Congressman Calls To Ban U.S. Dollar In Response To Plea For Bitcoin Ban | Hacker News Reader

Congressman Calls To Ban U.S. Dollar In Response To Plea For Bitcoin Ban

techcrunch.com

106 pointsmilesf31 comments

Open articleView on HN

When they are done goofing around, how about restoring the ban on congressional inside trading?

Because they quietly undid the ban.

They come out of secret meetings with insider knowledge that is privilege to them and then go buy stock.

https://www.google.com/search?q=congress+insider+trading+rep...

You expect the foxes to uphold Robert's Rules of Order in the henhouse?

> Bitcoin [..] an untraceable alternative to an official government-backed currency (the dollar).

I know people even in tech aren't aware of this: Bitcoin is actually the most traceable currency ever made by man.

Every single unit can be traced down to who generated it. If an account suddenly receives a lot of money, anybody can trace it back to who emitted the coins. And if you have special rights to know who's behind an IP (ie any police force in the world), then you know which individual is involved.

Bitcoin is the best way to keep a trace of all exchanges. Please don't spread the wrong assumption that you can hide with it.

The issue is, unlike a bank account, the bitcoin address is not attached to a person. If I'm using Tor, I can make it almost impossible to trace me. If I'm using a bank, the government won't even need to do anything, as the bank will contact the FBI for large transfers or give them information as needed.

Yes, if you're using Tor. My point is: Bitcoin doesn't hide anything; Tor does, whether you're using it for paying hitmen with bitcoins or sexting with XMPP. It's the Tor part alone that does it all.

Jared Polis is the only congressperson that would fit right in at a HN meetup. He's the type of congressperson SV deserves.

I'm glad he's not afraid to break ranks and take on old-school Dems like Manchin.

Sucks to see Manchin responding like this. Always thought he was one of the good ones.

Eh.

Politicians are people who hold a spectrum of beliefs and positions which overlap with your own to some extent or another. Sometimes they have more information than you on a subject, sometimes they have less, and sometimes they are just starting from different values than you have, which colors their perceptions of the available information in a different way than yours. You should neither expect a politician to always take the positions you would prefer, nor to never take a position you agree with.

I voted against Polis in the past, and now regret it.

"Congressmen who worry Bitcoin will hurt uninformed investors want it regulated or banned entirely"

Uninformed investors are going to be hurt no matter what investment currency they use.

Here's his press release:

http://polis.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=3...

March 5, 2014

Dear Secretary Lew, Chairwoman Yellen, Comptroller Curry, Acting Chairman Wetjen, Chairman Gruenberg, Chairwoman White:

I write today to express my concerns about United States dollar bills. The exchange of dollar bills, including high denomination bills, is currently unregulated and has allowed users to participate in illicit activity, while also being highly subject to forgery, theft, and loss. For the reasons outlined below, I urge regulators to take immediate and appropriate action to limit the use of dollar bills.

By way of background, a physical dollar bill is a printed version of a dollar note issued by the Federal Reserve and backed by the ephemeral “full faith and credit” of the United States. Dollar bills have gained notoriety in relation to illegal transactions; suitcases full of dollars used for illegal transactions were recently featured in popular movies such as American Hustle and Dallas Buyers Club, as well as the gangster classic, Scarface, among others. Dollar bills are present in nearly all major drug busts in the United States and many abroad. According to the U.S. Department of Justice study, “Crime in the United States,” more than $1 billion in cash was stolen in 2012, of which less than 3% was recovered. The United States’ Dollar was present by the truck load in Saddam Hussein’s compound, by the carload when Noriega was arrested for drug trafficking, and by the suitcase full in the Watergate case.

Unlike digital currencies, which are carbon neutral allowing us to breathe cleaner air, each dollar bill is manufactured from virgin materials like cotton and linen, which go through extensive treatment and processing. Last year, the Federal Reserve had to destroy $3 billion worth of $100 bills after a “printing error.” Certainly this cannot be the greenest currency.

Printed pieces of paper can fit in a person’s pocket and can be given to another person without any government oversight. Dollar bills are not only a store of value but also a method for transferring that value. This also means that dollar bills allow for anonymous and irreversible transactions.

The very features of dollar bills, such as anonymous transactions, have created ubiquitous uses from drug purchases, to hit men, to prostitutes, as dollar bills are attractive to criminals who are able to disguise their actions from law enforcement. Due to the dollar bills’ anonymity, the dollar bill market has been extremely susceptible to forgers, tax fraud, criminal cartels, and armed robbers stealing millions of dollars from their legitimate owners. Anonymity, combined with a dollar bills’ ability to finalize transactions quickly, makes it very difficult, if not impossible, to reverse fraudulent transactions.

Many of our foreign counterparts already understand the wide range of problems that physical currencies can have. Many physical currencies have enormous price fluctuations, and even experience deflation. 20 years ago Brazil had an inflation rate of 6281%. In 4 years (2001 to 2005), the Turkish Lira went from 1,650,000: $1 to 1.29 to $1. In 2009, Zimbabwe discontinued it’s dollar. Before it was eliminated, the Zimbabwe dollar was the least valuable currency in the world and their central bank even issued a $100 trillion dollar banknote. A person would starve on a billion Zimbabwe dollars and it took an entire wheelbarrow full of $100 billion dollars in notes to purchase a loaf of bread.

The clear use of dollar bills for transacting in illegal goods, anonymous transactions, tax fraud, and services or speculative gambling make me wary of their use. Before the United States gets too far behind the curve on this important topic, I urge the regulators to work together, act quickly, and prohibit this dangerous currency from harming hard-working Americans.

Sincerely,

Jared Polis Member of Congress

It would seem funny, if not for Sweden seriously considering getting rid of cash. You laugh today, you wake up in a cash-less society tomorrow, all transactions tracked and traced.

Mr Polis stands in the tradition of the Rev. Jonathan Swift specifically his pamphlet entitled A Modest Proposal For preventing the children of poor people in Ireland, from being a burden on their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the publick [1]. Excellent.

[1] http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1080

A Modest Proposal was mindblowing to me as a young teenager - it made me realise for the first time that nobody in the world, no matter what position they are in, is beyond criticism.

"Last Week I saw a Woman flay’d, and you will hardly believe, how much it altered her Person for the worse."

The Rev. Jonathan would be on the first flight to Kiev from somewhere like Syria were he alive today. We have much need of these people.

The events he witnessed and satirised together with their more modern ramifications have cast a shadow over the history of Ireland and England for centuries, and, indeed, have played a part in the outrageous growth and acceptance of organisations such as GCHQ in the modern era.

Nice satire (and major points for the "greenest currency" pun), but carbon neutral? Burning electricity is the only thing making it scarce!

That's true practically speaking, but there's nothing inherently carbon-intensive about electricity.

And there is nothing inherently carbon-intensive about manufacturing dollar bills. In fact, manufacture of dollar bills sequesters carbon into the notes and the organic byproducts from their manufacture.

Practically speaking, nearly all the energy used in this process is generated by means that emit atmospheric carbon.

> Unlike digital currencies, which are carbon neutral allowing us to breathe cleaner air

Hmmm. That statement is doubtful.

Congressman Polis did an excellent job of showing how dumb a Bitcoin[1] ban would be.

The sad part is that in another 20 years some Senator or Congressman will write the same letter about physical currency and be completely serious.

1) I still say bitcoins are a commodity more than a currency

Clearly this means the NSA got to him. That's the problem with these surveillance states. Look at how they're propping up their cryptocurrency by blackmailing U.S. Senators into writing satirical pieces.

It's terrible, this state of the world. Just terrible.

please be satire...

It looks to me like an attempt to write the perfect Hacker News comment. NSA surveillance, cryptocurrency, government corruption, no evidentiary basis or special relevance to HN — all it's missing is a poorly constructed defense of or attack on capitalism and a hastily written Node.js module implementing its ideas.

Close enough.

https://hn.algolia.com/?q=saraid216+satoshi#!/comment/foreve...

Also, Algolia seriously needs some competent user stories.

If you ban Bitcoin you might as well ban all forms of bartering and declare that transactions can only be done via nationalized currencies.

This is a great article but god damn some of those grammatical errors are hard to get past.

Only-slightly-OT: In Norway there is a lot of people (40% in a less than completely impartial survey [1]) who thinks cash will be completely replaced by electronic transactions. We have well functioning clearing of even small transactions. Of course the authorities thinks this is a great idea for reducing crime...

1: http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&n...

To be fair, physical dollar bills is still quite different from Bitcoin. It's a lot harder to steal (or make an illegal transaction of) $100 million worth of physical bills than Bitcoin.

I wonder if his opposition in future elections will use this against him out of context.

"Do you really want a leader who thinks money is a bad thing? He tried to ban the dollar bill while in congress!"

In a silly attempt to shame the (admittedly stoopid) bitcoin ban proposal, instead shames US politics.

Jared is da man !

Reply on news.ycombinator.com