> Or perhaps from an unknown jurisdiction.
Good luck with that, unless your vision of doing business doesn't involve ever charging customers, especially for b2b.
Good luck with that, unless your vision of doing business doesn't involve ever charging customers, especially for b2b.
What Silk Road and Bitcoin demonstrated is the huge popularity of dark markets for retail drug sales. With product authenticity and seller reliability attested through customer reviews. And without risk of meatspace violence (except if busted, of course).
And sure, that stuff is still widely illegal. However, when laws are ignored by substantial minorities, their legitimacy becomes questionable. African Americans didn't end segregation in the US through petitioning legislatures. They broke the laws, creating a crisis, and forcing the federal government to act. Lesbian and gay activists did much the same, at least initially.
BTC-e went down hard for example. But they had some much more obvious links with criminal enterprise.
Although even if it is possible to stay outside of the reach of the US, losing access to the international banking system is quite the handicap for any business.
Also, again, good luck getting any b2b when you tell them they need to pay in bitcoin only.
For small amounts, meatspace trades are doable using LocalBitcoins.com etc. For huge amounts, I suspect that expert assistance is available. It's the middle ground that's nontrivial.
False. You can mine it, you can receive it for free from someone else, and you can exchange goods/services for it.
Verification times are clearly an engineering problem, not a fundamental issue. Long-term solutions are currently under experimentation (lightning, DAG currencies, etc.)