Google trends shows an explosive growth in the Bitcoin meme. Like a tsunami, it started as a ripple and didn’t look like much, traveling for miles on the digital sea, and then Cyprus hit and the ripple became a roar.
Nearly all financial news outlets and blogs have weighed in with their opinion on Bitcoin; the majority indicating they either like or love the idea with a few dissenters. The dissenters keep coming back to the argument that Bitcoin’s success is capped by how far the government will allow it to succeed before stepping in and calling time.
Is government prohibition a concern for Bitcoin?
I don’t think the timing of Bitcoin’s appearance is a coincidence in that it appeared when many believe the government, and in particular the US government, has been stepping in and calling time too often. The Patriot Act, NDAA, and DHS are clear examples of government overreach and many argue that the ‘checks and balances’ built into the US Constitution are, over decades of specialist interest group erosion, failing to protect us from the interests of monopolists and warmongers.
Is pro-Bitcoin rights the new pro-gun rights?
The pro-gun advocates point to the 2nd amendment of America’s Constitution citing the right to bear arms as a protection against tyrants. Pro-Bitcoin advocates believe in protection against tyranny too. The difference is how the two groups define tyranny.
Curiously, for pro-gun rights, the threshold needed to be crossed that supposedly triggers a 2nd amendment response appears to have been violated many times since 9/11 with nary a peep. Whereas, pro-Bitcoin rights advocates, seeing the same chain of events, have rung the bell and are flooding the streets with a call to virtual currency arms.
Will Bitcoin, a stateless, decentralized, anonymous crypto-currency that has leaped in value from less than $1 mn to over $1 bn in just a few dozen months, succeed where the pro-gun rights advocates have failed – in protecting Americans, and people around the world – from an encroaching class of warmongering kleptocrats?
Looking at the response to deposit confiscation in Cyprus (or MF Global for that matter); by klepto-governments on behalf of corrupt TBTF bankers, the answer could be ‘Yes.’ If given the opportunity of preserving their wealth and independence or complying with crony capitalists bent on occupation and subjugation people tend to choose freedom over bondage. And Bitcoin enables that outcome.
Like America’s Minutemen of Revolutionary War fame, Bitcoin’ers are armed and ready to attack at a moment’s notice against the growing intolerance of the occupying monarchy. Everyone needs to have their Bitcoin plan of action ready in the face of financial tyranny.
