New York SUBPOENAS BITCOIN Operators After JUDGE DECLARES Digital Currency REAL MONEY

On Aug. 13, the state of New York’s Regulatory office issued subpoenas to every major Bitcoin operator just days after a Federal judge declared that the digital currency was in fact, real money.  In a statement today from NYSDFS’s superintendent Benjamin Lawsky, the regulator confirmed that the government no longer recognizes Bitcoin as a parallel to a barter currency, and that it must now follow national and international regulatory laws as any other globally recognized currency does.

Declaring Bitcoin “a virtual Wild West for narcotraffickers and other criminals,” the New York State Department of Financial Services is stepping into the sheriff’s boots.

“We believe that – for a number of reasons – putting in place appropriate regulatory safeguards for virtual currencies will be beneficial to the long-term strength of the virtual currency industry,” said NYSDFS superintendent Benjamin Lawsky in a statement. – Forbes

 Since its creation in 2008, immediately after the credit crisis nearly took down the Western financial system, Bitcoin has grown into an international medium of exchange that is quickly being recognized around the world.  Working as a strictly digital currency with a limited money supply, the intention of Bitcoin is to give consumers an alternative means of exchange without the interference of banks and regulatory systems inflating or controlling its application.

Over the past five years, the United States and most of the Western economies have ignored Bitcoin, seeing it only as a minor annoyance in the entire scope of economic transactions.  But when the banking holiday in Cyprus occurred, and continuing austerity has impoverished the people of Greece, bitcoin suddenly rose to center stage as citizens in these countries beganusing it en masse as their own national currencies were restricted by policies and capital controls.

So now with economic and financial headlwinds pointing towards a new monetary crisis, the powers that be are no longer ignoring the potential of Bitcoin, and are instead using a plagiarized form the old axiom, if you can’t beat them, co-opt them.  And within the course of one week, the U.S. courts have indicted one individual for fraud in a ‘bitcoin ponzi scheme’, and subsequently declared the digital currency ‘real money’ by de facto law.

Additionally within days of this ruling, Bloomberg created a Forex ticker for Bitcoin trading (XBT), and now the state of New York is seeking to impose massive regulations on the currency under the auspices of preventing ‘money laundering’ and ‘tax evasion’.

The whole purpose of Bitcoin was to be a means in which people could get out of the matrix of monetary debt slavery and to enable an exchange of products and services determined by the market, and not by central bank policy and control.  But as the digital currency grew in scope, and became a threat to the global financial system, the U.S. government wasted little time in co-opting Bitcoin so that it is no longer a free means of performing transactions, but instead another asset the system can soon use to exploit the people.