"The cool thing about bitcoin is that it doesn't matter if you abide by it or not. It doesn't matter what some politicians decide. It doesn't matter who wins the arguments. It doesn't matter who has the guns."
Try telling the IRS that. Then see what happens if the Bitcoin exchanges go away. Bitcoin's survival is completely dependent on your ability to trade Bitcoin units for fiat currencies.
"All that matters is the bits"
No, what matters is the security properties. Usually, digital cash systems try to meet a security property of the form, "No attacker working in polynomial time in the parameters of the system can double-spend the currency." Bitcoin does not meet that property; all an attacker needs to do is work as hard as all the honest parties in the system combined to have a guaranteed success in double spending. Usually we call cryptosystems where the attacker's work scale linearly with the parameters of the system "worthless" or "snake oil."
"It is actually happening, and there is nothing your arguments can do to stop it."
Unless someone bothers to attack the system. I can think of a few organizations that have the necessary resources and expertise, and who would probably be motivated if Bitcoin came anywhere near "mainstream:"
Try telling the IRS that. Then see what happens if the Bitcoin exchanges go away. Bitcoin's survival is completely dependent on your ability to trade Bitcoin units for fiat currencies.
"All that matters is the bits"
No, what matters is the security properties. Usually, digital cash systems try to meet a security property of the form, "No attacker working in polynomial time in the parameters of the system can double-spend the currency." Bitcoin does not meet that property; all an attacker needs to do is work as hard as all the honest parties in the system combined to have a guaranteed success in double spending. Usually we call cryptosystems where the attacker's work scale linearly with the parameters of the system "worthless" or "snake oil."
"It is actually happening, and there is nothing your arguments can do to stop it."
Unless someone bothers to attack the system. I can think of a few organizations that have the necessary resources and expertise, and who would probably be motivated if Bitcoin came anywhere near "mainstream:"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_states_government
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_party_of_china