[pistle]

Yeah, call in the regulators to get some back. Thank a US fiat tax payer. You're welcome.

It's the biggest load of hypocrisy that people who enthusiastically wanted to play in the libertarian paradise of an unregulated currency think they should be able to turn around and request the help of the regular, regulated, tax-supported economy to make them partial or whole.

First, we'll crap a bunch of processing resources into thin air, ponzi up value in the system, scream self-righteous screeds to the nay-sayers... then, when it goes to shit, call in the cops you were giving the finger to a second ago.

You took your chances. You relished in the freedom of the risk. You eat your pudding.

[danielweber]

I know why you are annoyed, but many libertarians (of the non-anarchist variety) still believe in the court system to recover damages. If they use the courts to recover part of their losses from MtGox's assets there's nothing hypocritical there.

If they want a bailout, ie a cash injection, then I'm with you.

[wpietri]

Given all of the rhetoric around the distributed, untraceable, unregulated nature of BitCoin, I think an initial assumption of hypocrisy is still not a bad place to start.

[zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC]

But you do realize that those arguments are for _bitcoin_ and not for _exchanges_? The decentralization of _bitcoin_ is supposedly an advantage precisely because _exchanges_ (like MtGox) and other central organizations like banks are prone to failure due to fraud and mismanagement.

So, they are essentially saying "We need bitcoin because we don't want to trust institutions like MtGox because they might fail" and you say "They are hypocritical because the failure that they are warning us about and that they suggest a solution to did indeed happen". You have a strange definition of hypocrisy.

[dragonwriter]

Yeah, its clearly not hypocrisy.

OTOH, it should be also clear that there is a problem with the pro-bitcoin argument here, as bitcoin hasn't yet solved the need for instititutions like exchanges. Which shouldn't be surprising, as the thing that bitcoin directly decentralizes (transaction validation and currency issuance) aren't the functions that exchanges serve.

[zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC]

Well, yes and no.

Apart from allowing you to find someone to trade with, validating the actual trade/settling the trade is an important part of an exchange as well, and those at least in principle could be solved using bitcoin-based technology.

And also, bitcoin at least partially could "solve" the problem by just not requiring the use of an exchange anymore once it has sufficient adoption. After all, most people don't directly need an exchange in order to use their local currency either.

And finally, there are suggestions how an exchange could prove its BTC liquidity using the bitcoin system, which would also solve at least part of the abuse potential of a centralized institution.

But yeah, it's not fully solved (yet?) and I simplified things a bit, but I think nothing that has any impact on my argument.

[wpietri]

I'm not saying that anybody who had money in Bitcoin is a hypocrite. But anybody who had money in MtGox, lost it, and now wants help getting it back is hypocritical if they were also singing the praises of Bitcoin in those ways. And that presuming that people with money in MtGox were Bitcoin proponents is not a giant stretch.

[celticninja]

I would have to disagree.

>And that presuming that people with money in MtGox were Bitcoin proponents is not a giant stretch.

It is a giant stretch given that most people who knew a lot about bitcoin and the bitcoin economy, the proponents of bitcoin as it were, have had concerns over mtgox for quite some time. Actually I imagine many people who lost btc and/or fiat at mtgox were relative newcomers who were unaware of the ongoing problems and just saw mtgox as the largest exchange and most public facing one at that. So you are making a huge assumption on which you base your choice to condemn people for their choice.

There have been plenty of these sorts of comments all over the internet since mtgox collapsed,essentially saying:

"champion that it is not regulated, go running to the regulators when a problem arises"

the thing is that never has any one of these comments been followed up with an example or instance where the same person has espoused both beliefs/statements. This is generally because they dont exist and/or the commenter doesnt want to do any work to prove their point they just want to denigrate people they think they are smarter than. An exercise in self-pomposity essentially.

[zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC]

Where is there hypocrisy in that? I just can't see any.

[wpietri]

The kind I'm seeing is celebrating uncontrollability and then suddenly wanting the benefits of control.

[crucini]

Perhaps there is some hypocrisy, but I think your comment borders on a common fallacy.

The fallacy says that an idealist is hypocritical for using real-world resources which wouldn't exist in his ideal world.

It says a communist is hypocritical for wearing shoes made by private enterprise, and a libertarian is hypocritical for buying liquor at the state liquor store, in a state which has that system.

It ignores the issue of bootstrapping. Those who dream of the future must necessarily exist in the present and use the resources of the present.

If (and I'm not persuaded of this) some BitCoiners want a future without regulators, they presumably want some other mechanism to replace regulators, just as the communist wants a people's shoe factory to replace the capitalist shoe factory.