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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

> you immunize (a-la Bitcoin)

Honest question: do Bitcoin proponents honestly believe it “immunises” them against the law?

I understand it and agree with it in the same meaning that BitTorrent bypasses copyright laws: you cannot prevent people from sharing and downloading a torrent, you can only prosecute them after the fact. Enough people do that and you cannot go against millions of people. I think the same concepts apply to Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.

I'm fairly sure GP meant that Bitcoin itself is designe to be immune to legal interference. Individual users are not, although by employing a very strict security regime, they can in principle stay completely anonymous.

> by employing a very strict security regime, they can in principle stay completely anonymous

Doesn't that necessarily require avoiding legitimate financial institutions at all costs?

You can interact with legitimate financial institutions in the normal way under your public identity. You've just got to make sure you don't share that identity with your bitcoin counterparties, which will limit your ability to exchange bitcoin for things of value such as fiat currency.

Bitcoin isn’t meant to interface with existing financial institutions.

Correct. It's actually in the first line of the Bitcoin whitepaper's abstract:

> A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.

Sure, but effectively 100% of the world's economy takes place via fiat currencies. One could remain anonymous by accumulating a bunch of cash (or gold, or some commodity, etc) and never spending it as well.

No. It means regulator’s tools are ineffective against the bitcoin network.

The immunity that Bitcoin pursues isn't on the user-level. People still need to expect being responsible for the consequences of their transactions.

The immunity that Bitcoin pursues is on the infrastructure / development level, in that the project contributors take great pains to prevent themselves from being subject to regulatory compulsion.

Some might, but it is really a misunderstanding. What it "immunises" against is some of the consequences of monetary policy - like interest rates and (hyper)inflation from adjusting the money supply.

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