Money. Like M-O-N-E-Y.

Where? Again, what money? I thought we were talking about the Bitcoin data protocol.

Thanks, nmat. Somehow I've missed this thread. Will have to read it.

Seems the law is at crossroad? If they say bitcoin is not money then we can do perfect payment system connected to but independent from current fiat money regulations. If they say bitcoin is money then they say that people can have money without banks and central bank to issue them. So, I suspect court's decision will deliberately take years. Enough to kill bitcoin!?

It all depends on what they mean by "Money".  What do they want it to not be?  Why?

I can give you a useless semantic argument either way for whether Bitcoin is "Money".  It IS a medium of exchange.  It can be a unit of account, but you could argue that this use is uncommon at present.  It can be a store of value, although you could argue that it's a poor one.

It shares some properties of money, but trying to shoehorn it into being "Money" or a "payment processing system", a "commodity", or a "security" will always reveal cases where it's used in ways that clearly don't fit any of those categories.

They probably want to know if Bitcoin has certain properties in common with other currencies.  If you want a good argument, you need to find out which properties they care about.

bitcoin isn't money.

its 21 million bits.

the fact that some people own the bits, and some people want more bits, means it has value.

ask them what is money? where dose it come from? and what gives it value...

you'll see bitcoin is nothing like "real money"... bitcoin isn't make believe!

 

Appreciated coin_toss. This is the kind of stuff I'd like to read. Thanks everybody for all constructive hints.