After seizing the largest Bitcoin exchange’s assets just earlier this month, the Fed’s have now taken down the largest e-currency exchange on the planet, Liberty Reserve.
Read here:
(AP) The U.S. Secret Service have arrested five individuals and seized multiple bank accounts related to a $6 billion money laundering scheme being described by authorities as “staggering” and the largest ever case of international money-laundering.
In a statement, Secret Service officials said authorities in Spain, Costa Rica and New York arrested five people on Friday and seized bank accounts and Internet domains associated with the company Liberty Reserve – a Costa Rica-based website that deals in digital currency and allows transnational online payments and money transfers.
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According to the statement from the Secret Service, Liberty Reserve had approximately one million users worldwide with more than 200,000 users in the United States. Overall, the company processed an estimated 55 million separate financial transactions and is believed to have laundered more than $6 billion in criminal proceeds.
Read the description of what Liberty Reserve was, ever so carefully, and then tell me, where is the line between money laundering and creating a currency not sanctioned by a global government?
Don’t answer that; because there isn’t one.
This isn’t some kind of legal game, kids, where the US plays nice with you in court. Take a close look, and realize the the US government treats serial killers, pedophiles, and rapists better than it treats anyone even coming close to impeding the status and legitimacy of the dollar.
Walk into a school and open fire on packs of school children, and you will receive more sympathy from a federal prosecutor than you could ever hope to get from messing around in electronic currencies.
Keep in mind, the feds don’t need to stop you from trading crappy hair cuts for help siding your house. That sort of black market behavior is everywhere all the time. But by forcing compensation in national currencies, that largely clear through a handful of major banks, the current fractional reserve system has given undo and excessive control of the national economy and financial opportunity into a concentrated process – and they aim to keep it that way.
Your Bitcoins have roughly the same dynamics as common IOU’s between friends, because any major attempt to link them into the current financial systems will be met with felony charges and people’s lives getting destroyed. The liquidity premium everyone’s hoping for with these e-currencies will be strangled to death every time it surfaces.
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Very true. This post demands more attention.
Agreud.
Isn’t it reasonable to say that enforcing this is part of the reason for our massive military force?
There’s a reason the classic “alternative currency” (aside from all other fiat) is taxed as a collectible.
Son of a bit coin!
“I effed your moms currency!”
-Joe Biden
This isnt anything we didnt already know but still interesting…
as far as markets go….
Doesn’t matter too much I suspect in short term… Not much “smart money” that was in the bit coin. We all knew it would be shut down…
On the other hand, those piling all their monthly paychecks into biitcoins will find somewhere else now which is good… and the Norm McDonald sounding characters named “Max” will start pumping someone else.