Thanks to the success of our previous op-ed, we would like to address more Bitcoin nonsense today.
1) “Sooner or later governments organized offensive against Bitcoin will start”
Bitcoin has been designed to be uncensurable. Governments can be a nuisance at the juncture between Bitcoin and fiat money (e.g. traditional exchanges), but cannot hinder those exchanges that use only Bitcoin and other criptocurrencies. However, now the exchanges themselves are beginning to be distributed and uncensurable (e.g. Bitsquare.io), and therefore governments ability to meddle in is going to be limited.
2) “Governments have many weapons, first of all the abolition of cash and the obligation of traceability of every expense”
Bitcoin has managed to use those weapons against the government itself. The more governments prohibit cash and inflate it, the more demand there will be for Bitcoin (see India and Venezuela). Bitcoin itself would not have been born, if governments had not launched their offensive against the free market.
3) “Under what conditions Bitcoin could undermine fiat money? For example, we buy TVs, goods and services that require the work of a lot of employees, engineers and accountants who are paid through electronic and tracked systems”
Firstly, today with intermediary services like Giftoff.com you can buy Bitcoin on Amazon, Skype and many more places where “the work of a lot of employees, engineers and accountants who are paid through electronic and tracked systems”. The spontaneous order of the free market has again set in motion: the number of goods and services that can be purchased with Bitcoin and have required the work of people paid in fiat money is growing.
Secondly, thanks to payment systems like Bitpay.com, it is possible to accept Bitcoin, receive fiat money and be perfectly tracked.
It is only a knowledge problem: due to misunderstandings waved by mainstream media, people don’t exactly know what Bitcoin is. Moreover, thanks to market platforms such as Openbazaar, being tracked can be avoided easily.
4) “Imagine a provision that invalidates the warranty of a product purchased, if the buyer does not attach, along with proof of purchase, the transaction traced by bank transfer or credit card. Think of a guy’s TV that breaks up after a week and cannot demand repair or replacement because he has paid it with Bitcoin [and not] with fiat money. Who would buy such goods?”
On one hand, when we buy on Amazon through Giftoff, we have the same guarantees of those who buy in fiat money. On the other hand, it’s not understandable the reason why those who buy with Bitcoin wouldn’t have guarantees. Today guarantees are imposed by government regulation, but they badly imitated the free market. In fact, guarantees are born as a free market product. In a free market situation, the seller has all the incentives to offer them. And if he does not, a competitor will offer them overthrowing him. In other words, the free market finds its own way to satisfy customers needs. It was so during the English industrial revolution and it is so today in those market where Bitcoin is used. Just take a look at Openbazaar where guarantees offered by anonymous sellers are generally better and last longer than those offered on the regulated markets. And on Bitsquare.io you see a system of market arbitrage for disputes that certainly works better than any court.
5) “What must happen to the evolved economy on which humanity is based on if we want to see Bitcoin winning?”
Nothing. In the sense that the free market process in the money sector has just begun and has already produced impressive results. Being uncensurable, this process will continue to find its own way. And as it does so, what somebody calls an “evolved economy on which humanity is based on” will be much more evolved than it is today.
