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> The moment that reward becomes a currency, and is traded for U.S. dollars, it leaves the domain of just being software. Banning that is quite different from banning the software per se.

That would make Eve online, Second Life, and other games illegal since people trade their digital assets all the time

>Comparing Bitcoin to free software seems similarly disingenuous.

Bitcoin is free software. https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin

So I create "bullshitCoin2023" and trade it amongst my friends and myself. We also mine it via proof of work. We all work hard to see who can out do each other to mine the most coin with same fixed amount of computational input.

Some guy in Nigeria I don't know starts swapping it for Zimbabwe dollars. Now I'm not writing software anymore?

If your position is that digital assets should be banned, you're a little late for that. Digital assets are defined in the US as property by the IRS since about 2014, and a commodity by the CFTC.

Furthermore, giving someone US dollars for something doesn't make that thing a "currency."

> Comparing Bitcoin to free software seems similarly disingenuous.

Bitcoin is literally FOSS.

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin