Comment by aminok | Hacker News Reader

Comment by aminok | Hacker News Reader

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Organisations that want to maintain control over society.

Case in point is the International Cyber Security Protection Alliance:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1h43ez/chilling_ar....

This organization represents major financial firms, including Visa Europe, and law enforcement agencies, including the City of London Police and Europol, and had a 2 page article appearing in the 2013 G8 trade magazine calling for a global ban on Bitcoin, for the most powerful people in the developed world to read.

The people who run this organization appear to be ruthless and amoral, going as far as publicly justifying cyber attacks against companies in the Bitcoin space:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1giuft/quote_from_...

Then there is the Hacking Team, a blackhat cyber security firm that works for government agencies around the world, and whose CEO said in an email "The DARKNET is your enemy. TOR is your enemy. ENCRYPTION is your enemy":

https://wikileaks.org/hackingteam/emails/emailid/37225

>People who run this organization appear to be ruthless and amoral

...

>Going as far as talking about a DDOS attack on Twitter

Also, that G8 article you linked has a full page MTGOX ad on page 8. Kinda ironic huh?

Okay, enough with the low hanging fruits, now some serious stuff.

I don't see how Bitcoin enthusiasts can trivially brush off the criminal activities connected to Bitcoin. The public at large doesn't care about your shiny little toy - but they do if it's used by criminals. The article specifically mentions child pornography. Now how can CP be distributed? Tor and hidden services. But how is someone going to pay / profit from it? There was no easy solution - then comes Bitcoin, and suddenly people can be absolutely untraceable on the internet. You cannot simply ignore this. You have to acknowledge it, and then a) provide some form of solution (kinda contradicts its principles) or b) argue that it isn't as important compared to potential benefits of Bitcoin.

>You have to acknowledge it, and then a) provide some form of solution (kinda contradicts its principles) or b) argue that it isn't as important compared to potential benefits of Bitcoin.

There is no solution to the specific problem of electronic cash making it easier to transfer money in exchange for an immoral product like child pornography, just like there's no solution to the specific problem of strong cryptography and the internet making it easier to disseminate child pornography.

I would argue, with plenty of rationale and evidence, that the economic freedom provided by these technologies, has the potential to massively improve the quality of life of the world's population, despite these unavoidable side effects.

If there were fewer poor and desperate families, there would be fewer parents who sell their children into the sex trade. Economic freedom facilitated by technologies that also make it harder for states to prevent trade in immoral goods reduces the number of desperate parents and we can reasonably assume reduces the problem of child exploitation as a result.

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