http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Bechtler#The_Bechtl...
This move with regard to Bitcoin is merely Bank.Gov trying to protect its monopoly on the issuing of currency.
The fact that Congress chooses, for a time, not to exercise a power within the scope of its enumerated powers in Art. I does not in any way change the fact that it is an enumerated power.
> This move with regard to Bitcoin is merely Bank.Gov trying to protect its monopoly on the issuing of currency.
No, this is about punishing fraud in selling investments, not about issuing currency.
Were that true, the principals of Goldman Sachs would be in jail.
No, actually, that has nothing to do with what the issues in this case are.
If you want to make the argument that there is evidence (whether from their response to Goldman-Sachs or otherwise) that the SEC's interest in the case at issue here is not securities fraud, go ahead and make the argument.
Waving your hand in the direction of Goldman-Sachs, however, is not making that argument.
What this says is that any commercial exchange is subject to government regulation.
"To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;"
As I had to explain the difference between lunch and arbitrary use of government power, do I also have to explain the difference between government of consent and tyranny?
It's not your fault; this is just a really terrible venue for political discussions.
The overarching power of government is the problem, not how we discuss it on the net.
Actually, it is Congress. Specifically, the Court ruled that the use of bitcoins for the transactions at issue does not (as the defendant attempted to argue) cause them to fall outside the scope of the Exchange Act of 1934.
You can't defraud someone in any currency in the US. Or launder money or perform illegal activities. I can't mug a tourist and take the money out of their wallet and then claim that because I didn't steal any US currency I'm not a thief.
This case isn't about regulating authority over currency. Its about whether the fact that an investment was sold for bitcoins isntead of a fiat currency takes that investment out of the scope of the definition of "securities" subject to various provisions of the Exchange Act relating to securities fraud.
Yes, but as I understand it, foreign currency within the US is still regulated.
Any medium of exchange can theoretically be used as currency (e.g. cartons of cigarettes in prison, or cans of chewing tobacco on a submerged submarine on its third month of patrol).
Whether the government pays attention to it or not will depend on whether that type of currency starts to act as coinage or as a medium of interstate commerce, but just because the government doesn't deign to notice cowrie shells being used for trade doesn't mean they don't have the power to regulate it.
They were. The government's reaction to the popularity of the Bechtler coins was to open two mints in North Carolina, not to "regulate" Bechtler's coins.
The government does not lose enumerated powers, or the ability to apply them in a particular manner, because it chose not to apply them in that manner at one time in the past in a similar circumstance.
You can, of course, make the argument that, power aside, the government should not use its enumerated powers in the way in question and should instead act as it did in the past case, but that takes more than waving your hand in the direction of the past case and asserting that it exists and therefore the restraint the government exercised then must be repeated, it takes actually making the case that that decision would be correct in the present circumstances.
Generation to generation, the natural tendency of a relative minority is to seek and maintain influence over the many. This is reflected in the continued advance of the power of the State over the rights and liberties of its citizens. Unlike our own political vocabulary, The Greeks had terms for this particular dynamic: hoi polloi and hoi oligoi.
> You can, of course, make the argument that, power aside, the government should not use its enumerated powers in the way in question and should instead act as it did in the past case
My larger argument is more fundamental. If power is asserted over rights often enough, there will be few, if any, actual rights left.
Perhaps. But in this case you're not speaking of any actual 'right' that people had in the first place, so there's no right that would be eroded by SEC action here.