Due to surging exchange rates in the past few months, the opening of Bitcoin futures, and the likelihood of Bitcoin exchange-traded funds in the near future, there is renewed mainstream interest in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Mainstream investors tend to be attracted to the profit potential, portfolio diversification, and technological curiosities of cryptocurrency. But there are other benefits of cryptocurrencies which may scare away the average investor. Let us consider eight activities which can be performed with or aided by Bitcoin and its alternatives that will be cheered by political outsiders to the chagrin of the establishment. 1. Tax Evasion Charles Stross famously complained that Bitcoin “looks like it was designed as a weapon intended to damage central banking and money issuing banks, with a Libertarian political agenda in mind—to damage states ability to collect tax and monitor their citizens’ financial transactions.” The problem is that he views this as a negative. From a moral standpoint, taxation is armed robbery, slavery, racketeering, trespassing, communicating threats, receiving stolen money, and conspiracy to commit the aforementioned crimes. If anyone dared to challenge the state’s monopoly on tax collection, they could face any of these criminal charges. By doing business in cryptocurrencies and taking additional steps to protect one’s identity (Bitcoin is pseudonymous rather than anonymous, though other cryptocurrencies are fully anonymous), one can keep part or all of one’s income and stored wealth away from Leviathan’s watchful eye. Establishment politicians and pundits will decry tax evasion as immoral. But as Murray Rothbard writes, “Just as no one is morally required to answer a robber truthfully when he asks if there are any valuables in one’s house, so no one can be morally required to answer truthfully similar questions asked by the State, e.g., when filling out income tax returns.”[1] The weapon of cryptocurrency is thus more of a shield than a sword, though it may be employed in an offensive posture (see #8). Read the entire article at ZerothPosition.com References: Rothbard, Murray (1982). The Ethics of Liberty. Humanities Press. p. 183
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