Chris Liss on Nostr: “No one was *forced* to give up their gold” is a lot like “No one was *forced* ...

“No one was *forced* to give up their gold” is a lot like “No one was *forced* to get vaccinated.”

Yeah, I couldn’t go into a restaurant, and people lost their jobs, and the policy was only dropped after they were sued, but other than that, no one was forced.

quoting note1p4s…8qpy

101 on how gold was confiscated:

You had to turn it in for dollars by a deadline prior to dollar devaluation, and there were massive prison consequences for not turning it in, but little resources in terms of investigating who didn’t turn it in. That would be expensive. So it was fear based. Focusing on illegality and tail risks on edge cases more than enforcement on average.

Institutions had to comply immediately, since it’s all visible. So the government broke liquidity in the domestic gold market, which was enough for their purposes. Gold became a hard-to-trade illegal relic for those that held it.

If a small family hodled some extra bars for 40 years until it became legal again, they did okay.

But can the government track bitcoin in the 2020s better or worse than gold in 1930s for enforcement purposes? That’s the right question.

And don’t just think of confiscation. Think of 70% selective taxes and things like that. Far more within the current rule of law. That’s the sophisticated approach. Don’t take it. Selectively tax it by a lot.

Those are the politics to push against from a bitcoin perspective.