Posted on 05/15/2013 3:04:46 PM PDT by dynachrome
That hands-off stance may have started to change this week when the feds took action against Mt. Gox, the world’s leading Bitcoin exchange. Many people use Dwolla, a PayPal-like payment network, to send dollars to their Mt. Gox accounts. They then use those dollars to buy Bitcoins. On Tuesday, Dwolla announced that it had frozen Mt. Gox’s account at the request of federal investigators. It’s the first federal action against the currency.
CNet has confirmed that the asset seizure was initiated by Homeland Security Investigations, a division of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Among other things, that agency has the power to enforce laws against money laundering and drug smuggling.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
The big-government /big-corporate criminal complex cannot allow a currency that they can’t manipulate for their personal benefit.
I thought the Mt. Gox server was in Japan. How can it have all of its accounts seized?
are they going to stop btc to eur? btc to gold? btc for car washes?
I don’t think so.
this is just another move by techno neophytes that are still mystified by the mouse
/johnny
If it ain’t PMs in your hand, it’s paper.
“it’s paper”
Or bytes on a harddrive that go poof.
And with gold and silver taking a dump, its time to back up the truck and load up on PM’s.
Bitcoiners have now lost their money “anonymously”. Someone has suggested carrier pigeons.
All you need to own cryptocurrency is a decryption key which can be memorized. You would be able to bank anonymously through an offshore satellite phone (paid for with bitcoin). Much like precious metals, each bitcoin must be "mined" using real resources and cannot be created from thin air(like dollars).
The main issue with this system is that most people still convert to/from government currency when using it. The target in this article is one of these exchangers, not the system itself. The system cannot be targeted because there is no central server.
When bitcoin (or some future system) becomes popular enough where it rarely needs to be converted into government currency, there is not a damn thing the government can do to monitor it. Taxation and government manipulation of currency would become near impossible. People would simply have their own secure store of value with which to exchange time and materials.
It's coming and there's not a damn thing they can do to stop it short of killing the internet.
After a WSJ article on bitcoins, I fully expected this. The government doesn’t want anyone in competition with itself. If it can’t control it, it eliminates it.
I have always viewed bitcoins as a lot like global warming carbon credits - something created out of thin air with no innate value. Only you can create bitcoins living in the basement of your mother’s house.
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