Economics

Bitcoin and the Law

/ Matthew Clemente / 2 Comments

Bitcoin and the Law

Recently, my professor for Commercial Transactions mentioned Bitcoin, a new online currency.  It is not money according to the Uniform Commercial Code, but it increasingly used as currency throughout the United States and around the world.  The latest edition of the Lawyer to Lawyer podcast discussed the legal issues surrounding Bitcoin. 

Here is a description of the podcast: 

If you had bought $1,000 worth of Bitcoins in 2010, you would have $2.4 million dollars today. The anonymous, Internet-based currency has seen an exponential rise in value and popularity since its inception in 2009. This raises legal questions regarding the legitimacy, the legalities, and what lawyers need to know about this new currency. In this edition of Lawyer2Lawyer hosts Bob Ambrogiand J. Craig Williams invite Bitcoin experts, attorney Lowell D. Ness and journalist Kashmir Hill, to provide some answers and a foretelling of the e-currency’s future.

Ness is a partner of the nationwide law firm Perkins Coie which has extensive experience in virtual currency. The firm’s Virtual Currency Report Blog, which Lowell regularly contributes to, provides a legal outlook on the state of bitcoin and the market. Lowell’s practice focuses on high-growth emerging companies and involves venture capital financings, mergers and acquisitions, public offerings, and private placements.

Senior Online Editor of Forbes, Hill is a privacy pragmatist with an interest in the intersection of law, technology, social media, and personal information. Former editor of Above the Law, she has been following the Bitcoin story from the start, and will be releasing an e-book documenting Bitcoin’s rise later this year.

Betting on the End of the World

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The most recent episode of the Planet Money podcast discusses a new book by Yale historian Paul Sabin entitled The Bet: Paul Ehrlich, Julian Simon, and Our Gamble over Earth’s Future. In 1980, economist Julian Simon challenged biologist Paul Ehrlich to a bet. Ehrlich came to fame by writing The Population Bomb, which argued that unchecked population growth would led to the end of mankind. Economist Simon believed Ehrlich’s assertions were unfounded. The two devised a debate to test the proposition.

Here is a description of the podcast from the Planet Money website:
A famous biologist predicts overpopulation will lead to global catastrophe. He writes a bestselling book and goes on the Tonight Show to make his case.

An economist disagrees. He thinks the biologist isn’t accounting for how clever people can be, and how shortages can lead to new, more efficient ways of doing things.

So the economist, Julian Simon, challenges the biologist, Paul Ehrlich, to a very public, very acrimonious, decade-long bet. On today’s show: The story of that bet, and the ugly precedent it set.

“Understanding The Volcker Rule”

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“Understanding The Volcker Rule”

This week regulators voted to institute “Volcker Rule” as part of Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.  The Volcker Rule is aimed at preventing banks from making speculative investments that may jeopardize their customers.  A recent episode of The Diane Remh Show discussed the Volcker Rule, its impact and its limitations.

Here is a description of the program:

The so-called “Volcker Rule” is aimed at reining in risky trading by banks. Details on the new rule and whether it’s tough enough to prevent another financial crisis.

Guests 

Michael Greenberger –  founder and director, University of Maryland Center for Health and Homeland Security

Tim Pawlenty –CEO, Financial Services Roundtable. He was governor of Minnesota from 2003 to 2011.

Jim Zarroli –business reporter, NPR.

Janet Hook – congressional correspondent, The Wall Street Journal.

 

A Look Inside Amazon on Cyber Monday

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A Look Inside Amazon on Cyber Monday

In anticipation of Cyber Monday, 60 Minutes ran a segment that took a look into how Amazon.com operates. 

Here is how the story began: 

There has never been a company quite like Amazon. Conceived as an online book seller, Amazon has reinvented itself time and again, changing the way the world shops, reads and computes. Amazon has 225 million customers around the world. Its goal is to sell everything to everyone. The brainchild of Jeff Bezos, Amazon prides itself on disrupting the traditional way of doing things. A few weeks ago the company announced it was launching Sunday delivery.

 

Tonight, for the first time, you will be introduced to perhaps Amazon’s boldest venture ever.

Do Violent Video Games Lead to Less Violent Crime?

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Do Violent Video Games Lead to Less Violent Crime?

That was one of the questions asked on the Freakonomics Radio podcast.  

Here is a description of the episode: 

Our latest podcast is called “Who Runs the Internet?” (You can subscribe to the podcast at iTunes, get the RSS feed, or listen via the media player above. You can also read the transcript; it includes credits for the music you’ll hear in the episode.)

It begins with Stephen Dubner and Steve Levitt talking about whether virtual mayhem — from online ranting to videogame violence — may help reduce mayhem in the real world. There is no solid data on this, Levitt says, but he hypothesizes: 

LEVITT: Maybe the biggest effect of all of having these violent video games is that they’re super fun for people to play, especially adolescent boys, maybe even adolescent boys who are prone to real violence. And so if you can make video games fun enough, then kids will stop doing everything else. They’ll stop watching TV, they’ll stop doing homework, and they’ll stop going out and creating mayhem on the street. 

This episode then moves on to a bigger question about the Internet itself: who runs it? As Dubner asks: “Who’s in charge of the gazillions of conversations and transactions and character assassinations that happen online every day?”

Internet scholar Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, tells us that 60 percent of adults around the world are now connected to the same communications grid. (South Korea, he says, is the “most wired” country.) And this global connectivity is interesting, he says, because it’s not like there is an international body governing what’s online:

SHIRKY: Well, I mean, famously, the regulatory overhead on the Internet is permissive and minimal. In fact, the thing that freaked everyone out about it in the 90s when it was spreading on the wings of the web was that no one was in charge. … There are famous stories of bosses fretting that because all of their employees were suddenly sending international emails that they were suddenly going to be hit by the bill by the people who ran the Internet.