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Judge rules bitcoins aren't money.

“Bitcoin may have some attributes in common with what we commonly refer to as money,” she wrote. It can be “exchanged for items of value,” for example, but unlike money, not always. It’s accepted by some merchants and service providers but unlike money, not by all of them. Unlike money, bitcoin’s value fluctuates wildly. “With such volatility, they have a limited ability to act as a store of value, another important attribute of money.”

A dude got money laundering charges dropped against him due to this ruling.

Not surprising, really. Bitcoin is basically the community currency of the interwebs, and community currencies aren't treated as money either.

$740

They've been a lot more stable over the last year.

Logged into my account for the first time in forever, 1 BTC still there, which I bought for $321, currently worth $778.

Bought $50 of ETH at $6.338 for the hell of it.

TheCatt wrote:$740

$940 1 month later...

The fact that it's been a slow raise is good. But watch for a spike up to $2k, and if it goes up fast sell. You'll be able to buy again when it drops back to $800 to $900.

TheCatt wrote:

TheCatt wrote:$740

$940 1 month later...

$1050 1 week later...

TheCatt wrote:

TheCatt wrote:

TheCatt wrote:$740

$940 1 month later...

$1050 1 week later...

And back to $850 two days later...

Well that slipped back sooner than I expected.

Gold: $1,235/ounce
Bitcoin: $1,259/btc

TheCatt wrote: Logged into my account for the first time in forever, 1 BTC still there, which I bought for $321, currently worth $778.

Bought $50 of ETH at $6.338 for the hell of it.

ETH up to $19.

Do people that are holders of Bitcoin think we will eventually go to an all digital financial system with no physical money?

The problem with the question is it presumes all holders of bitcoins are similar.

Some do, some don't, many don't care. I think right now the fastest-growing segment in bitcoins are Chinese trying to get their money out of the sinking Chinese economy and bitcoin is one of the only channels to do that since it's illegal to take their money out of the country. They probably don't care.

TPRJones wrote: The problem with the question is it presumes all holders of bitcoins are similar.

Some do, some don't, many don't care. I think right now the fastest-growing segment in bitcoins are Chinese trying to get their money out of the sinking Chinese economy and bitcoin is one of the only channels to do that since it's illegal to take their money out of the country. They probably don't care.

I guess I worded that sloppy. I'm more curious concerning those in the west.

I personally think there will be a big push to do away with physical currency. There is already talk of that in Europe. I was just curious as to thoughts on that. I don't think there will be room for an alternative currency that isn't controlled by the banks. Makes the banks obsolete (and the official government currency for that matter).

The nice thing about bitcoins and it's ilk, though, is that it is not up to the banks and the government to decide. It's up to all the individual people and companies. If everyone starts using them the banks and governments can't stop them, worst case is if they dig in their heels they can refuse to use them themselves and make people buy some actual U.S. currency to pay their taxes. Banks would cave well before that because they want to stay in business but government could hold out forever if they wanted to be stubborn.

I can see that happening as old people who are used to carrying physical cash die out. Younger generations are more likely to have ever only known digital dollars and the only difference for them between digital dollars and something like bitcoins is which ap to use to pay for things.

But I don't think it would be bitcoins. Bitcoins is the C64 of digital currencies; it's surprisingly good and the first digital currency to become really popular and get used by lots of normal people. But it's still only got a limited amount of RAM and will one day be surpassed by even more generic computing systems while instead of the hardware it's the operating system that becomes the main identifier of the system and Windows takes over everything. I'm not sure what exactly the difference between computer and OS means in this analogy to digital currency, but that's because we're still in the C64/bitcoin era and haven't evolved to that next stage yet.

TPRJones wrote: The nice thing about bitcoins and it's ilk, though, is that it is not up to the banks and the government to decide. It's up to all the individual people and companies. If everyone starts using them the banks and governments can't stop them, worst case is if they dig in their heels they can refuse to use them themselves and make people buy some actual U.S. currency to pay their taxes. Banks would cave well before that because they want to stay in business but government could hold out forever if they wanted to be stubborn.

I think you underestimate the government on that. They can outlaw their use. And I suspect the banks would lobby for that if currency went away and they were threatened. It was only in 1933 that the government outlawed owning gold.

Don't know if these things would happen for sure, but I could see them happening. And I think the young people might develop a renewed love of cash should we end up with a Cypress style bail in with no way to get your money out.

I think you underestimate the government on that. They can outlaw their use.

I think you overestimate the government's ability to make any difference by outlawing their use. China has taken the first steps towards outlawing them and yet there's more and more bitcoins being owned and used by the Chinese every day.

The only way to shut it down now would be to shut down the internet traffic in the U.S. That would be much more damaging than any damage bitcoins can themselves do.

TPRJones wrote:I think you overestimate the government's ability to make any difference by outlawing their use. China has taken the first steps towards outlawing them and yet there's more and more bitcoins being owned and used by the Chinese every day.

The only way to shut it down now would be to shut down the internet traffic in the U.S. That would be much more damaging than any damage bitcoins can themselves do.

I'm sure they can't get rid of them. But they can make them so hard to use that they will not be worth much. Not getting an ETF today knocked it down 16% I think (though it got most of that back). Imagine what being deemed illegal would do.

Bitcoin is the preferred black market currency. The end. QED.