Liberty Dollar Update

[Brandybuck]

Ah bitcoins, the antithesis of gold, favorite of the pot heads and pirates the world over. Watch out with those less you get plundered by the lulzboat!

What? You actually believe Schumer's drivel?

The overwhelming users of bitcoin are techheads not potheads. Yesterday I saw a billboard that advertised it accepted bitcoin. It was not a store for pot, heroin, crack, or anything like that. It was a store for used computer parts.

[Burzmali]

What? You actually believe Schumer's drivel?

The overwhelming users of bitcoin are techheads not potheads. Yesterday I saw a billboard that advertised it accepted bitcoin. It was not a store for pot, heroin, crack, or anything like that. It was a store for used computer parts.

All cats are mammals but not all mammals are cats. Saying that Cheetos are the favorite of stoners doesn't imply that all Cheetos fans are stoners. I have a small stash of BTCs lying around in case I need to deal with questionable vendors of online services.

And before anyone comments, I haven't seen any adult services that take bitcoins. They might be out there, but I haven't seen them.

[Lambkin]

I have a small stash of BTCs lying around in case I need to deal with questionable vendors of online services.

My curiosity is piqued. Dish the dirt girlfriend. What sort of "questionable" on line vendors are you dealing with? I mean other than porn, what would it be? Gun related? Black market babies?

Organs, and bush meat.

[Burzmali]

Nothing so interesting, sometimes a guy can find a use for a shell account on a system that isn't identified as a public proxy.

[fortinbras]

With reference to bitcoins, does anyone remember (about 8 years ago) a sort of internet-spendable money called Flooz? There were TV commercials with Whoopie Goldberg. Apparently you could pay real money now for a nearly corresponding amount of "Flooze" which could be used to pay online vendors for almost everything. It died a hideous death and I am not sure what happened to the people who put money into it. I believe that it was beaten to death by competition from Paypal and from websites using secure methods for credit card purchases.

[grixit]

The best scheme i ever heard of for dealing with spam is one that requires that a protocol be developed to attach money to email. Then you can set your mail client to "only accept messages from addresses on my whitelist or those that include at least a quarter of a cent". That way, a legitimate communication from a stranger would go through, .0025 is no big deal. But spammers rely on sending out messages by the myriads, they couldn't afford it. Perhaps Bitcoin could do something with a one use encryption system.

[Gregg]

Excuse my ignorance, but why not just put your super secret password file thingy on a zip drive, and only plug it in when you want to use it?

for someone who made a bit of money on the internet, I am hopelessly inept at these things

[Burzmali]

Complacency mostly, he had his wallet sitting in his Dropbox folder when it get swiped.

[Gregg]

So, putting the file on a zip drive and pulling the zip drive out of the computer WOULD work?

[Burzmali]

More typically, you would keep the 25,000 bitcoin wallet encrypted on a flash drive with an encoded paper backup in a safe deposit box, and only connect the flash drive to your computer once a week or so to transfer some bitcoins to a second less protected wallet for day-to-day use.

Generally speaking, you run the bitcoin client 24/7 because if you fall behind on the block chain (i.e. the record of transactions) you won't be able to verify transactions.

[webhick]

Bitcoin sounds like a pain in the ass.

[Burzmali]

It depends, if your goal if to shield your transactions from the government's prying eyes, a little pain is a small price to pay. Well, if you like risking the tax evasion charges that is.

[Non Mens Rea]

The counterfeiting charge DOES feel a bit unsettling to me.

. . . how does making and distributing ones own silver barter tokens constitute counterfeiting? It's not like he said they were U.S. dollars. . . . so how was the Liberty Dollar guy guilty of counterfeiting?

Glad to see that somebody here is unsettled about that.

Bernard was explicitly encouraging people to use his coins as currency and to pass them off as the equivalent for US coins.

That is incorrect.
He urged his coins as an alternative to, not a counterfeit equivalent of, U.S. coins.
Those who received and held on to their Liberty silver coins have likely increased
their wealth than had they accepted FRNs. Some "fraud".

Non Mens Rea

[Thule]

He urged his coins as an alternative to, not a counterfeit equivalent of, U.S. coins.

Which is why he always kept an updated list of the price of silver and conversion rates. No wait, he didn't. He pegged the Libby to the USD, regardless of the actual metallic value of the Libby. Some alternative.

Those who received and held on to their Liberty silver coins have likely increased their wealth than had they accepted FRNs. Some "fraud".

Not because of Von Nothouse. Selling §5 of silver and claiming that it's worth §10 right now is fraud. He didn't sell them as investment objects that in time *might* be worth what the mark paid for it, he sold them at inflated rates for immidate use. He even encouraged people to pass them on.

[Pottapaug1938]

Bernard was explicitly encouraging people to use his coins as currency and to pass them off as the equivalent for US coins.

That is incorrect.
He urged his coins as an alternative to, not a counterfeit equivalent of, U.S. coins.
Those who received and held on to their Liberty silver coins have likely increased
their wealth than had they accepted FRNs. Some "fraud".

Non Mens Rea

No, it's correct, alright. Von Nothaus deliberately designed his tokens -- NOT coins -- to mimic the appearance of genuine US coinage; and he states dollar amounts on them.
This is not a new issue; collections of "early American coppers" will remember the "Hard Times Tokens" and "Civil War Tokens" bearing the inscription "not One Cent"; and of course this language was used to get around the laws against private coinage issues.

As for the contention that "those who received and held onto their Liberty silver coins [sic] have likely increased their wealth than had they accepted FRNs", the same is true regarding most commodities. Had they accepted one-ounce copper or nickel tokens, they would have likely "increased their wealth" as well. Of course, what goes up can come back down just as easily -- check out the prices of gold and silver in 1980-81 if you don't believe me.

There are plenty of other sketchy features of the von Nothaus issues; and if you truly come here with an open mind, you can reread the posts on this thread and learn more about them.

[Nikki]

The counterfeiting charge DOES feel a bit unsettling to me.

. . . how does making and distributing ones own silver barter tokens constitute counterfeiting? It's not like he said they were U.S. dollars. . . . so how was the Liberty Dollar guy guilty of counterfeiting?

Glad to see that somebody here is unsettled about that.

Bernard was explicitly encouraging people to use his coins as currency and to pass them off as the equivalent for US coins.

That is incorrect.
He urged his coins as an alternative to, not a counterfeit equivalent of, U.S. coins.
Those who received and held on to their Liberty silver coins have likely increased
their wealth than had they accepted FRNs. Some "fraud".

Non Mens Rea

Either you are intentionally twisting words or you are just stupid.

He specifically told people to "do the drop" -- tender one of his coins as payment in purchases.

[fortinbras]

18 USC § 486, criminalizing the making of one's own coins "of gold or silver or other metal ... intended for use as current money, whether in the resemblance of coins of the United States or of foreign countries or of original design" was first enacted on June 8, 1864, 13 Stat.L. 120, Rev.Stat. § 5461.

Bernard von NotHous originally (ca. 1995) promoted his silver drachma as "currency" and a legitimate alternative to legal tender. When I reminded NORFED's lawyer of § 486, NORFED abruptly changed its advertising but ... it continued to peddle its drachma as a legal alternative form of money, and it even claimed it was "inflation-proof". It was inflation-proof only to the extent that the inflation was built-in from the beginning; BVN was selling the drachma at almost twice the market price for the silver content, and when the price of silver rose to approach his selling price, he doubled his price to stay ahead of the price of silver. His claim was that the extra viggorish was to subsidize his "research" - but there wasn't any. His website originally claimed that there was some distinction between a dollar sign drawn with one vertical stroke and one drawn with two vertical strokes (no explanation why every typewriter and TTF font offers only one version of the dollar sign) -- I kept nagging him for the evidence and he finally deleted that claim from his website.

At one point he was peddling a design that deliberately reproduced the "Walking Liberty" image on a US silver dollar of a century ago; he put "U.S.A." and a value preceded by a dollar sign on his drachma; he definitely was promoting his stuff "as current money" in violation of the law.

[Thule]

It was inflation-proof only to the extent that the inflation was built-in from the beginning; BVN was selling the drachma at almost twice the market price for the silver content, and when the price of silver rose to approach his selling price, he doubled his price to stay ahead of the price of silver.

Yeah, but it's inflation you can understand. It's the Nothausian school of echonomy. No big words like "market", "monetary supply" or "backin". Nothausian inflation has one single cause; Bernie needs pot-money.

[webhick]

It was inflation-proof only to the extent that the inflation was built-in from the beginning; BVN was selling the drachma at almost twice the market price for the silver content, and when the price of silver rose to approach his selling price, he doubled his price to stay ahead of the price of silver.

Yeah, but it's inflation you can understand. It's the Nothausian school of echonomy. No big words like "market", "monetary supply" or "backin". Nothausian inflation has one single cause; Bernie needs pot-money.

[rant="Layman with only one year of real high school"]
Actually, it's double-inflation. First, you have the inflated price ($10 of silver sold for $20) but then there's the potential "stepping down." When the price of silver drops, Bernie asks people to send back their Libbies to get re-stamped for a fee (which I believed Bernie admitted happened at least once with the Libbies). This means that where you used to be able to use just one Libby (which you paid $20) to purchase a DVD, you suddenly must now have two ($20s stepped down to $10) to purchase that same DVD (and since the Libby doesn't make more than a few increments, your change would come back in USD). $40 for a $20 product. Sounds like inflation to me.

And when you really think about it, the Libbies don't even cancel out the $'s inflation because he's using the spot price of silver in dollars as a value for his currency. Granted, the spot price of silver is probably based more on supply and demand than inflation, but inflation must play a part in the price since the currency its valued in inflates. In my mind, it's possible that the spot price of silver could (over the next ten years) fail to meet the $50 "step up" requirements due to a combination of a decrease in value and inflation. This would mean that while the price on the DVD would go up over $20, my Libby would remain at $20 and I would need two $20 Libbies to buy that DVD when before I'd only need one.

Now, if he had made up an independent system by saying that an ounce of silver is equal to 10 Libbies and made many different increments of currency each containing the appropriate amount of silver and had participating merchants list both the $ and the Libby price then he'd at least be able to truthfully say he was independent of the dollar. But he didn't do that,so either this self-proclaimed monetary genius didn't see the inherent flaw in his "We're goin' off the dollar!" plan, or he's a bold faced liar.

I still find it funny that if the dollar collapses as IIRC he predicted it would, the spot price of silver in dollars would go down to $0 which makes his Libbies only worth the silver that's in them - which is likely going to be less than what you paid for them and certainly won't be worth the face value because they're denoted in USD which is $0. Would he have asked everyone for their Libbies back and re-stamped them with a different currency designation then? Is it suddenly going to be an "inflation-proof" alternative to the euro or the yuan? [/rant]

That's why everyone needs to invest in Quibbies:


Now that's an inflation proof currency!

[The Observer]

Instead of "Cluck like a chicken", shouldn't the coin motto read, "Be plucked like a chicken?"