Responding to senator’s bid to ban Bitcoin, congressman calls for cash ban

Last month, a senator from West Virginia called on American financial regulators to ban Bitcoin in a seemingly gross misunderstanding of how the cryptocurrency actually works.

On Wednesday, however, a representative from Colorado responded with a tongue-in-cheek letter to those same authorities.

Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO) wrote:

The exchange of dollar bills, including high denomination bills, is currently unregulated and has allowed users to participate in illicit activity, while also being highly subject to forgery, theft, and loss. For the reasons outlined below, I urge regulators to take immediate and appropriate action to limit the use of dollar bills.

By way of background, a physical dollar bill is a printed version of a dollar note issued by the Federal Reserve and backed by the ephemeral “full faith and credit” of the United States. Dollar bills have gained notoriety in relation to illegal transactions; suitcases full of dollars used for illegal transactions were recently featured in popular movies such as American Hustle and Dallas Buyers Club, as well as the gangster classic, Scarface, among others. Dollar bills are present in nearly all major drug busts in the United States and many abroad. According to the US Department of Justice study, “Crime in the United States,” more than $1 billion in cash was stolen in 2012, of which less than 3% was recovered. The United States’ Dollar was present by the truck load in Saddam Hussein’s compound, by the carload when Noriega was arrested for drug trafficking, and by the suitcase full in the Watergate case.

Unlike digital currencies, which are carbon neutral allowing us to breathe cleaner air, each dollar bill is manufactured from virgin materials like cotton and linen, which go through extensive treatment and processing. Last year, the Federal Reserve had to destroy $3 billion worth of $100 bills after a “printing error.” Certainly this cannot be the greenest currency.

. . .

The clear use of dollar bills for transacting in illegal goods, anonymous transactions, tax fraud, and services or speculative gambling make me wary of their use. Before the United States gets too far behind the curve on this important topic, I urge the regulators to work together, act quickly, and prohibit this dangerous currency from harming hard-working Americans.

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Those that need to will not get it. Get back to fixing the economy unless it is not to be fixed. If that is so then carry on.

reply to post by roadgravel


Ahaha... that is freakin hilarious. What a legend.

You think they might ban cash given out by AIPAC? Hell, I don't know of any congressman or senator that isn't receiving something from them.

Our tax money at work (or play, for drugs, for prostitutes, for insider trading, for [fill in the blank]).

This is just another example of government hypocrisy, which likely stems from the fact that many US politicians are definitely not qualified to hold the positions they fill. The hypocrisy stems from the fact that politicians are notoriously corrupt, as most of us know, and yet they are the ones tasked with making and upholding our laws. It is just counter-intuitive, and I cannot imagine the Founding Fathers envisioning what things would turn in to, although they did express amazing foresight when it came to the potential abuses of the system they instituted, but what good was that foresight and their actions to fill in those gaps, when later lawmakers, corrupt lawmakers mind you, can simply alter the law to suit their purposes.

And that is not even the worst part. The worst part is that they don't even have to alter the law...They simply don't obey it, and there is nothing that anyone can do, aside from exercising their 2nd amendment right, which by the way was the intended purpose of said amendment, a fact that seems to escape many people.