This is a false choice. Silk Road(s) cannot exist without Bitcoin. Bitcoin cannot exist while also prohibiting Silk Road(s).

Not as bad as #1 enemy of USA Wikileaks accepting Bitcoin donations. The moment Wikileaks started accepting it it was a doomed currency, you know eventually clownshoes American's would try to go after it. Just be sure you aren't a US based exchanger or you will get picked up by the Secret Service like that guy peddling the Liberty Dollar in Florida, and every single exchanger in the 1990s crackdown

Still nothing they can do except harass their own citizens trading it, rest of us and our coins are fine tho

Well, you weren't who I asked, but your answer tells me exactly where your interest in bitcoins originates.

As for the badness you asked about, it's bad publicity.  We need the public on the side of bitcoin for real trade to occur, with which to solidify the value of bitcoins.

I don't understand why Silk Road is so important to Bitcoin?  Please elaborate.

Yeah, I've been doing my best to keep up with the whole issue. Schumer sounds like a moron that has no idea what he's talking about or dealing with. The difference is that while he might be a moron and would like to take Bitcoin down, it takes more than one senator to do something like that. So, my whole IF situation is really unknown until/if more government officials get involved in this.

I don't have much hope in the rest of the government being a whole lot smarter on the issue, but I can't predict the future!


If you send me 20 BTC to my Bitcoin wallet, I will consider responding in one of several different unsatisfactory ways.

I agree with you on this one.  You are absolutely correct - although I think calling it a somewhat novel is a tremendous understatement, considering the multitude of its other benefits.  I simply don't think Bitcoin can survive in my country completely unregulated.  I believe that this is bad, but inevitable, for now.  This climate will change, but probably not in my lifetime.

I am going to alienate every user on these forums with this next bit, but a regulated bitcoin currency would be uncounterfeitable, easily and safely stored, taxable within the regulating economy for the support of beneficial governmental services, all without needing a single bank getting involved at any point.  The banking industry and the united states federal government may be inextricably tangled by now, in which case this situation is impossible.  Bitcoin represents a tremendous threat to the banking industry, and under proper regulation no threat to governmental authorities.  Totally unregulated, Bitcoin is a threat to both parties, and there is no doubt in my mind that the two of them can and will cause a doomsday scenario in the US and other tight-fisted plutocratic countries.  

As for the userbase statement, I'll bet you 5 BTC that if a poll were made in the general bitcoin forums about the motives driving individual interest in the bitcoin movement, the individuals interested in Bitcoins for black transactions would be outnumbered by the users interested in Bitcoins for either personal profit or ideological reasons by at least 3 to 1.  This thread sees a tremendous disparity of idealogy in favor of the black market simply because it is a thread about the black market Bitcoin economy, which uninterested parties aren't even going to take the time to read, much less post in.

I fixed that for you, since it seemed like you were using a lot of unnecessary words to make the core point.

Silk Road, individually, is not important to Bitcoin. If Silk Road decided they wanted to shut down tomorrow, Bitcoin would still live on.

Silk Road, as a concept - that is, a way to perform financial transactions that are not agreeable to 100% of the people with power - is absolutely essential to Bitcoin. The entire purpose of Bitcoin is that no one entity ever gets to decide whether a transaction happens or not, for any reason.


If you argue that the reason you want to use Bitcoin is to get out from underneath the thumb of those entities with large amounts of power, then you can't turn around and argue that we should let those entities have power over Bitcoin. And giving them the power to deny transactions at a whim is, essentially, handing them Bitcoin on a silver platter.


You didn't really explain what the advantage of a regulated bitcoin would be, but you did make an interesting assertion here.

What makes you think that the "ideological reasons" that people are interested in Bitcoin for don't include this exact ideology? What other ideological reasons could one have for using Bitcoin beyond the ideology of "I think my money should be free from interference from any entity"?

Someone else answered it exactly how I would have answered it so I didn't bother, but I'll repeat their answer.

Silkroad could not exist without Bitcoin. There are sites like Silkroad that do not use Bitcoin, but they aren't Silk Road because they don't use Bitcoin. Only Bitcoin offers the features required for a Silk Road.

So the only remaining answer to your question is Bitcoin - but a Bitcoin which made Silk Road(s) impossible would not be Bitcoin. It would be some other currency that made arbitrary moral decisions about the acceptability of transactions. At that point we might as well be using Flooz.

In other words, your question is completely unanswerable because it's a false dichotomy.

Now answer my question. What would be the purpose of a "regulated Bitcoin"? That is, what would be the functional difference between (I'll use the US here) the USD, which is a regulated, centralized, electronically transferrable currency issued by a central authority, and US-Bitcoin, the centralized, regulated, electronically transferrable currency issued by a central authority with a blockchain?