HomeUploadUpload DirectHotlinkRandomAbouttheme toggle

Bitcoin Is Free Speech: Why Jamie Dimon Was Wrong and Governments Can Never ‘Close It Down’

Views: 867
J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon said that governments will "close bitcoin down." In the U.S., thankfully, that can never happen because bitcoin is protected by the First Amendment.

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: http://youtube.com/reasontv
Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Reason.Magazine/
Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/reason
Subscribe to our podcast at iTunes: https://goo.gl/az3a7a

Reason is the planet's leading source of news, politics, and culture from a libertarian perspective. Go to reason.com for a point of view you won't get from legacy media and old left-right opinion magazines.

----------------

"Governments like to the control the currency," J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon said at a September 12 financial service conference, when asked why he thinks bitcoin is a "fraud."

"They control it through a central bank...the bigger these things get...they close it down."

Bitcoin enthusiasts were quick to point out that bitcoin can't be shut down because it doesn't have a CEO or corporate headquarters. It's a software network that runs on computers spread around the globe, so any efforts to close it down would resemble a game of wack-a-mole.

Here's the other point Jamie Dimon doesn't understand: Bitcoin is also free speech. And though other countries could ban it, it can't be made illegal in the U.S. thanks to the First Amendment. That's because bitcoin is just code, and code is just speech, which is based on legal precedent established during the so-called crypto wars of the early 90s.

In 1993, Phil Zimmerman faced possible criminal charges for writing the encryption software PGP. The government said that it was as dangerous as guns and bombs. To make the point that PGP's source code is protected speech, MIT Press printed it in a book, sold it abroad, and Zimmerman was never indicted.

Then in 1995, with help from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, mathematician Daniel Bernstein sued the U.S. government on First Amendment grounds for blocking publication of his encryption program.

"Computer language is just that, language," wrote Judge Marilyn Hall Patel. Ultimately, the Ninth Circuit Court affirmed Patel's ruling that code has the same constitutional protections as a poem or newspaper article.

The First Amendment protects users who keep their own bitcoins printed on a sheet of paper or stored in a software wallet, but it doesn't preclude regulatory regimes like the New York BitLicense, which constrains the activities of third-party companies that maintain other people's crypto holdings. But these firms are a vestige of the old-world financial system.

If the world transitions from a dollar standard to a bitcoin standard, by then, software will have made it easier for users to maintain and trade their own cryptocurrency without involving a regulated company. And those activities have the same constitutional protections as other forms of controversial speech.

That money can now be expressed in strings of numbers and letters that don't require a government-sanctioned bank to declare them valid poses a mortal threat to the existing financial industry. Is it any wonder that the CEO of the world's sixth largest bank wants to believe that the government can step in and offer protection?

Written and produced by Jim Epstein.

Music:

"Rollin at 5" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

"Too Cool" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

"Common Consensus" by The Franks is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
@ReasonVidsfollow
Thumbnail for Why We Should Privatize the Postal Service4:07
Why We Should Privatize the Postal Service
ReasonVids
860 views
Thumbnail for Showing off their guns in a school gymnasium0:29
Showing off their guns in a school gymnasium
bestofvoatxyz
1077 views
Thumbnail for Things You Didn't Know3:13
Things You Didn't Know
bestofupgoat
375 views
Thumbnail for Cryptography vs. Big Brother: How Math Became a Weapon Against Tyranny7:26
Cryptography vs. Big Brother: How Math Became a Weapon Against Tyranny
ReasonVids
879 views
Thumbnail for License to Fail, staring BumbleFuck Biden 1:18
License to Fail, staring BumbleFuck Biden
bestofupgoat
509 views
Thumbnail for How Trump Will Reshape Foreign Policy11:29
How Trump Will Reshape Foreign Policy
ReasonVids
843 views
Thumbnail for Cops with Machine Guns: The Killing of Michael Nida7:11
Cops with Machine Guns: The Killing of Michael Nida
ReasonVids
862 views
Thumbnail for Obama's New New Deal: As bad as the old new deal?4:06
Obama's New New Deal: As bad as the old new deal?
ReasonVids
872 views
Thumbnail for Can Medical Tourism Save Us From Obamacare?3:50
Can Medical Tourism Save Us From Obamacare?
ReasonVids
770 views
Thumbnail for What about the 'war on drugs' and libertarians?4:12
What about the 'war on drugs' and libertarians?
ReasonVids
882 views
Thumbnail for Shark Tank's Kevin O'Leary Explains Donald Trump's Success34:49
Shark Tank's Kevin O'Leary Explains Donald Trump's Success
ReasonVids
978 views
Thumbnail for Did Doctors Overtreating With Opioids Cause the Overdose Crisis? A Soho Forum Debate1:21:10
Did Doctors Overtreating With Opioids Cause the Overdose Crisis? A Soho Forum Debate
ReasonVids
744 views
Thumbnail for End the Fed: Filmmaker Tad Lumpkin Animates the Financial Crisis9:42
End the Fed: Filmmaker Tad Lumpkin Animates the Financial Crisis
ReasonVids
926 views
Thumbnail for Remy: People Will Die!1:56
Remy: People Will Die!
ReasonVids
875 views
Thumbnail for Greg Lukianoff: How Colleges Fight Free Speech4:09
Greg Lukianoff: How Colleges Fight Free Speech
ReasonVids
859 views
Thumbnail for "Black History Month" or Baseball0:21
"Black History Month" or Baseball
AOUisgay
443 views
Thumbnail for Multi million dollar solar park destroyed by hail storm0:26
Multi million dollar solar park destroyed by hail storm
bestofupgoat
321 views
Thumbnail for The Future of School Choice58:26
The Future of School Choice
ReasonVids
841 views
Thumbnail for No Asylum: Immigrants Locked Up in U.S. after Fleeing Violence8:23
No Asylum: Immigrants Locked Up in U.S. after Fleeing Violence
ReasonVids
849 views
Thumbnail for Remy: Banana (Free Trade Camila Cabello Havana Parody)2:22
Remy: Banana (Free Trade Camila Cabello Havana Parody)
ReasonVids
820 views
Thumbnail for 🤔0:31
🤔
bestofupgoat
162 views
Thumbnail for VA Recap: U.S. Vet on Cause, Solution, and Scale of Scandal6:43
VA Recap: U.S. Vet on Cause, Solution, and Scale of Scandal
ReasonVids
864 views
Thumbnail for Trump, Reagan, and Why Republicans Flip-Flopped on Free Trade6:05
Trump, Reagan, and Why Republicans Flip-Flopped on Free Trade
ReasonVids
896 views
Thumbnail for How Politics Corrupted Science: Dr. Vinay Prasad on COVID50:25
How Politics Corrupted Science: Dr. Vinay Prasad on COVID
ReasonVids
931 views

points

Permalink
Reply
libertarian, reason magazine, reason.com, reason.tv, reasontv, bitcoin, jamie dimon, cryptocurrency, free speech, first amendment
TOS  •  Add Keywords  •  Donate  •   Analytics  •   DMCA  •   Puzzle