Kinsella On Liberty

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 090. I spoke at Liberty on the Rocks-Houston last night on the topic of intellectual property. Nice crowd and a good time. I touched on a number of matters, from negative servitudes to positive rights. Zoe Russell and others did a great job running/arranging this. This is my own iPhone recording: not great quality, but mostly listenable. A better video/audio version ought to be forthcoming soon. In the meantime.... have fun.

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 089.  This is my appearance earlier today (10/23/2013) on  Declare Your Independence with Ernest Hancock radio show. We talked intellectual property, including libertarian sci-fi author L. Neil Smith's pro-IP views (see The L. Neil Smith – FreeTalkLive Copyright Dispute; Smith, Unanimous Consent and the Utopian Vision or I Dreamed I Was a Signatory In My Maidenform Bra; Shire Society Forum, Topic: L. Neil Smith has Important Shire Business; L. Neil Smith, A New Covenant).   2013-10-23 Hour 2 Stephan Kinsella from Ernest Hancock on Vimeo.

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 088. This is the audio for episode 001 of Liberty Talk, a new weekly-ish Google hangout-based podcast with Jeffrey Tucker and me (Google Plus page; Youtube Channel). This week Jeff and I talked a variety of issues, including Jeff's recent Crypto-Currency Conference in Atlanta, his impromptu 50-person bar meetup in New York before the Students for Liberty regional conference in NY; and Jeff's thoughts on what he calls "the new libertarianism": a movement characterized by optimistic, entrepreneurial, pro-tech and smart young people interested in incorporating liberty into their lives; circumventing the state instead of pleading for it to give them an inch more of freedom, etc. Update: See Jeff's Freeman article The New Libertarianism.

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 087. This was my appearance on Michael Shanklin's Voluntary Virtues Vodcast. We talked about the Stefan Molyneux vs. Zeitgeist guy "Peter Joseph" etc. Jeff Tucker made an impromptu entrance at the end, discombobulating everyone, as is his wont.   Background: Zeitgeist Versus the Market - Peter Joseph Debates Stefan Molyneux Zeitgeist Examined: Peter Joseph/Stefan Molyneux Debate Analysis Peter Joseph on Stefan Molyneux: "The Art of Nonsense" | Pathology or Con-Artistry?

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 086. Last weekend I gave a talk “The History, Meaning, and Future of Legal Tender,” at Jeff Tucker's Crypto-Currency Conference: Bitcoin and the Future of Money (Atlanta, Oct. 5, 2013). See KOL085 | The History, Meaning, and Future of Legal Tender; slides below. Video/professional audio to be released later. Pix here and here. This is an interview I did with Kurt Wallace, of RARE radio, whom I met at the CCC. We discussed a variety of issues about bitcoin; the transcript is below. Rare Conversation LISTEN: Why the U.S. will declare war on Bitcoin PBS News Hour clip: The currency known as Bitcoin, which made headlines earlier this week when the FBI seized Silk Road, the popular online black marketplace for drugs and other contraband, payable by Bitcoin had done over a billion dollars worth of business in just the last two years. Kurt Wallace for Rare: Bitcoin has made headlines on PBS News Hour, sparked by an online Bitcoin drug trafficking site. Mainstream companies are popping up all over the place, big time investors are getting involved in this emerging sector and there are crypto-currency conferences monthly and sometimes weekly all over the world. Even Canada has introduced their own government-backed digital currency called mint-chip. What is the future here in the United States regarding Bitcoin and digital currency? Here to help us out is registered patent attorney Stephan Kinsella, founder of Libertarian Papers and former adjunct professor at the South Texas College of Law. Good to have you on Stephan, thank you for joining us today. Stephan Kinsella: Thank you very much glad to be here. Rare: Silk Road is this online black-market that was shut down by the FBI last week. Should people be worried about using Bitcoin in the United States? Kinsella: I don’t think using Bitcoin itself is a big concern. Silk Road itself might be a different issue. You have to consider your own risks in using Silk Road, but Bitcoin itself … no, you can use Bitcoin without being implicated with the Silk Road issues right now. Rare: What’s happened with Silk Road, is that a benefit for Bitcoin or it that bad for Bitcoin? Kinsella: I think it’s good and bad, if you think about. Everything that people accuse Bitcoin of being bad for is true of the U.S. dollar. People are saying that Bitcoin is used for drug transactions. Well the U.S. dollar is used for that too. All the bad things that people accuse Bitcoin of are being used by the U.S. dollar. It’s just an alternative currency that people use. As long as you are careful and as long as you don’t use it for illegal transactions you should be OK. Rare: The U.S. government has the War on Drugs and the War on Poverty and the War on Terror and we were at this crypto-currency conference in Atlanta over the weekend, there were a lot of Libertarians there. A lot of people concerned about their freedoms and their ability to live their lives without government interference. Do we see a possibility of the United States government declaring a war on Bitcoin? Kinsella: Yes, I think there is a concern there, and the concern is that if the U.S. government sees a significant threat to its hegemony over the currency of the U.S. dollar, or the world monetary system. They will try and crack down on it. But we have seen this in the internet as well. I don’t believe the U.S. government, if they had known in the early 1990s what the internet would evolve into, I don’t think they would have allowed it. But it’s a little too late for them to stop it, I hope. I’m puzzling the same is true of Bitcoin and similar currencies. Rare: What part is Bitcoin going to play in the future of legal tender in the United States, with the rest of the world already embracing Bitcoin like in Europe and again Canada having their own digital currency? Kinsella: The legal tender is just another tool in the toolbox at stake that they can resort to when they need to, to try and crack down on people that threaten their systems. The dollar, the dollar estimate and the interest system of the world monetary order, and really doesn’t need to crack down to far right now, other than counterfeiting and things like this. As Roosevelt and other charlatan authorities, they will seize gold, they will outlaw gold clauses and contracts, and they will do what they have to do to protect their monetary system. If Bitcoin emerges as something that threatens the dollar supremacy, you can expect the state to try and react, and try to ban transactions with Bitcoin using legal tender law and whatever provisions they have available to them. Rare: What if the Federal Reserve thought this was to overwhelming for them on the world market and tried to hedge by creating their own crypto-currency, will they do that? Kinsella: I think its possible that the world currencies will try to modernize and use digital methods, but what they are trying to do is use technology to basically track and implement their own currency system. They don’t have the advantages that Bitcoin does, which is a fixed limited supply, and free of government intervention, so they are always going to be inferior in that sense. There is really little difference between Bitcoin and the dollar except that there is no limit on the U.S. government inflating the dollar as much as they want. But Bitcoin has a 21-million currency unit limit. So they can never compete with Bitcoin really, because they don’t want to be limited by these shackles. Rare:  But what about regulating digital currency? Kinsella: Well I think that regulations could start creeping in, using tender laws or other laws. So they can start saying that if you pay in Bitcoins it is going to be regulated, or you have to pay sales tax. There is a danger of that. The advantage for Bitcoin is that it is highly encrypted. I view Bitcoin like Esperanto. Esperanto is this artificial language, which was not intended to be a substitute for regular language, but a universal second language. Bitcoin doesn’t have to be the dominant monetary currency to survive. It just has be a currency. If it is in the background, if it is used for some things, even if it is only used by certain people who are savvy enough to use it, that may be good enough for it to survive. Kurt Wallace lives in Atlanta and has been active in new media since 2007 specializing in strategic content. As a podcast host he has interviewed hundreds of guests in politics, business, economics and entertainment. Wallace has served over 20 national political campaigns as a fundraising consultant and producer for online fundraising broadcasts including Rand Paul 2010 and Ron Paul 2012 campaigns. His most important role in life is being a father to an incredible son. He’s a football fan and an amateur poker player. Attorney Stephan Kinsella, Executive Editor of Libertarian Papers and former professor at South Texas College of Law. - See more at: http://rare.us/story/why-the-us-will-declare-war-on-bitcoin/#sthash.bTDCH2cC.dpuf

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 085 Relevant links at KOL274 | Nobody Owns Bitcoin (PFS 2019). See also: Bitcoin Confiscation vs. Gold Confiscation This is the audio (from my iPhone) of my talk “The History, Meaning, and Future of Legal Tender,” from the Crypto-Currency Conference: Bitcoin and the Future of Money (Atlanta, Oct. 5, 2013). Slides below. Video/professional audio to be released later. Pix here and here. https://youtu.be/myTq7ydbYO8 Update: Video is available here (BAD LINK)   Transcript below. Update: See also Bitcoin Magazine's: OCTOBER 2013 CRYPTO-CURRENCY CONFERENCE PREVIEW: On October 4 through 5, Atlanta, Georgia will host the 2013 Crypto-currency Conference: Bitcoin and the Future of Money. Bitcoin Magazine is proud to serve as a sponsor alongside of Let’s Talk Bitcoin, The Bitcoin Foundation, Students for Liberty, FEE, and Atlanta Bitcoin of this conference spearheaded by Jeffrey Tucker, Executive Editor of Laissez Faire Club and Laissez Faire Books, Distinguished Fellow for the Foundation for Economic Education, and Research Fellow of the Action Institute. The purpose of the conference will be to connect monetary economists, legal theorists, banking pundits, code-slinging visionaries, miners, and payment-systems analysts to shed light on the rise of Bitcoin. As Bitcoin is not just a currency but a movement towards greater economic freedom the 2013 Crypto-Conference will address the following questions: What does the success of Bitcoin imply for the theory, practice, and future of money and payment systems? How can we account for the sheer implausibility of Bitcoin’s rise? What does its emergence imply for the prospects of nationalized systems of money and the future of human liberty and commerce? Will Bitcoin go the way of most innovations and fall prey to government’s dead hand of regulation and strangulation? The Conference team hopes to shed light on how Bitcoin, in contrast to most currencies, has in fact increased in value over time. Over the past 100 years, the value of money has fallen to carry only about 5 of its purchasing power. As a decentralized, digital currency, Bitcoin is not beholden to a central bank and has emerged as a solution to bypass fiat money. The speed and ease of transaction makes the crypto-standard stronger than the gold standards. The Conference will open with a Friday night reception at the office of BitPay, Inc., one of the lead Bitcoin payment processing companies, where guests will hear from musician Tatiana Moroz who as a guitarist and songwriter sings about human liberty. On Saturday morning, Jeffrey Tucker will provide the keynote address, “A New Currency for the Digital Age,” at the The Twelve Hotel in Atlantic Station, a post-industrial hub of Atlanta. Panels will include discussions of Money and Freedom, Cryptography and Contracts, Merchantcraft, and Future Development. Speakers include Tony Gallippi (CEO, BitPay) and Stephen Pair (CTO, BitPay), Stephen Kinsella (Executive Editor, Libertarian Papers), Doug French (Senior Editor, Laissez Faire Club), Michael Goldstein (Co-Founder, The Mises Circle), Peter Surda (Author, Economics of Bitcoin), Charlie Schrem (CEO, BitInstant), Charles Hoskinson (CEO, Invictus Innovations Incorporated), Daniel Larimer (CTO, Invictus Innovations Incorporated), Cathy Reisenwitz (Writer and Political Commentator, Reason Magazine), Adam B. Levine (Editor in Chief, Let’s Talk Bitcoin), Tuur Demeester (Author, MacroTrends), Daniel Krawisz (Libertarian Activist). The evening will conclude with a cocktail reception featuring Austin Craig and Beccy Bingham’s story, “Life on Bitcoin.” Austin and Becky as newlyweds took the challenges of living for 90 days on Bitcoin alone and will share of their journey which is shortly coming to a close. THE REST OF THE YEAR: BITCOIN CONVENTION ROUNDUP: Crypto-Currency Conference – this conference will be more focused on philosophical issues than the others, with speakers like Laissez Faire Books’ Jeffrey Tucker, libertarian legal theorist Stephan Kinsella and the Mises Institute’s Doug French, as well as the Bitcoin economist Peter Surda, Adam Levine and BitPay’s Tony Gallippi. The conference will take place on October 5 in Atlanta. *** Also: in the WSJ article Tax Plan May Hurt Bitcoin, the article notes that legal tender laws are, in fact, jeopardizing BTC. Bitcoins are now classified by the IRS as "property" "instead of" as legal tender money, meaning capital gains taxes are owed on transactions. I mentioned this danger in my talk; a similar problem afflicts the re-adoption of gold or silver as money.  But as I noted in the Q&A to my talk, I am not persuaded that bitcoins are ownable resources—things subject to property rights. The IRS here assumes that something is either money or property. This is one danger of BTC advocates using the language of property rights to describe bitcoins. I would argue that bitcoins are not legally owned and thus capital gains taxes are not applicable—or at least, this is one argument the target of a government tax evasion suit might want to use. Update: Swiss Tax Authorities Confirm that Bitcoin is VAT-free in Switzerland: Bitcoin Association Switzerland reports that, according to the Swiss Federal Tax Administration, no VAT applies to bitcoin in Switzerland. The transfer of bitcoin doesn’t constitute delivery of goods or services, and therefore it’s not subject to VAT. Update:  for more on whether bitcoin is ownable property, see this Facebook thread. And see: Tokyo court says bitcoins are not ownable. See also: FinCEN Rules Commodity-Backed Token Services are Money Transmitters Also: "in the WSJ article Tax Plan May Hurt Bitcoin, the article notes that legal tender laws are, in fact, jeopardizing BTC. Bitcoins are now classified by the IRS as “property” “instead of” as legal tender money, meaning capital gains taxes are owed on transactions. I mentioned this danger in my talk; a similar problem afflicts the re-adoption of gold or silver as money.  But as I noted in the Q&A to my talk, I am not persuaded that bitcoins are ownable resources—things subject to property rights. The IRS here assumes that something is either money or property. This is one danger of BTC advocates using the language of property rights to describe bitcoins. I would argue that bitcoins are not legally owned and thus capital gains taxes are not applicable—or at least, this is one argument the target of a government tax evasion suit might want to use." KOL085 | The History, Meaning, and Future of Legal Tender ] See also: Bitcoin Is Officially a Commodity, According to U.S. Regulator; KOL191 | The Economy with Albert Lu: Can You Own Bitcoin? (1/3) Also: SEC: US Securities Laws 'May Apply' to Token Sales   TRANSCRIPT 00:00:10 DOUG FRENCH: Our next speaker has done nothing less than pathbreaking work in the area of intellectual property.  He probably could be considered the “Satoshi of IT” if you will.  He’s an American intellectual property lawyer, a libertarian legal theorist.  He’s created the website The Libertarian Standard.  He’s created the academic journal, the Libertarian Papers.  He’s written a number of books, including my favorite, Louisiana Civil Law Dictionary.  But probably he is best known for a book called – that really turned the libertarian world on its ear.  This argument continues on.  It rages on.  He continues to debate any and all comers online.  But he is – well, this is the perfect time in the cyber world to have a lawyer in the house.  And he is our lawyer in the house.  Please help me welcome Stephan Kinsella. 00:01:17 [clapping] 00:01:23 STEPHAN KINSELLA: Thanks very much Doug, and I’m really glad to be here.  I just flew in from Houston.  I would really like to thank Jeff for giving me the chance to speak on a non-IP topic, which I do enjoy.  So my topic today is on legal tender.  I’m going to explain briefly how I recently got interested in this topic and then go into some background.  When I was in law school, in 1989 or so, I was clerking at a firm in Baton Rouge.  I was asked by the partner to research the question of whether it was legal or illegal to refuse to take a payment of cash under legal tender law. 00:02:01 So if you owe someone a million dollars and you bring them a briefcase full of cash, can they say, “I refuse to accept that offer.  I want you to write me a check instead.  So I started researching what is legal tender.  If you look at your dollar bills, it will say this note is legal tender for all debts public and private.  It’s sort of a mysterious meaning.  What exactly does that mean?  How much money do you have to pay to satisfy a debt? 00:02:25 So I started getting interested in it.  A couple of years later, I was in graduate school in law in London, and I looked at the British pound notes and they have other language which says, Bank of England.  I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of 5 pounds or 10 pounds or whatever the note is.  So, like a smartass, I walk down to the Bank of England one day, in the middle of the financial district, with a backpack.  I was dressed like a student, and I walked in the front door and I asked.  I said, “Can I redeem this for five pounds of whatever it is it’s five pounds of?”  And they said, “Do you have an appointment?”  I said, “No”.  So they sent me out, and they said you have to have an appointment to come into the Bank of England. 00:03:06 So they said you might want to visit the Bank of England Museum around the corner.   So I walked around the corner.  I went to the Bank of England Museum.  I was the only guy there, and I started asking the curator these questions.  And he went to the back,

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 084. This is from Episode 415 of the Bad Quaker podcast, with Ben Stone. We talked about a variety of matters, including the legitimacy of the state, intellectual property, and related matters.

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 083. This was my appearance on Daniel Rothschild's youtube channel on Sept. 27, 2013; we discussed a variety of topics, including "Intellectual Property, Government, National Defense, and Other Scams".

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 082. This is from the Sunday, Aug. 21, 2011 FreeTalkLive in which I was a guest, discussing intellectual property with Sunday hosts Mark Edge and Stephanie. We talked for about an hour and a half, from 7pm-830pm EDT and had a good, wide-ranging discussion. A few callers called in near the end. This was the FTL debut on XM satellite radio’s “Extreme Talk”, XM 165. This episode is also available on the show's podcast feed here.

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 081. I appeared in August 2011 on Adam vs. The Man, talking about drug patents and related issues. Our segment runs from about 22:38 to 28:35.