Commodity barter is legal — so is BitCoin
BitCoin is a computational commodity; stop thinking of it as money
BitCoin was legal at creation; commoditizing data with protocol rules violates no laws — anymore than inventing the container, which automated much of what stevedores did, was.
The fact that BitCoin makes for a commodity which HAPPENS to function extremely well as money, doesn’t make it illegal. Perhaps the better way to say it, is BitCoin is misunderstood due to its youth. If recorded history were better (see Tominaga Nakamoto), we’d probably find fine historical precent in ancient Lydia at the time of the first electrum coins. Gold and silver already existed WELL before coins were created to commoditize and verify metallic properties of the commodities involved — gold and silver. In fact, commoditizing the shiny metals WAS the business of goldsmiths and silversmiths before this service was sheparded into private and then public mints. What a Lydian businessman likely started — the Roman, Spanish, and US mints finished. But imagine being able to walk around Lydia in year TWO of electrum coins — there’s probably some eerie similarities to today’s BitCoin.
If people today started bartering with barrels of crude oil or stamped copper (which could be construed as making a money) coins from a single trusted issuer then this is no different than trading in…
