Re: Senator Joe Manchin is a bitcoin owner ^^

I'm clueless here but why are bitcoiners actually tipping him?

What happened when alcohol was outlawed? An extremely lucrative black market sprang into existence.

What happened when marijuana was outlawed? An extremely lucrative black market sprang into existence.

Those are only mind altering substances. Imagine the black market value of free (as in speech) money!

This man is going to make Bitcoin holders rich beyond their wildest dreams!

What happened when alcohol was outlawed? Sellers started getting sent to federal prison.
What happened when marijuana was outlawed? Sellers started getting sent to federal prison.
What happens if bitcoin is outlawed? No bank, exchange, financial services institution, or business will be able to accept it. Makes it somewhat worthless.

Your first two examples work because alcohol and marijuana have a physical utility (they are addictive substances). What the hell are you going to do with your bitcoin when nobody accepts them anymore? Sit there and stare at it?

Why would nobody accept them any more because a single country in the world outlaws them?

They have extreme amounts of utility. You can send value to anyone, anywhere in the world, without the help of a middleman or the permission of an authority. That has ridiculous amount of value.

On a side note: Marijuana is not an addictive substance.

Money only has value if people believe it does. You get the largest economy in the world banning it, and the other economies banning it, and pretty soon that "value" you are sending to anyone no longer has value.

No government will ever shut down bitcoin. We've seen that it's impossible to shut down P2P file sharing. What they can do is destroy its *value.*

P.S. My friend's roommate scrapes the ash residue out of his bong and smokes the ash when he's out of marijuana. Never smoked the stuff, so I couldn't say, but it sure as hell sounds addicting to me. YMMV.