Why would demand for bitcoins go up? Who would want BitCoins? Most people seem to wish they had them so they can sell them; so the question is, who is willing to pay this premium?.
It takes some thought. But what kind of people would be actively seeking a virtual currency on an unregulated, decentralized marketplace?
Probably the types of people that don't want to leave a paper trail in their transactions. It's a lot harder to associate a given Bitcoin account with a person than a credit card statement, especially when that transaction record is an encrypted set of blockchains.
So we have to think- the price of Bitcoins went up a lot recently. Most people are thrilled. "yay these bitcoins are worth more"; many people will state something like yourself, Calum, "oh you guys are just jealous".
But who is stopping to think about why demand is so high? Who wants these Bitcoins, and why?
One answer, and one answer only that I can think of. You know what it is. payment for illicit content.
Now I am of course not saying the people thrilled about bitcoin, purposely active parts of that. What I'm saying is that we have to think- why is demand so high? Who wants bitcoins, and who is willing to pay that premium, and why?" And every time I ask myself that question, the only answer I can think of is that they want to use the bitcoins for something they either cannot or do not want to use legal tender for. And the only thing that comes to mind when I think of that particularly in combination with the Internet is illicit content. The Biggest one in terms of illicit content appears to be Child Pornography. More recent busts, I seem to recall, showed evidence of bitcoin transactions and/or a bitcoin wallet on the perpetrators machine.
This has been a rather well known fact. Bitcoin has practically worked with Tor, a anonymization network that has been the go-to Child Porn Spigot for years. Worse still, in using Tor, Bitcoin transactions- which otherwise only identify via IP and Bitcoin Address- become almost entirely anonymous.
Then I got to thinking, well, this is pretty well established- one of the main users of bitcoins are those who have the most to gain from it's decentralized and unregulated nature. And they would probably be the only ones actually buying bitcoins- Most folks that are excited about this price jump are miners- they don't sell them. But one has to realize that in order for you to sell a bitcoin for ~100 dollars, somebody has to be willing to buy a bitcoin for 100$.
The only thing I can ever think about when somebody mentions bitcoins is that it's being used as tool to allow sick, twisted individuals to continue to abuse children and sell their twisted abuses which will scar those children for a lifetime with other sick-twisted individuals, in exchange for a virtual currency that by it's nature is more difficult for law enforcement to track or trace transactions with.
if I had any number of bitcoins, I don't think I could sell them for that reason. A million dollars would be nice but based on what I can learn about where you can spend bitcoin (there are like 10 placed in the world that accept it, it's hardly something you can use in place of a credit or debit card), the fact that there is actually a demand and people willing to spend that much money to get bitcoins makes me strongly suspect that the people paying for that million dollars are going to be living with the psychological trauma for the rest of their lives. Or, in a worst case, not living. And it's all made so much easier for those disgusting individuals due to the decentralized, unregulated nature of Bitcoin.
Now I'm not saying Bitcoin was designed for this. Nobody had this in mind. It just happens that the goals of "a new virtual currency that makes it so the guv'ment can't track my spending habits" and folks that go, "golly, I'm a sick, twisted individual and I would like to watch disgusting videos were children are forced to perform acts that traumatize them for the remainder of their life, assuming the videographer doesn't kill them to eliminate witnesses, but I really don't want that to show up on my credit card statement" happen to coincide in implementation.
So when you go to sell your bitcoins, ask yourself what kind of a person would actually want to spend nearly 100 dollars for a single bitcoin. I cannot think of many legitimate reasons for a person to be willing to buy a single bitcoin for 100$; I mean, of course people want to sell them, most people mining are jumping all over the chance to sell their bitcoins, but few think about what motives a person would have to spend that much money on a Bitcoin and for what purpose they wish to have Bitcoins.
No comments:
Post a Comment