Bitcoin’s Future is in Asia and More

Well bitcoin has been under sustained fire from authorities who see cryptocurrencies as undermining the monopoly of central bank fiat money.

Sovereign Man’s Simon Black explains why bitcoin’s future is in Asia

Senator Tom Carper (Delaware) is confused about Bitcoin.

As Chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, this is how Carper framed his opening remarks yesterday at a hearing about digital currencies– with complete, incoherent confusion.

Carper’s hearing went on for several hours as one witness after another testified about the potential evils of digital currencies. They hailed from agencies and organizations like:

• The Homeland Security committee
• Criminal Division of the US Attorney General’s Office
• US Secret Service Criminal Investigative Division
• The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network
• The International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children

Based on the way they stacked the witness list, the message they’re sending is clear: digital currencies like Bitoin equate to crime, terrorism, and child exploitation.

But the height of absurdity in yesterday’s hearing probably came during the testimony from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), in which the agency’s chief cited the BENEFITS of digital currencies, including:

• anonymity
• simple, easy to navigate
• lower fees than the conventional financial system
• globally accessible
• can be used as both a store of value and medium of exchange
• security

etc.

Yet in listing all of these benefits, FinCEN’s chief was actually trying to make a case AGAINST Bitcoin! In her mind, only criminal terrorists want low-fee, secure, globally accessible money.

All of these politicians and bureaucrats can’t wait to get their arms around digital currency to regulate the hell out of it. They don’t understand it… therefore they think it’s dangerous.

Even the World Bank president (a US government-appointed stooge) weighed in on digital currencies. It’s obvious they’re all afraid.

And their entire argument begins with the deeply flawed premise that financial privacy is somehow wrong, immoral, and nefarious.

Read the rest why Asia here

I’d add that if bitcoin is a manifestation of declining trust on the US dollar standard or even fiat money, then bitcoin will flourish not only in Asia but around the world despite sustained harassment by governments around the world.

As proof of this, the world’s first bitcoin ATM was launched 3 weeks back in Vancouver Canada.

Fiatleak.com has a real time counter which tracks global bitcoin trades.

And curiously as government’s continue to tighten their grip on bitcoin, the web’s response has been to introduce an bitcoin based “assassination market” where RT.com “Barack Obama, Ben Bernanke and the prime minister of Finland are already on the hit list.” 

Bitcoin is also a manifestation of the transition to the information age where much of people’s 'decentralized' activities will revolve around the web.

As Laissez Faire Book’s Jeffrey A Tucker notes

How long will it take before the full implications reveal themselves?  It took email some 20 years to go from obscure to common. Digital phone technology needed about the same swath of time. Bitcoin, however, could be different. Information travels farther and faster than ever before. Adoption could be led by peoples who are currently excluded from the existing cartelized system of privilege. Every currency crisis, whether national or international, could be a catalyst for advances.

Here is an update of bitcoin prices in US dollars which been exploding amidst amidst intense scrutiny from public officials.