Quote from: justusranvier on August 15, 2014, 05:07:59 PM

You're probably right this time, but I want to make sure this possibility is on everyone's radar because the odds of it happening go up every day.

That the Federal Reserve Bank of NY stole 300+ tons of gold from Germany is not an imaginary conspiracy theory.

They promised to hold those bars. Not an equivalent value - the specific serial numbered one which Germany originally deposited.

When keeping that promise became inconvenient they defaulted.

This is the MO of Wall Street, and they will not change their ways when they get involved with Bitcoin.

What I expect to happen is that Bitlicenses are going to eventually force all Bitcoin startups to get acquired by banks, because Bitlicenses are impossible to comply with and banks are immune from their provisions. One day after Coinbase has been bought out, their users are going to log in and have to check a box indicating they've read the new Terms of Service. Buried deeply in the legalese where nobody will actually read it will be the provision that says they "might" rehypothecate your deposits.

tl;dr: Hold your own coins and don't store them with third parties, because if you don't you'll eventually discover you don't actually own any.

The advantage for bitcoin is it is less manipulable than gold has proved to be. Throughout history just about every single major power started with some form of gold as a base currency, but then resorted to debasing the gold content in coins more and more until the populace finally would not accept the devalued coins anymore.

This has proven even easier in the modern era where the banks/government do not even have to issue falsified coins with less and less gold content, and instead have been able to completely sever gold content from currency in people's minds.

But with bitcoin it will always be easy for people paying attention to take physical possession of their own coins in their own wallets. The only way to stop this is to make it illegal entirely, which exposes the scam. This is why I am betting on bitcoin more than gold this time around.