Senator Schumer Says Bitcoin Is Money Laundering
Found on Techdirt on Sunday, 05 June 2011
Last week, Gawker wrote a story about Silk Road, the online drug marketplace that users can only access via TOR and where the only currency accepted is Bitcoin.
enator Chuck Schumer, who can grandstand with the best of them, apparently got handed that article and saw an opportunity to publicly demand that something must be done about Silk Road.
You know what else is a form of currency that is used to disguise the source of money? Cash. And, last I checked, it's still legal tender. Blaming the semi-anonymous nature of Bitcoin is severely misplaced.
No doubt they don't like a currency system which is out of their control. However, I guess the biggest problem for Bitcoin is Bitcoin itself: while the idea of a global p2p blockchain is a good concept, it also introduces a large overhead. Last time I tried it, you ended up with a 230MB chain after a long download and CPU cycles. If Bitcoin keeps on storing every single transaction in that blockchain, it will grow huge when it catches on. Then, the average non-tech user won't wait a few hours until he can make his first transaction.