Quote from: Goldenmaw on June 06, 2011, 08:48:23 PM

Quote from: greenfloyd on June 06, 2011, 08:45:27 PM

I don't understand why Silk Road is so important to Bitcoin? Please elaborate.

That's an easy one. The true value of bitcoins is the ability of bitcoins to be used for any transaction with no centralized entity arbitrating that transaction.

I fixed that for you, since it seemed like you were using a lot of unnecessary words to make the core point.

Silk Road, individually, is not important to Bitcoin. If Silk Road decided they wanted to shut down tomorrow, Bitcoin would still live on.

Silk Road, as a concept - that is, a way to perform financial transactions that are not agreeable to 100% of the people with power - is absolutely essential to Bitcoin. The entire purpose of Bitcoin is that no one entity ever gets to decide whether a transaction happens or not, for any reason.

If you argue that the reason you want to use Bitcoin is to get out from underneath the thumb of those entities with large amounts of power, then you can't turn around and argue that we should let those entities have power over Bitcoin. And giving them the power to deny transactions at a whim is, essentially, handing them Bitcoin on a silver platter.

Quote from: Goldenmaw on June 06, 2011, 09:18:37 PM

I'll bet you 5 BTC that if a poll were made in the general bitcoin forums about the motives driving individual interest in the bitcoin movement, the individuals interested in Bitcoins for black transactions would be outnumbered by the users interested in Bitcoins for either personal profit or ideological reasons by at least 3 to 1.

You didn't really explain what the advantage of a regulated bitcoin would be, but you did make an interesting assertion here.

What makes you think that the "ideological reasons" that people are interested in Bitcoin for don't include this exact ideology? What other ideological reasons could one have for using Bitcoin beyond the ideology of "I think my money should be free from interference from any entity"?