Bitcoin Donations To US Campaigns Might Soon Be Allowed 144
SonicSpike writes with this excerpt from Politico: "Political campaigns will be allowed to accept — but not spend — the digital currency Bitcoin, under a proposed federal rule released Thursday. The Federal Election Commission draft would require campaigns to first convert any Bitcoins collected as donation to dollars. According to the proposal, the currency will count as an 'in-kind' contribution to a campaign — like a stock or bond. The FEC will not consider them currency. Campaigns are permitted to accept non-monetary contributions like stocks, private stocks, commodities, and equipment— but must list their value in dollars on campaign finance reports. Attorneys for Conservative Action Fund PAC asked the agency in September to decide if and how political candidates and outside groups are allowed to use the digital currency, in addition to U.S. dollars. "
Well... (Score:3, Insightful)
Good. But still bad. Great for Bitcoins. A big shame that donations are allowed at all.
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So you think that only people who are already rich should run for office?
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Do we also restrain speech because everything is politics and freedom of the press belongs to the owners of the presses?
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The only thing bitcoins have going for them is that nobody's bothered to regulate them properly yet.
Apart from that, they're something way less convenient than pretty much any first world currency or precious metal.
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Gold ownership doesn't mean having to carry around the gold, just having some evidence that you own it.
And if you lose that evidence, well, at least there's a record elsewhere to confirm it.
You lose your bitcoin, and it's lost.
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Gold ownership doesn't mean having to carry around the gold, just having some evidence that you own it.
If you are talking about some sort of bond or note backed by gold, well there is nothing stopping one from doing the same with bitcoin. A company that holds bitcoins can take your info and provide you with an "IOU x bitcoins". So we'll call it a tie in that scenario. Now if you want the security of personally owning your bitcoins(keys), then yes, if you lose them... they are lost... same for gold. <snark>Of course you could pull out your backup of you gold you had in another location</snark>
I'
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So how does that work? You give me a voucher to some amount of gold? Except that's not enough, the record needs to be updated too. In fact, since I always have to contact the record, we can as well not bother with the vouchers, since they don't accomplish anything; and in fact there's no point in keeping gold in a vault
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Unlike "real identification: you're not allowed to "get it back" once you lose it for one simple reason
So, when you say "totally incorrect", you mean "totally incorrect except for this little caveat which makes it totally correct".
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At least it won't be the first time that bitcoins are used for murder.
Can you go ahead and rattle off a couple of examples of bitcoin being used for murder? Oh, and the silk road thing doesn't count, because nobody was actually murdered.
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Yes because nobody has ever held people hostage, decapitated, or committed mass killings for the good ol' dollar.
Oh and did you know that most dollar bills carry trace amounts of cocaine and meth, in spite of new ones always being put into circulation and old ones being destroyed?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contaminated_currency [wikipedia.org]
I think it's probably safe to say that bitcoin hasn't been used for as much illegal activity as the dollar has in the same time period (even though that may simply be due to it bein
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Not 99% at all, but do you understand how that method consolidates existing power?
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Paying the deposit doesn't get you campaign financing, lol. And loads of small parties lose most of their deposits - the deposit being nothing more than a way of limiting the number of people on the ballot paper to the usual suspects. We have no such thing as a write-in candidate in the UK, remember.
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(though [Canadian campaign finance authorities] don't issue tax credits after the first $1000 per person, and unlike the USA, corporations don't get a credit for donating!)
I can't speak with any authority on the Canadian campaign finance system, but in the US, neither individuals nor corporations can deduct campaign contributions from their taxes.
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Unlike now.
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Many successful political parties were created through the union movement in Europe.
That was just a bunch of working men and women throwing money into a pot.
It's not about the money, but the propaganda.
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And about access to platforms to spread your propaganda, which is often based on... the money. In the US, the wealthy hold near complete sway over the entire media, so "news" consists of one multimillionaire bashing another for not hating unions quite enough. Working-class political movements got their voices out through things like Labor newspapers; good luck finding those in wide circulation in the US. For a while before the 'net caught on in the wide mainstream, there was opportunity for freer discussion
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No, but I don't consider a government-for-sale a good idea either.
I prefer the model our country has: Get more than 2% (IIRC) of the votes and get reimbursed by tax money for your campaign expenses. Not a perfect model either, but I prefer to pay my politicians myself instead of letting corporations do it.
Re: Well... (Score:2)
Re: Well... (Score:2)
False dichotomy. The government should provide public campaign financing with reasonable rules as to who can access the funds.
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Who sets the rules?
What if you have 1000 people asking for a share of the funds, is it a net benefit to dilute the pool by splitting it evenly, or do we say the crazy guy who mumbles and can't put a sentence together does not qualify?
If one person does not qualify, where do we draw a fair line?
How do we set up a system to resist complaints analogous to gerrymandering, where the people who decide the rules seem fair but are manipulated into giving a predetermined answer by apparently unrelated rules?
If the
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God, you mention a possible solution to corruption and people start complaining "but there are so many variables!" Yes, yes there are. Politics is complicated.
If we're going to block every idea because it's not simple enough, we're simply going to be paralyzed, and I'm not a fan of that course of action.
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That's ridiculous. Just because public financing cannot solve 100% of the problem doesn't mean it's not worthwhile.
How does it solve the problem of "$CANDIDATE has views I find reprehensible. I shouldn't have to pay to support that asshole." Free Speech and Free Association (which are natural rights, though I borrowed the phrasing from the US Constitution) implies a right to NOT speak and to NOT associate.
I'm for free-as-in-speech speech, but not free-as-in-beer speech. If you have a message you want to put out, hit your supporters up for money. It is not the job for any freedom-respecting government to spend THE TAXP
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Having had to clean up a couple of computers from an infection by a bitcoin mining malware, I don't think that it is a good idea for any organization to accept donations in bitcoin.
Unlike with government-backed currency, which at worst can be earned through criminal enterprise (which does not change its status as legal tender), the VALUE and the particular bitcoin itself can be A criminal enterprise.
The mining I.e. creation of the coin being a crime, not a mere product of a crime like money earned from grow
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Unlike with government-backed currency, which at worst can be earned through criminal enterprise (which does not change its status as legal tender), the VALUE and the particular bitcoin itself can be A criminal enterprise.
No. This does not rise to the level that it really even needs a rebuttal, but I will leave you with one other thing to ponder: email.
Even better, imagine a Daily Mail article with a photo of someone's grandma being all old and dad cause het power bill grew exponentially before her computer died and a title like "Greenpeace donators suspected of robbing the elderly!"
Did you think that this was in any way representative of reality? Kill yourself before your idiocy spreads. The last fucking thing we need is more tabloid garbage spreading propaganda just because you are so incompetent that you struggle to get rid of a simple botnet.
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Wow! You make no sensible comment or claim AND your arguments are all ad hominems.
Your mom must be proud.
By proud I mean she killed herself cause she couldn't stand bringing such a sorry excuse for a biped to the world.
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They'll probably just get zombies to float it into $20 and under anonymous donations, much like the last two national elections.
Dead People Have Donated Nearly $600K to Campaigns Since 2009 [motherjones.com]
Anonymous Donations Can Remain Secret Despite IRS Requirement to Disclose [bloomberg.com]
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Equal Opportunity (Score:5, Insightful)
Congress will take bribes from anyone.
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The good news is that now that the congresscritters will have Bitcoin of their own, so they'll have a vested interest in helping it become a legal and legitimate currency. That way, they can spend it on attack ads against their opponents in 2016 :)
Don't forget that there are still a lot of banksters out there who are still trying to outlaw Bitcoin transactions in the US, using sites like Silk Road as an example on why it shouldn't be adopted as a mainstream currency. The potential loss of credit card transa
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When consumer protection laws apply to bitcoins it may have a chance of becoming a viable alternative. I know that if someone screws with my Amex or Visa account, I will not be on the hook for more than $50. If someone steals my bitcoins I am screwed, period.
No thanks. I'll continue to take my chances on $US.
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How would they steal it when it is encrypted?
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Protip: US dollars are the paper slips with pictures of dead people on them people keep in their wallet, not the rounded plastic rounded rectangle that says "Visa". If someone steals the dollars, you've lost them, period.
The plastic rectangle is called a "credit card". It's not a dollar, nor any other t
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Well excuse me. OK, if someone steals the money out of my bank account, it gets replaced by the FDIC. When bitcoin has a guarantor like the FDIC I'll reconsider. Until then, pfffft!
Like my credit cards, if someone steals the money out of my wallet I usually won't be out more than $50 either.
Credit cards will get you into trouble only if you don't use them properly. No, they don't come with instructions and yes, you need a certain amount of common sense, and yes, there's a very short supply of that these
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What makes it illegitimate? People are accepting it as trade for products and services, which is just as legitimate as many other quasi-currencies out there.
Of course, Congress-critters would LOVE bitcoin because of its anonymous nature. Send any amount of cash an
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Congress will take bribes from anyone.
Especially relatively untraceable anonymous bribes like bitcoin would be.
Fucking scumbags.
So the politicians will be in good company (Score:3)
with the likes of those who operate the silk road. "in-kind" contribution? Sounds about right to me.
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Indeed. Bitcoin, like party politics, is enjoyed by people who are out of their mind and should be out of the question.
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No thanks (Score:2)
Wow, this may be one of the first bitcoin services I had no intention of ever using right out of the gate. I would feel better about.... paying for a murder directly than funding some asshat to go cause mass murders.
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I would feel better about.... paying for a murder directly than funding some asshat to go cause mass murders.
I take it you don't pay your taxes then? Got WMD?
Remember Silk Road? (Score:2)
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Silk Road Haul needs to be laundered (Score:2)
The government is sitting on millions of dollars of Bitcoin seized successfully from the Dread Pirate Roberts' Silk Road shutdown. What a perfect way to put this money back in circulation; political manipulation!
Sure why not (Score:2)
Election funds are a money pit.
I can think of no better way to drain the value of bitcoins
and line the pockets of elected officials brothers in law.
Most corruption is the vast media funds where art and air
time are purchased through family shills.
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This decision is pretty much, "It isn't real money, but something that enough chumps value."
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The US dollar isn't real money either, and it hasn't been since the FDR regime.
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Care to share your definition of "real money"? Money can only be something that people value above its production cost, which makes the existence of "real money" impossible.
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Sure: real money is any token which can be used to pay for all debts and nearly everything available on general sale. It is supported by systems to ensure it maintains a fairly stable value.
That's one simple, practical definition of money.
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If I go to a general store, I can't pay with US dollars. Are they not real money?
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Is it, "What would be the response of a smartass who doesn't live in the US?"
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Money is anything that someone else values. Simple as that. As soon as I can exchange some goods or services for something I hold and that is not goods or services itself to be consumed and/or traded further, that something becomes money. Whether that's sheets of paper with funny heads printed on it, some shiny pebbles out of certain metals or whatever else, what matters is whether the one offering the good or service is willing to part with it in exchange for that money.
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I'm pretty sure US businesses and governments still accept the US dollar even if you're abroad.
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USD is probably not the best example, because a lot of foreign stores do accept it. The point is that you can buy nearly everything by type in USD, not everything by quantity in USD.
incorrect - been to 4 countries, spent US cash (Score:2)
Though the _most_common_ money in most countries is the local currency, I've been to four countries and never had any problem spending US dollars in any of them, including at supermarkets restaurants, and bars In one non-US country, sellers saw that I looked like an American and quoted prices in USD. I surprised one shop keeper when I paid in local currency. I had acquired a small amount of local currency but found out there was no need for it.
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Out of interest, which countries? The only place I've had that is in Switzerland (Geneva airport accepted euro, with a rubbish exchange rate) and The French Pyranese where a lot of peopleb going skiing has Spanish pasetas.
I'm going to jump to conclusions and say that they were probably counties whose own currencies were slightly unstable.
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Pretty much any country with an unstable local currency will accept US dollars, GB pounds, Euros, Yen.
neighboring countries w/ stable currency (Score:2)
I've only been to neighboring countries - Canada, Mexico, and Jamaica. I'm not sure why I said four. Am I forgetting a country that I've been to? Was I counting the People's Republic of California? shrug
I've been told US dollars are ubiquitous in Singapore. I'm curious. My thought is that in most industrialized countries one could spend USD, maybe at a crappy exchange rate. I wonder if that's true.
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Every definitions exercise is a line-drawing game, lol.
The important property here is that you can buy nearly everything on general sale with US dollars. You can't buy everything with US dollars everywhere, but that's not what matters.
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Actually, the law (in the US) says that the US Dollar is payment for all debts. That doesn't apply if there is no debt. If I order a meal in a restaurant, and I owe $20, that's a debt, and they have to accept a twenty-dollar bill as payment. If I want to buy a $20 book in a bookstore, there is no existing debt and therefore the payment law does not apply. To put it another way, they have no legal obligation to sell the book to me (not entirely true, but probably close enough), so they can put condition
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Real money is something that has a guarantee that it can be turned into goods or services in the future, backed by something that most people will trust. Examples of the guarantee include a bank that owns a lot of assets making a promise, a guarantee that a government will accept it in payment for taxes or will enforce your right to settle debts with it, or some commodity (historical examples include grain and precious metals) that is stored somewhere in an amount that makes a convincing argument that peop
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Excellently summarised.
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Both currencies are backed by exactly nothing.
If the US government would make guaranties about trading dollars for some amount of goods or service, it would be a guaranty agents inflation. Running a money press without adding goods or services is exactly the opposite.
But there is one big difference: Bitcoin is designed to make limitless money printing impossible, which sounds a whole lot better than a promise from some kind government. In fact, Bitcoin does not depend on any politician, anywhere in the worl
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Jesus Christ, this is how scientologists really think.
Any government could change the algorithms to give itself the power to create new bitcoins. Sure, you can create a fork of bitcoin, just like people could have created a fork of the US dollar at the ending of the gold standard... but you know what almost everyone chose to continue using?
And if it were really true that all US wars are about the currency used to trade oil, the fuck do you think is going to happen to bitcoins the moment some oil speculator
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Well, given that everyone continued using the US dollar at the ending of the gold standard, my bet will be that people are going to go for the currency that receives the support of the government they've elected.
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This is why I prefer the Euro over the Dollar. It is backed by a "real" economy, but instead of one government behind it that could go bonkers and do something radical, over a dozen governments hold their hands over it and it's very unlikely that they will ever agree on anything, let alone any radical change.
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The U.S. Dollar is similarly backed by the agreement of the people that it has a certain value. However, that value may change because an outside authority has the power to print more of such money, thus diluting what your current money is worth. Therefore, the U.S. Dollar is an investment vehicle guaranteed to lose value over ti
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Bitcoin is backed by the agreement of people that use bitcoin that it has a certain value. This value tends to change as more people use bitcoin, as there are only so many of them.
That is not backing. Backing requires responsibility. If all of the people who accept bitcoin today suddenly stop tomorrow, who will enforce their guarantee? No one has made legally binding promises to exchange Bitcoins for anything in the future.
The U.S. Dollar is similarly backed by the agreement of the people that it has a certain value. However, that value may change because an outside authority has the power to print more of such money, thus diluting what your current money is worth. Therefore, the U.S. Dollar is an investment vehicle guaranteed to lose value over time in relation to any fixed commodity.
The US Dollar is backed by two guarantees in US law, deriving from Constitution. One is that the US Government will accept them in payment for taxes. The other is that the US Government will, via its legal apparatus, allow any debts held between US citizens to
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Bitcoin is backed by the agreement of people that use bitcoin that it has a certain value. This value tends to change as more people use bitcoin, as there are only so many of them.
The U.S. Dollar is similarly backed by the agreement of the people that it has a certain value. However, that value may change because an outside authority has the power to print more of such money
SCARCITY != VALUE
Say it with me: SCARCITY != VALUE
Yes, scarcity can be a component of value, but it is not a guarantee. I can go out into my back yard and start picking up random worthless rocks, build a little stand and try to sell them: "Genuine rocks from AthanasiusKircher's back yard! Only a few like them in the world!" Nobody will care.
I could even argue that "This rock is the ONLY ROCK WITH THIS EXACT SHAPE IN THE KNOWN UNIVERSE!!" That's probably true. If it looks pretty, maybe somebody
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Backing is required for fiat currencies because they do not have any sort of built in scarcity other than what is enforced by the owner of the fiat. The promise is really to bust down my door with guns if I try to produce any US$ myself, thus creating an artificial scarcity of valuable pieces of basic paper and ink.
Bitcoin is not a fiat currency, it's closer to gold in that it has an actual scarcity, just like one day we'll run out of gold one day we'll run out of bitcoins and our option for expanding the s
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Backing is required for fiat currencies because they do not have any sort of built in scarcity other than what is enforced by the owner of the fiat.
Precious metal-based currencies are also backed by the promise that the person storing the metal for you will exchange the currency for some quantity of the metal.
Bitcoin is not a fiat currency, it's closer to gold in that it has an actual scarcity, just like one day we'll run out of gold one day we'll run out of bitcoins and our option for expanding the supply will boil down to further subdividing the pool that remains
Scarcity does not imply value. There are lots of things that are scarce, but have low value because no one wants them. You don't create value just because you have something that is scarce. Pieces of paper on which I have drawn a picture of a cock are scarce, but that doesn't make them valuable. I don't intend to create any more, and so now by
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Bitcoin is backed by the stakeholders - those who have invested money into mining and bitcoins. These people are citizens of a variety of countries, many of which offer legal rights for investments. The United States, being the very capitalist nation that it is, has many laws that protect its citizen's property. These citizens will be petitioning the government constantly through every legal avenue possible to insure their bitcoin holdings are not made illegal on a political whim. In Canada for example,
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Ignoring its tendency to eat humans, the lion makes a much better pet than the chihuahua.
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Mod parent up.
Money in generally defined as
medium of exchange
store of value
unit of account.
As such it kind of passes the first test, but volatility kills bitcoin use for the other 2 requirements.
Re: Can we have a week without ... (Score:2)
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Universal acceptance is one of the requirements. If a token is only useful for enumerating some exchange but not others, than it's indistinguishable from grocery store coupons.
So we are in agreement that there is no such thing as a currency.
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Epic fail (Score:2)
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With 3D printers you'll be able to make hours, days or any other unit of time at home, for free!
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With 3D printers you'll be able to make hours, days or any other unit of time at home, for free!
I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but you need a 4D printer for that.
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Bubble? It's a hyperbubble, you insensitive clod!
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Sorry to bear it to you, but your precious US dollar is not real money since 1934 when the US government defaulted. Any form of currency that can be devalued on a whim is make-believe: it lasts only as long as people believe in their government and banking system, and people are rapidly losing faith. Take a look at the public debt to GBP ratios: the debt spiral looks like there will be a collapse in no more than 10-20 years.
That's why people are so desperately looking at a currency that can't be spent at
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Yeah, everyone who fails to make bank off a scam is just bitter.
Boiler Room is also a good film.
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With the huge number of stories these must be hundreds of comments which point out the problems by now. Funny thing is I don't remember seeing a story here about the theft of around a million dollars in bitcoins in Australia this week, I only saw that in the mainstream news. We only seem to see stories about bitcoin on this sight that put it in a positive light submitted by people that undoubte
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But don't you see??? Bitcoins will deliver us from the evil of central banking!
All that has to happen is for everyone to agree to use and control them only in the ways the Bitcoin Founding Fathers claimed to intend.
THE PLAN IS FLAWLESS.
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If it is a scam, it must have victims. Please point out the victims of this scam.
If it is a pyramid scheme, then money is being taken from people who entered into the scheme late and being given to the people who entered into the scheme early. Please indicate who has recently had money taken from them to enter into this scheme, and who has been paid for entering into this scheme early.
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Or maybe the nerds saw the boat but decided not to ride it.
There's a word for people whose interest is making money without working, and it's not "nerd".
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You do realise that at any instant there is a finite, fixed number of units of every currency in the world, yes? And the only way to create more is by printing them, which is exactly what bitcoinites don't like.
Increasing WEALTH - i.e. the sense in which economists like to talk of the market as non-zero-sum - means actually creating something, e.g. a more efficient tool or process. The very problem with bitcoin speculation is that it does not create anything. You cannot make money from bitcoins without taki
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To be clear, speculation in traditional markets CAN be productive. When some of the traders are in it for the underlying product, speculators (in a well-functioning market) promote the most efficient producers at best, and provide liquidity at worst. But when there is no underlying product, it's just as a Ponzi scheme: there is still no such thing as a free lunch.
We don't want that boat (Score:2)
It's a scam. There's plenty of comments here that describe why far better than I can put it.
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Yup, and now they want donations for it too.
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Let's just save some money and do this right for a change.
First; gather all political donations to ALL candidates regardless of party. In fact,this includes every party right down to the independents only registered in one state.
Then; organize a 50 states in 50 days tour like Lollapalooza. ( If George Thorogood can do it, someone wanting to be president can do it.)
Make them all ride in the same bus, no consulting with campaign managers who will be left behind, along with cell phones.
All day debates on 5 sta