Frogolocalypse

> why not use cash?

As as been repeatedly demonstrated to you, holding cash is unsafe, because it can be seized by the government without you ever having committed a crime.

> what does adding a cryptocurrency give you?

As has been repeatedly demonstrated to you, you have protection from it being seized through the insidious civil asset forfeiture procedure.

> Do you think you have to pay taxes?

Of course.

> the government needs the authority to confirm that transactions are properly accounted for.

Ludicrously false. You clearly have no idea how the law works. You must think you live in a police state. In spite of what you might think, if you live in a western democracy, you don't. You fill in your little boxes on the form and you pay your taxes. You may be asked to justify the numbers in the boxes.

You seem to have a bizarre belief that something illegal or wrong is occuring. You realize you're not a slave, right? You realize you have rights, right? You know what a right is, right? You realize the law is a list of things you can't do, not a permission list of what you can do, right?

Thanks for the clarification.

I'm actually confident that America will eventually get it right. I expect that America, when backed into it, will legislate your rights to protect the fruits of your labour. And then they'll have the moral authority again. They're just going to have to work harder in diplomacy. Which they are quite capable of doing at times. Underrated? Treaty with Iran. Iran ain't really in the news of late? That is better.

But to your question, keeping $1 million in cash, all legitimately acquired, in your house, which could be seized under the flimiest of pretenses, is madness. Bank? Gold? No thanks.

It's going to happen eventually. You might as well figure out how to get used to it. In spite of how the US sometimes is, they have inevitably come down on the right side of history.

> How did anything get into those wallets in the first place?

I think you misunderstand the nature of freedom and rights. I don't have to explain what I did with my money. I have the presumption of innocence. You don't get to trawl through my financial records looking for a crime. You have to have probable cause that I have committed a crime, and then seek supporting evidence for it.

I think it's funny that the country with the first and second amendment is the one that has, for decades, pushed the restriction of rights in money. Americans seem to have forgotten what a right even is. With the first amendment, people aren't legally 'allowed' to say what they want. The government doesn't have the right to stop you saying what you want. With the second amendment, people aren't legally 'allowed' to have guns. The government doesn't have the right to take them away from you. For too long the surveillance state has crept in, and now there are people that believe that you have to prove your innocence. Incorrect. You have to prove I have a case to answer, and I get to protect myself from self-incrimination, and you have to prove that case beyond reasonable doubt.

That is what is so insidious about civil asset forfeiture. It is civil. Instead of proving beyond reasonable doubt that you have committed a crime, all they have to prove is the balance of probabilities. You are treated like a criminal, but it isn't you who is the criminal, it is your assets. When they don't know your assets, nor have access to your assets, because they can't just confiscate the cash out of your car, your house, or your bank, you are protecting yourself.

Law, meet bitcoin.

If you find it exploitative, you are free to create and use your own crypto instrument without these properties that you take offense to. All of the code is available for you to modify as you see fit, as it is open source. If you believe it has value, all you need to do is to convince others of the superior nature of your implementation, and surely they will adopt your solution for their crypto needs.

Interesting. I'm clearly getting this message from oracle, so it's not a problem on my end. Perhaps a routing problem? It has been giving me this message for an hour.

I wouldn't be surprised, but I don't think this will have been at the direction of the US government, and not in a coordinated way. I would expect they have identified funds that have come from known hacks, and blacklisted them. But as I said, it wouldn't surprise me that much. If it hasn't happened already, it's going to. Only a matter of time.

I think it's one of the reasons why they have been so against some of the other crypto technologies like segwit and lightning. It removes them from the possibility of having that oversight role. I'm not the conspiracy type really, but it wouldn't come as a surprise that they have already had these discussions with regulatory authorities. Common sense really. The only real question is whether they have been encouraged to support or undermine technologies based upon those hypothetical discussions. They are who they are, and they work in that regulatory environment. It's not to be negative about them. They have a hand dealt to them, they play it.

Bitcoin is just a chain of transactions. This address to this address to this address to this address, right back to the block it was created in. It is not terribly difficult to validate whether the payment you're currently looking at existed as bitcoin in that address at some point or another. Like I said though, even the ability of that is likely to be undermined over the next 3-4 years.

The secret to bitcoins success is that if you cry wolf enough times, and take away peoples freedom to such an extent that they are impoverished by the wealthy, they will find a way to exert their power. This is what happens when you lose the moral high-ground.

Freedom is hard. Actually requiring probable cause before being subjected to the justice system used to be a thing. Then the US government started stealing peoples money without ever even charging them with a crime. So now we have crypto. So the government can't do it anymore. "But but but what if they are committing a crime!" they say. Prove it i say. You know. Rule of law. That's what democracies are supposed to be about aren't they?

That attack on freedom now has crypto as a response. The thing that it is counter-intuitive about crypto, is that the solution to electronic anonymous and censorship resistant money, turned out being record everything forever. When someone can flick a switch and take everything from you, you don't have freedom. When you can access the ledger from anyone, prove that it it is valid, and be able to send your money to anyone, for whatever purpose, you do. This technology has been developed as a direct response to the insidious and anti-democratic implementation of AML/KYC laws on a global scale over the past 30 years. The extrapolation of these laws, given a long enough timeline, is slavery. Not figurative slavery, actual slavery.

Bitcoin is the technical response to that problem.

> However the list didn't include rockets

Or submarines. Which is probably an even closer parallel.