My Thoughts on the Bitcoin Hearing

To my Twitter followers, thanks for bearing with me today through my non-stop messaging on the Senate’s Bitcoin hearing that just wrapped up. I hadn’t intended to write a post on it, but upon further reflection I have decided it is worth putting some initial thoughts down in a more formal format.

Unlike most people in the Bitcoin world, I hadn’t spent any time whatsoever thinking about what would go down at the hearing. In fact, I wasn’t even sure that I would bother to listen to it live. The only expectation I had going in was that the various government regulators would invoke the terms “child pornography,” “terrorism” and “money laundering” as frequently as possible. Indeed, they did not disappoint on that front.

The thing that did surprise me was the lack of hostility to Bitcoin itself. This is not to say that the government agents testifying appeared particularly enlightened on the subject, but their lack of complete and total ignorance was quite surprising. No, I do not chalk this up to their deep research and understanding on the topic, but rather I attribute it to something else.

One of the most significant and positive things to happen to Bitcoin this year was its embrace by some forward thinking, and very wealthy technology focused venture capitalists. I covered it on several occasions, including my post from May titled: Bitcoin Startup Coinbase Raises $5 Million…Major Venture Capital Players Getting Involved. The involvement of extremely wealthy venture capitalists was of huge importance at the time, and I believe it paid off at today’s hearing. While I am only speculating, I believe that several of these folks have been actively lobbying behind the scenes to make sure Congress doesn’t do something stupid…and I think the dividends of such efforts were seen today. It’s an extraordinarily positive development.

The second thing that caught my attention was the fact that it was almost universally agreed upon that centralized virtual currencies are much more susceptible to being used for criminal activities than decentralized currencies. This is an incredible realization and is also extremely positive.

In the end, while the hearing was painful to watch at times, the result was much more supportive of Bitcoin than I could ever have imagined. If you are a retailer and were hesitant to accept it up till now, this hearing more or less gave you the green light to do so.

This thing is just getting started.

In Liberty,
Mike

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10 thoughts on “My Thoughts on the Bitcoin Hearing”

  1. Bitcoin could be the way out of the dollar , why I say this? well what if people know the dollar destroy everything , bitcoin is a deflationary system so saving earths resources is profitable!
    This could be a geopolitical way out!

    Reply
  2. mike you should do better than this. a paradigm destroying meeting where 3 law enforcement officials and one senator who say “we dont need new laws to deal with this new technology. we recognize the potential for good and that this technology is here to stay,” and your response is “hm, surprising” ?

    that being said, you are wrong to say “after this meeting, get involved with bitcoins this is the green light.” it was just a hearing. senate could get expert opinions from who cares how many people who say to do one thing, and then they could do the exact opposite thing if a few of those clowns went rogue and really wanted to force something through, or of course, if the majority didnt care what the expert testimony had to say.

    your post on this topic was naive!

    Reply
    • I agree, and i also think any virtual currency is 100% doomed. A simple power down failure event would create havoc. Plus is is absolutely going to get corrupted and taken over by computer algo smart people who can hijack it i dont care what anyone says, if you dont hold it in your hand, it aint real, its just 1’s and 0’s on a computer that you dont securely control. Bitcoin is doomed for sure, and is just a distraction from owning real money, real hard assets, like silver and gold.
      And real estate.
      And THATS why govt is allowing it.
      Silver and gold for thousands of years is the ONLY real money and when the digital money and paper crap moneys all fail, they always come back to silver and gold. Since the creation of money that has been, and always be true.

  3. So lobbying is suddenly ok when it is done for *our* cause?
    Bitcoin is by its very nature anarchic, and does Not need the approaval of any ruling agency.

    Reply

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