Has anyone thought of creating a universal crypto wallet client that does the exchange rate for you ?.

Yup Chaoskampf. Its time for the dragon to eat it's tail.

pEACe

In the eyes of the law, Bitcoin itself is already money laundering...plain and simple.

The main point here is that we can't move fiat around as easily as Bitcoin. This is where services like Dwolla come in. If you're proposing we build the Bitcoin economy solely on the backs of merchants, you're ignoring the fact that there are billions of people who don't have Bitcoins. Where would they get it from? Mining? You can't expect everyone who wants to get involved in Bitcoin to become a merchant in order to do so. The reason we've had such a huge explosion in the value of this currency is because massive amounts of Fiat have been taken out of the old economy in exchange for Bitcoin. As this becomes more and more difficult because of government intervention, we'll have to start considering ideas like this, however inconceivable they may seem at first.

And this is why it is a de facto money laundering tool as far as the government is concerned. The key word is "can". Think of these scenarios:


Me and you meet in some dark alleyway. I have 10 million dollars I need "laundering". You have the equivalent in Bitcoin. Commodities exchange hands


Me and you meet on some public internet marketplace for the world to see. I just spent 10 million dollars on some classic work of art (you could say I "laundered" my fiat with it). You have the equivalent value in Bitcoin. Commodities exchange hands.


Is there a substantive difference between these two scenarios? In my eyes, no, and neither to the eyes of the US government. There's no need for wishful thinking. Bitcoin will never be accepted by the status quo (at least in its present state. They could always co-opt it and produce some bastardization, e.g. Ripple).

Double speak is the status quo's greatest past time.

What was that I heard.. something about how the clamp down on money laundering put the banks into a cash shortage because nearly all fiat is in the hands of people who are involved in various illegal activities.

The return of the Greenback and/or the gold/silver standard is more vital now than it ever was.

The problem is that most developers don't want to spend time and effort developing something that is in a shady legal realm. You could code a framework that would minimize the instances of scamming considerably, but the bigger problem must be where do you go once everything is complete? How many developers are willing to dedicate themselves to this underground project after it's up and running? Most like certainty (who doesn't), and the amount of work required to establish and orchestrate something like the idea I proposed would be well outside the comfort zone of most of our coding brethren. Obviously my proposal is somewhat extreme (though I consider it to be a very serious option), but even a simple p2p fiat exchange outside of the banking system would be inviting legal scrutiny.

I don't think it is possible, at a fundamental level, to have any sort of distributed, or P2P, or non-centralized method to go USD<->BTC


All you can do is local bitcoins.

Every way of moving USD into the digital internet realm is highly regulated

With this reply, I reach 100 posts, finally becoming a full member. Just wanted this milestone post to be on one of my own threads. Can't believe I didn't join bitcointalk earlier. Also, watch out for the Chaoskampf proxy trading platform, coming to an internet near you:

https://bt.irlbtc.com/view/221863.0

Mt.Gox is dying.
This was part of the plan.

      I just got back from a long discussion with one of the hot-shot econ professors at my university (Steven Landsburg, if anyone's interested), and he says that he would invest tens of thousands into Bitcoin if the exchange frameworks were more friendly/legal for doing so. We talked about p2p exchanges and the need for true decentralization in almost every regard in order to establish pure markets.

      There's clearly a tremendous amount of interest buzzing around concerning Bitcoin. Its power as a vehicle for transferring value is noticed by internet trolls, drug dealers, and prominent economists alike. Despite all the threads on here with plans for a p2p exchange, there doesn't seem to be a concerted effort to craft anything of the sort. Planning is clearly of fundamental importance, but there have already been a few protocols planned out that, to me, seem incredibly legitimate (The BitMessage thread being one of them). If nothing else, these should serve as blueprints for anyone to implement analogous or complementary frameworks. Who is doing this? If I had 6 months of uninterrupted development time, this is what I'd do 24/7 (maybe I'd sleep and poop from time to time as well). Do you guys know of any active development projects on this frontier? I read the Development board pretty regularly, but all the p2p projects there are very speculative rather than explicitly undertaken and being written up/designed. I truly hope that serious programmers are actually working on this, because there's only so much time left before the Internet is fully regulated and Bitcoin has another HUGE obstacle to traverse apart from the exchange legality issue and money laundering regulations.

      That brings me to another point. Do you guys know of any legitimate p2p internets? I'm familiar with mesh-net among a few others, but I'm curious to to see if the community knows of/is developing any alternatives. We need to appreciate the incredible importance that this factor will to play in the upcoming months and years. I'd argue that Bitcoin's future depends SOLELY on a free and open internet. No other issue is even close to being as important to the continued success and evolution of Bitcoin as this. What do you guys think?