Toto wrote:
Gary Howland wrote:
But digital currencies will never become fiat currencies, let alone legal tender, unless governments say they are. So why should they worry? (OK, OK, they will worry about tax evasion etc. etc.) Exactly. How can they claim, on one hand, that something does not qualify as currency, or as legal tender, and then turn around and tax it? If I have 10 Million UNITS that aren't considered to legally be of value, then I'm certainly not going to 'go easy' to tax court. Any currency that becomes sufficiently distributed and traded will find itself becoming a 'legal entity' in some form or another. Once it has been 'entityenized' (don't bother looking for that word in the dictionary), it will be a short step for it to achieve a quantifiable status among other currencies. [snip]
One should always look at the Mike Milken example of an alternate currency. This has not been reported from this point of view in, say, the NY Times that I know of, but some "underground" publications have done so. The Wall Street Cabal (as they say) was genuinely frightened that since Milken was so successful with high-yield bonds, they deliberately created the term Junk Bonds and flooded the markets with appropriate propaganda, and thereby killed off their competition. How they turned it into a criminal offense is truly an art.