Good question! I am glad you know about redeeming lawful money.
Thank you for the link. I do not find the case on PACER yet.
Good question! I am glad you know about redeeming lawful money.
Thank you for the link. I do not find the case on PACER yet.
This is what jimstone freelance has got on the subject.
(Link here)
Re-posted from Jim Stone's website:
I have checked up on MtGox a few times and the formal statement regarding the account seizure has been removed with nothing replacing it, and everything appears to be normal. It may have been real, but I think they dealt with it, and I also figured out it was an ambush.
The case was based around the fact that MtGox had a bank account that was not registered for international "money exchanges". At the time this account was set up, Bitcoin was not considered by TPTB to be a currency, so setting up the type of bank account MtGox had was perfectly legitimate. Once Canada delcared bitcoin to be a taxable currency, the U.S. hopped on it and instantly took action against MtGox for having an illigitimate account. This is of course how tyranny functions, it will do background investigations to find ways to make people in violation of the law just because the tyranny tweaked a law somewhere, when all intention on the part of the victim was above board. So it looks to me like MtGox handled this technicality and all is well, as usual they are up and running, and bitcoin is perfectly stable.
Is MtGox seizure a silly internet rumor?
MtGox is up and running just fine, and knows nothing about a court order. They have issued a statement, which follows:
Statement Regarding DHS court Order
. TOKYO - JAPAN - May 15, 2013
MtGox has read on the Internet that the United States Department of Homeland Security had a court order and/or warrant issued from the United States District Court in Maryland which it served upon the Dwolla mobile payment service with respect to accounts used for trading with MtGox. MtGox takes this information seriously. However, as of this time MtGox has not been provided with a copy of the court order and/or warrant and does not know its scope and/or the reasons for its issuance. MtGox is investigating and will provide further reports when additional information becomes known.
Regards
Mt.Gox Co. Ltd Team.
You can go directly to this announcement HERE
Note to MtGox: They have a 15 day window to seize the account according to the court document. So drain the account and be done with it. If this is legit, someone who cared about you published something that was supposed to be kept secret with the seizure being an ambush
This live bitcoin chart, which updates instantly shows that MtGox is up and running just fine and serves as a secondary verification that MtGox really is doing OK
In addition to this, bitcoins have taken absolutely no downward hit in value, which proves the currency is indeed stable and does not need mtgox to survive. However, if mtgox is taken down it would be tragic because mtgox handles over 70 percent of all bitcoin traffic. Others would be there as a backup if this internet rumor happens to be true, but at this point I think it could all be hearsay.
UPDATE:
I read the court order, and if it is real it won´t affect MtGox anyway unless he is staffed by idiots. He can just open a different account and put the funds there. The court order as written gives an agent 14 days to sieze the account in question, and if MtGox did not drain that account SECOND ONE of hearing this news they are idiots. It is a matter of a bank account, not MtGox itself, and they were nailed on a technicality and not anything substantial. So don't be expecting MtGox to go anywhere, they will not, they will simply continue as is with a different account even if that account has to be opened in a friendlier nation - America is NOT the place to try to survive freedom.
It is entirely possible that the papers are indeed legit, but that they got leaked by someone in the court system that disagreed with them and wanted to warn MtGox before anything happened. Usually these are issued and kept silent until action is taken, but if that action is not taken before the holder of the account takes action to save it, there is little the agent can do once he enters the scene late other than to sieze an empty account that is not worth it´s space on a hard drive.
If that be the case, MtGox will not suffer from this AT ALL.
Treefarmer
There is power in the blood of Jesus
That explains nothing on PACER! Thank you Treefarmer.
I like what Paul Rosenberg said on Free-Man's Perspective dot com:
The following is a copy and paste of the article:
Bitcoin: The Tyranny Test
FREEMANSPERSPECTIVE · May 20th, 2013
An increasing number of people have complained about governments and central banks in recent years, even using the word “tyranny” to describe them. They are, of course, called names in the establishment press: conspiracy theorists, mainly.
Calling someone a name, however, does not erase their argument (at least not among rational people) and both the governments and the big banks stand accused.
Up till now, however, these accusations were never accepted by the general public. The average guy really didn’t want to hear about the evils of government money. After all, that was the only thing he had ever used to buy food, clothes, gasoline, cars, and so on. He didn’t want to acknowledge the accusations because he feared what might happen to him without his usual money.
Now, however, we have a brand new currency (called Bitcoin) available to us: something radically different. This gives us a new way to directly address the subject of monetary tyranny, providing a clear test for the governments and money masters of the world:
If they are truly NOT tyrannical, they will leave this new currency alone.
If they ARE tyrannical, they will attack the new currency because it eats into their scam.
In other words, Bitcoin is a test for “the powers that be.” The way they deal with this new method of exchange will reveal their true nature.
If they ignore Bitcoin, they refute the charges of tyranny. If they attack it, they verify those charges.
After all, what honest reason could there be to attack an inherently peaceful tool for transferring value?
Prospective Reasons
Reasons to attack Bitcoin have recently appeared in the “public square.” Here are the three most popular ones, each followed with some analysis:
It can be used for money laundering.
Of course it can be used for money laundering — ANY currency can be used for money laundering. Currencies are neutral — that is their purpose! Currencies are valuable precisely because they can be exchanged for anything else — that’s why we use them!
Moreover, dollars and Euros and Pounds are used for money laundering every day. Consider the recent money laundering crimes of HSBC and Wachovia/Wells Fargo. These banks laundered hundreds of billions of dollars for violent drug cartels. And consider that this amount of laundered money is several hundred times the value of every Bitcoin in existence.
No one from either bank went to jail. Neither bank was shut down. Neither bank suffered more than a minor fine. So, how much of a concern can money laundering really be to governments and banks? Clearly not much.
But, since they accuse Bitcoin of being used for bad things, let’s be clear about the situation:
Every mafioso uses government money.
Every drug smuggler uses government money.
Every terrorist uses government money.
Every pornographer uses government money.
Every criminal of every type uses government money.
They also use the telephone system and the mail and banks and a wide variety of government services. But government money is good and Bitcoin is bad?
The argument fails.
It could destabilize the current system.
A tiny, new currency is a threat to the long-established king of the hill? Comparing Bitcoin to dollars, Euros and Yen is like comparing an ant to a dinosaur. This is a threat?
Please understand also that no one is forcing anyone to use Bitcoin. If you don’t think it’s a great idea, you don’t have to use it. If its price movements (relative to dollars) bother you, you don’t have to use it. How is that destabilizing to the current system? It is entirely separate.
And what of the current system? It was falling apart on its own before the Bitcoin program was ever written. And I could go on at length on the insane levels of government debt, hundreds of trillions in derivatives, rehypothecation, and innocent people being forced to bail-out failed banks.
The current system has massive problems, but none of them can be blamed on Bitcoin.
This argument fails also.
Bitcoin provides no customer protection.
Well, no, it doesn’t. Bitcoin is a currency, not a legal system.
What is implied by this argument is that the government banking system does protect customers. That is an outright lie. People are ripped-off via the banking system every day. And more than that, consider what happened just a month ago in Cyprus: Thousands of innocent people were ripped-off BY the banking system — purposely — all at once and without recourse. This argument is, really, an insult to one’s intelligence.
And I should add something else: If Bitcoin is used properly, the crime of identity theft (a big problem with government money) vanishes – there is no identity available to be stolen.
So, again, the argument fails. Only those people who believe anything a government says will buy it.
In the End
In the end, it is said, we judge ourselves. Bitcoin has now put governments and banks in the position of judging themselves. They will write their own verdicts.
It should be interesting to watch.
Paul Rosenberg
FreemansPerspective.com
Treefarmer
There is power in the blood of Jesus
http://innovatedeconomy.com/uncatego..._lsa=646d-4771
The bitcoin network is more powerful than the top 500 supercomputers combined
Add up the combined computing power of the 500 fastest supercomputers in the world—that’s billions upon billions of dollars worth of hardware—and stack it up against to the raw processing power of every computer currently producing the alternative currency bitcoin, and what do you get?
The network of computers “mining” bitcoin is more powerful—eight times more powerful, in fact.
And that’s not all: The bitcoin network also qualifies as the world’s first exascale computer, meaning it’s capable of a quintillion floating point calculations per second. Some people argue that exascale computing will make possible everything from predicting the effects of climate change to producing energy with fusion. Supercomputers aren’t expected to achieve that speed until sometime around 2020.
However, bitcoin mining is distributed among the multitude of machines that devote computing power to the network, helping to solve cryptographic puzzles every 10 minutes, for which they are sometimes rewarded with new bitcoins. And the bitcoin network has become so specialized that much of it cannot be used for any other purpose. So what bitcoin has wrought is the world’s fastest supercomputer that can only be used to mine bitcoin.
Add this to the $150,000 a day bitcoin miners are collectively spending on electricity to produce about half a million dollars worth of bitcoin, and the scale of the computing resources currently devoted to producing the virtual currency really comes into perspective.
U.S. Shuts Currency Exchange Allegedly Tied To $6B In Money Laundering
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2013/05/28/u-s-authorities-close-another-digital-currency-exchange/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...-of-governmentBitcoin makes Liberty Reserve look quaint – as unlike the alleged money launderer, Bitcoin is decentralised. There's no single company or entity controlling the currency, and so it's nearly impossible to shut down.
Federal Court Rules That the Bitcoin Is Money
When the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged Trendon Shavers, the founder of Bitcoin Savings and Trust (BTCST) with running a Ponzi scheme, Shavers challenged the agency by claiming that bitcoins didn’t fall under their definition of securities and so therefore he and his company were exempt from SEC rules. Federal Judge Amos Mazzant ruled otherwise, which was bad news for Shavers but good news for bitcoin owners who have been using the digital currency as money ever since it was invented in 2009. Said the court:
It is clear that Bitcoin can be used as money. It can be used to purchase goods or services, and as Shavers stated, used to pay for individual living expenses. The only limitation of Bitcoin is that it is limited to those places that accept it as currency. However, it can also be exchanged for conventional currencies, such as the U.S. dollar, Euro, Yen, and Yuan.
Therefore, Bitcoin is a currency or form of money, and investors wishing to invest in BTCST provided an investment of money.
The development of the so-called cryptocurrency caught the attention of freedom lovers and others increasingly nervous about governmental invasions of privacy into their financial transactions and thought that the bitcoin — traded anonymously on the Internet — would circumvent those incursions. It also was outside the realm of central banks around the world and the present fiat currencies being manipulated by them. It would, when fully developed, provide security, privacy and liquidity.
Its history has been bumpy. The value of a bitcoin was first negotiated through online forums and some transactions were compromised by hackers and thieves. Some investors lost thousands — even hundreds of thousands — of dollars. With the passage of time, however, the glitches began to be worked out, and the bitcoin gained credibility and even prominence. By October 2012, one single bitcoin exchange, BitPay, reported having more than 1,000 merchants accepting bitcoins under its processing service. Another processor announced in February 2013 that it processed more than $20 million in transactions in a single month.
At the height of the Cyprus banking crisis, investors were seeking safe havens to avoid having their savings confiscated and some of them bid up the price of the bitcoin to unsustainable levels, touching $266 a piece before dropping to $76 (and then returning to $160) in a single day. The present value of a bitcoin is a little over $100.
As the bitcoin gained more credibility so did attacks on it from predictable establishment sources, such as economist Paul Krugman, who called bitcoin “The Anti-Social Network,” adding that “Bitcoins … derive their value, if any, purely from self-fulfilling prophecy, the belief that other people will accept them as payment.” Just like Federal Reserve Notes.
Others, however, took a more reasoned view and began to explore, and accept, the bitcoin as money. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), for instance, announced in May that it would be glad to accept bitcoin donations, with this disclaimer:
While we are accepting Bitcoin donations, EFF is not endorsing Bitcoin. EFF does not typically endorse products or services, and we certainly do not endorse any of the [other] electronic payment methods that we currently accept (credit cards, PayPal, and now BitPay).
With respect to Bitcoin as a technology, there is clearly a lot more to be said. Currently it seems that Bitcoin, while innovative, has a number of limitations and weaknesses in its design, and might yet turn out to be just the first draft for future crypto-currencies.
However, as an organization that supports cryptographic experimentation, we believe the best answer to Bitcoin’s potential shortcomings is for others to come along and offer superior alternatives.
One of bitcoin’s limitations is that it isn’t nearly as private and safe from prying eyes as its users would like. Said EFF: “Bitcoin is very often not anonymous in the ways users might believe or expect, because the network doesn’t actively conceal the IP addresses from which transactions were initiated.” But it added that it was willing to accept bitcoins as an expression of its commitment to freedom and privacy, expressing hope that future improvements would be coming:
The fact that Bitcoin is subject to criticism should not be surprising; it would have been much more surprising if the first widely used cryptographic currency had been perfect, and very active research continues on ways of improving Bitcoin or creating new crypto-currencies with other properties.
One of those improvements was announced by Andy Greenberg in Forbes magazine in April: the “Zerocoin Add-on,” which would make transactions in bitcoins truly anonymous and untraceable. Wrote Greenberg:
If adopted by enough of the Bitcoin network, Zerocoin’s inventors believe it could become a fundamental upgrade to Bitcoin’s code, integrating itself into the currency and solving what many see as serious privacy flaws in Bitcoin’s current implementation.
Serious money is being drawn into the development of bitcoin. Winklevoss Capital invested more than $10 million in bitcoins back in April, followed by venture capitalist Andreessen Horowitz and Exante, a hedge fund out of Malta.
The dream of freedom and privacy continues to drive innovation for a digital currency that is beyond the reach of government snoops and spies and central bank manipulation. Bitcoin is just the first iteration. Now that it has officially received sanction from a federal court, the bitcoin’s road to legitimacy and acceptance is brighter and clearer than ever.
A graduate of Cornell University and a former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American magazine and blogs frequently at www.LightFromTheRight.com, primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at badelmann@thenewamerican.com
The reviews are getting more shabbier.
TOKYO (Reuters) - Mt. Gox, once the world's biggest bitcoin exchange, looked to have essentially disappeared on Tuesday, with its website down, its founder unaccounted for and a Tokyo office empty bar a handful of protesters saying they had lost money investing in the virtual currency. http://news.yahoo.com/bitcoin-exchan...1--sector.html
Mt. Gox had been dying a slow death for years. Feel for those who are out money but most in the bitcoin community knew it was a troubled exchange, avoided it, and are now glad this drag is behind us. Notice there will be no taxpayer-funded bailouts (bail-ins) of MtGox; nor should there be.
And look at this... bitcoin ATM comes to old man Pottapaug's home state:
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/b...in-atm-boston/
Last edited by stoneFree; 02-26-14 at 03:59 PM.
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