[Foundation-l] EFF & Bitcoins

[Thomas Morton]

I'm guessing it is related to a dawning reality that while Bitcoin isn't at
the whim of some government it *is* at the whim of "lots of people on the
internet". There are major issues there; of a lack of oversight, a lack of
security in the market (i.e. the recent hacking and crashinng of the market
at MtGox) and so forth.

The MtGox crash will potentially be the turning point for BTC, I fear -
notably because it raises the point that a decentralised currency can be
attacked and scammed and you can't do anything about it without breaking the
claim of "a currency no one can control" (which is what they did). This is
what one of my favourite commentators had to say:

*The Bitcoin "community" is an emergent, distributed boiler
room<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiler_room_(business)>.
They could just as easily be selling pink clam shells, tulips, or shares in
an insolvent company that had a business plan to make pool cleaning agents.
The underlying commodity doesn't matter. What does matter is that the widely
disbursing the underlying commodity early gave them enough of a following,
including folks who are savvy enough to think that they are the ones getting
rich off the marks (a classic element of fraud), to attempt to convince
other people that there is actually intrinsic value in what they are
selling.*

Also a lot of the claims by BTC advocates are turning out to likely be
legally unsound, which is leading a lot of commentators into the attitude of
"there could be trouble brewing here".

Just in case BTC's were every logistically on the table... this should all
be taken under consideration :)

Tom

On 21 June 2011 14:37, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 06/21/2011 09:11 AM, Thomas Morton wrote:
> > As a follow up to the discussion about Bitcoins (during the board
> elections)
> > & accepting them as donations... I thought this article by the EFF
> > explaining why they no longer accept BC sets out some interesting
> > arguments: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/06/eff-and-bitcoin
>
> Eh, the group of lawyers were sure about legal issues at the beginning
> and now they are not. I suppose that US have introduced new laws in the
> mean time.
>
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