cost of designing the IC. The actual cost of printing it on Si is a very small fraction for large volume chips.

Governments would love to extract that BTC for their spendings instead of killing it.

Governments than can print fiat currency don't really have a problem financing their spending. They do have a problem with currencies that undermine fiat currencies.

[cdash]

To be honest they don't even have to actually do it, if they so much as just announced that they were going to do it is probably enough to cause a panic sell utterly destroying any chance bitcoin has because so many people would be burned.

[dllthomas]

I wonder if that announcement would lead to more or less mining going on. If less, the announcement would mean the attack itself gets cheaper.

[dinkumthinkum]

I think economics is more complicated than what you suggest. I feel lie you think cryptocurrencies are a way to foil the big bad government...

[dinkumthinkum]

So is this like in reality or a fantasy?

[sliverstorm]

How would that help? You declare your "salary" wallet, your salary flows from your day job. You run your underworld schemes in another wallet, and ne'r the two do meet.

[wdvh]

How do you propose to spend money from your underworld wallet to buy real things - say to buy a car - without revealing your identity to the merchant? And once your identity is out in the open, how do you propose to evade the undisclosed income investigation that will be inevitably follow.

[sliverstorm]

It depends on how much your underground wallet holds. There was that guy who was successful for many years, laundering dollar bills in person.

If you buy a BMW, your identity will be noted and the transaction recorded. If you buy a bagel sandwich, the clerk will forget about you by noon the next day. So if it's small potatoes, you could be fine.

If you have a ton of cash to move, you are right- in person becomes a bad option. That's when you go back to the basics- you launder the money, like every big-time criminal in history.

[raldi]

Same way the mafia does it: with a front.

"Oh, sure, some guy came in and placed a huge catering order. $10,000 worth of food. Paid in BTC. I never saw him again."