I'm looking into this, and FinCen admitted crccy is nearly impossible to outlaw because it's not easily definable. How would they define a crccy, exactly? I think once you think about it, from a legal standpoint, it's not so simple, at all. Which is exactly why crccy's are so wonderful - they liberate billions from currencies that are printed into the toilet.
Oh, it is very simple. Whatever the US government says, it goes. If they tell to the New Zealand authorities to raid Kim Dotcom's house and shut down his business and bank accounts, the kiwis jump right away. The government's muscle is more important then their legal ability or moral standards. Have we found the Iraqi WMDs yet? Oh, about definitions. Once they throw in the magic word "terrorism" they can and will do whatever they want... Right now it is illegal to make a competing currency to the US dollar. It is also illegal to operate a money trafficking business without license. There you go, 2 existing laws that bitcoin users break.... they don't even need to rewrtite the legal code.... Just imagine tomorrow there is terrorist cell discovered living in Kansas. They also discover that they have been funded using bitcoins sent from wherever. That would be the end of $140 BTC...
[cough]marihuana[cough] I think you are a little late worrying about that. ------------------------------ Legal question to ponder: If someone steals my bitcoins and I know who did it, will authorities care or do anything? What was exactly stolen?? -------------------------------- " And then 100 FBI agents get a few thousand Bitcoins each, buy something from US based Bitcoin merchants and parade them out on national TV for the entire nation to see why Bitcoin acceptance results in a $250,000 fine and 5 years in prison. In other words, Bitcoin could very well become a victim of its own success as the US government would never allow another form of money to detract from public purpose due to high levels of monetary competition. " http://www.businessinsider.com/is-bitcoin-money-2013-4
You just answered your own question. That's why the Government can't outlaw it. It's not a physical currency. It's random digits stored on a computer, that mean something, to some people. It's fluff. Nothing. But something. At this point, I'll more research. We're entering the realm of conjecture now.
What the guberment can do is threaten all parties/exchanges/companies that take bitcoin as a payment with fraud and jail time or else.
I bet right away there are at least 5-10 Russian/Chinese code writer groups working on how to hack, modify, steal from the system. I bet in the next 6 weeks we are going to see a hacking scandal or a huge thefts of one of the exchanges. When BC was under $10, the incentive wasn't there. Now with the growing value.... Then when you go to the police; Hey, they just stole my 10K Bitcoins, the government is just going to smile and say: see, I told you so.... -------------------------- What about natural loss I mentioned earlier? Let's say an early miner dies with 500K coins and nobody knows where he kept them. That is 5% of the current coinsupply lost forever...
There is a thread somewhere detailing just this. I think it is estimated that around 250,000 coins are lost forever? I may be off by around 100k though, hard to remember exactly what the total was. GL "hacking" bitcoin, whatever that means. Exchanges, yes, that do not utilize cold storage.
Depletion is not a problem. Digital currency is just a mathematical algorithm. So it should not be difficult to replace one digital currency with another I think.
Sure it is. 1. You don't even know it is missing. The only thing you see is that the coins are not trading, but that doesn't necessary mean they are lost, maybe they are just horded. 2. Who has the authority to issue new coins for the lost ones (if can be proven)? It is decentralized! 3. This could go on forever, depleting the whole supply....