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brayton

So far we have gotten Bitcoin classified:

* CFTC: Commodity * IRS: Property * Judge: Currency * SEC: Security * TSA: Cash

One step closer to world domination.

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In other words, every government entity happens to believe it is entitled to regulate it.

Not sure this is cause for celebration.

...or that's it's remarkable.

It's the default belief for a government entity.

Yep, regulators generally want to broaden their reach to cover anything and everything that could be interpreted as being under their regulation.

Narrow readings are not for the regulator. You have to go to court (or have the legitimate ability to threaten going to court) to hope for a narrower reading.

[citation needed] it's often more about what industry and politics vs regulators.

Ex: EPA often has a rather hands off policy and is frequently sued for failing to regulate industry. SEC is often described as asleep at the wheel. FDA carved out lots of things as outside their preview like 'natural' remedies even if it was created in Large part to deal with exactly that type of snake oil.

Perhaps though, you've confused breadth for depth.

Every government is entilted to regulate it, it's an asset like any other, being new doesn't make it outside of existing law.

Why?

Quite simply because law doesn't work that way. Laws apply to future new things as well as existing things; being new doesn't make something exist outside of current law and law doesn't regulate things with technology, but with law. The ability to jail people is how and why law works and you can't tech your way around that. They don't need to technically be able to stop something because they have the means and ability to enforce these things socially.

Because governments rely on the ability to tax financial exchanges to finance themselves. Not saying it's right, but it's the crux of their power and income.

Well the "why are they are entitled to it" is because they have a monopoly on power. Why they regulate is to finance themselves.

> is because they have a monopoly on power.

Granted to them by us, voluntarily.

The most decorated soldier in american history is Smedley Butler. Two medals of honor. He wrote a book, "war is a racket" where he comes to the conclusion that his entire career was to further the interests of big money and elites.

We peons don't get to really choose who governs us, never mind to have government. But if belief in "the consent of the governed" comforts you, go ahead and down vote me.

War is a racket, and we consent to it. We peons as a whole are ignorant and easily misled, consent is easily manufactured. Consent of the governed is not matter of belief, it's simply a fact they operate with our consent for our consent is the source of their power. Smedely Butler is correct, but his statement does not support your argument in any way.

No, mathematics makes it outside of existing law. There is nothing a government can do to stop or alter Bitcoin.

And murdering someone is just applied physics... Of course they can do things to regulate mathematics. Hell they can regulate Knowledge itself, just look up the "born secret doctrine". Through the sanctioned monopoly on violence, the government is given final rights over everything via their ability to leverage the threat of violence.

"the government is given final rights"

Well not according to the US' citizenship test which states that the constitution is the top law whilst defining the rule of law as no entity, including the government, being above the law.

That's the theory anyways. In reality, might makes right now more than ever (there's a very interesting article from MIT about if technology fosters democracy. They conclude no)

The constitution is what grants them that power. The executive branch is charged with enforcing the laws of the legislative branch according the main body of the constitution and the 16th amendment says they can tax your income. Taxing bitcoin is something the constitution says they can do.

What could a government do to prevent or alter Bitcoin? Shut down the Internet?

They cannot destroy it but they can hinder it in major ways and drive it underground. For example if major governments announced that they're banning bitcoin it would drive off a lot of users and we would have to find ways around their legislation. Major exchanges will have to go underground, it would be a lot harder to buy bitcoin, maybe the value would drop.

Exchanges are peripheral noise.

What would 'banning bitcoin' even mean? All that is required is the computation of a number and its transmission to the blockchain. It's impossible to block such a message without blocking all other communications.

likely, "banning bitcoin" would take the form of barring companies from accepting it. It definitely changes the value proposition if Amazon, Target, Overstock, Subway, TigerDirect, Home Depot, etc. can no longer accept bitcoin as payment. There's no need to mess with the blockchain if you can simply eliminate mainstream use and force it onto black markets.

On what basis could a company be banned from accepting it? No physical items are exchanged. It's simply a record in a long chain of integers.

> On what basis could a company be banned from accepting it?

If by basis you mean authority, the Commerce Clause is most likely, though I suppose the Coinage Clause might be invoked as well.

If by basis you mean policy motivation, there's an infinite number of possibilities.

> No physical items are exchanged.

Government regulates acts that don't involve an exchange of "physical items", but just electronic data, all the time (pretty much all instance of wire fraud, CFAA violations, among many examples.)

I mean basis as, what technological basis would disallow the transmission of Bitcoin transactions, but still allow all other digital communications?

Most government prohibitions don't involve technological barriers. (E.g., the prohibition on murder doesn't involve the existence of technological means which obstruct homicidal acts but not other human interaction.)

Engineers like to use lines like "long chain of numbers", but that doesn't really hold weight. Stolen credit card numbers, digitized child porn, and terrorist communications all also qualify as "just a bunch of numbers". So does the majority of NSA surveillance, which most HN'ers oppose.

The government is pretty good at figuring out justifications for banning things. I wouldn't rely on reasoning as flimsy as "it's just numbers" for why it couldn't happen. (I'm not saying I expect them to, just that if they did, it'd most likely take the form of a merchant ban, "just numbers" would not be an adequate justification, and all the big retailers would comply because none of them want to risk a big legal fight.)

>Stolen credit card numbers, digitized child porn, and terrorist communications all also qualify as "just a bunch of numbers".

Sorry, are you claiming that government has stopped those things?

A government can say whatever it likes. Actually causing that to be reality is a much different problem.

I'm claiming that those things are less ubiquitous than they'd be if they were legal. You can get them, but you have to do so underground, and there are risks associated with that trade.

You seem to be thinking in terms of whether the government has the absolute power to 100% stop something. The rest of us are thinking in terms of whether, if the government declared something to be illegal, it would have a significant impact on that market. I claim that it would. Part of the value of bitcoin is that you can exchange it for physical goods at major retailers like Home Depot, Target, Subway, and TigerDirect. If the government declares a ban, those retailers would almost definitely honor that ban, and then bitcoin would become less valuable overnight.

They couldn't accept it as payment. And it is that simple.

> What would 'banning bitcoin' even mean? All that is required is the computation of a number and its transmission to the blockchain. It's impossible to block such a message without blocking all other communications.

Government prohibition of an act rarely involves blocking all instances of the act (in fact, if the government could effectively make an act impossible, it wouldn't need to prohibit it.)

So the question here just seems to miss the entire idea of legal prohibitions.

Make it illegal? Break down our door and take your computer and coins? Raid the service that holds your coins? Put you in jail if you refuse to give up passwords?

You miss the point, they don't regulate Bitcoin, they regulate citizens. Just because you can't stop something completely, doesn't mean you can't outlaw it. Bitcoin, like all commodities now and in the future is taxable under current law because the law taxes all income of any form except things we say you can deduct. That means it covers new forms of assets as well as existing ones. Not paying your taxes is illegal and is more than enough threat—as it always has been—to make citizens obey the law.

You miss the point. Bitcoin is not necessarily income. It's simply a chain of integers bound through certain mathematical operations.

Law is social, nothing is outside of existing law and being math can't change that because law is based on what is or isn't mathematically preventable.

This comment has nothing to do with the topic at hand.

This is the most important point. We apparently live in a country where regulators get to decide what falls under the umbrella of their regulation.

Courts and lawmakers are the ones who get to decide, but when the laws are vague the regulatory agencies have to choose some interpretation of the law to operate under until the lawmakers make a clearer law or until courts issue a ruling that clarifies the law.

Careful, increasingly the governments expect you to agree they have a right to whatever they claim.

Not sure this is cause for regulation.

it's probably more indicative that all of them are wrong since they can't be collectively right.

This isn't new IRS also sees stocks and bonds as (investment) property http://www.irs.gov/publications/p550/ch04.html.

Each agency can regulate the same thing under different scenarios there isn't really a conflict there.

The NY Judge defined it as a currency so they could adequately prosecute someone using bitcoin in a ponzi scheme.

If the law redefined ponzi scheme to use something other than a currency, it might be defined differently.

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