{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.carper.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/news-clips?ContentRecord_id=54adf075-806d-4f7f-a5b4-d5b1675c53d6", "FOX News: The Speaker's Lobby: Whatisthebitcoin?", "2013-11-28", "2013", "2013-11", "Democrat", "House", "DE", "Thomas Carper", "C000174", "www.carper.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "By Chad Pergram \n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\tWhatisthebitcoin?\r\nUnfortunately, no one can be told what Bitcoin is. You have to see it for yourself\u2026\r\nWellll\u2026..not quite.\r\nBut Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Carper (D-DE) sure wants to learn more.\r\n\u201cVirtual currencies, perhaps most notably Bitcoin, have captured the imagination of some, struck fear among others and confused the heck out of many of us,\u201d Carper said. \u201cIncluding me.\u201d\r\nCarper gaveled the first ever Congressional hearing on Bitcoin to order last week. No, he didn\u2019t invite attendees to take the red pill or the blue pill as the panel explored the dangers and risks posed by computer-generated cryptocurrencies. The signature \u201cMatrix\u201d green lines of computer code didn\u2019t drip down the committee room walls during testimony from witnesses. Nor did Agent Smith work security at the door. But Carper certainly probed a virtual marketplace of determining what\u2019s real, what \u2018s valuable and what lurks in the shadows of digital money.\r\nIn the movie \u201cThe Matrix,\u201d the character Morpheus asks \u201cWhat is real? How do you define real? If you\u2019re talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then real is simply electronic signals interpreted by your brain.\u201d\r\nAnd that\u2019s the question which lingers around Bitcoin. How real is it?\u00a0 Is it a currency which can be used in financial transactions? Or is it a commodity which can be mined and monetized at a market rate?\r\n++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++\r\nFirst of all, an explanation on Bitcoin.\r\nCreated four years ago, Bitcoin is essentially very complex computer code, thus assigning it value. The algorithm is set up to continue to \u201cmine\u201d additional Bitcoins between now and 2140. That limits the potential for \u201cinflation\u201d and imposes traditional \u201csupply and demand\u201d rules of the market.\u00a0\r\nPeople who acquire Bitcoins may store them in a digital \u201cwallet,\u201d accessing the currency much the way people would access traditional reserves in their bank account, protected by private \u201ckeys.\u201d\r\n\u201cIt\u2019s like email for money,\u201d testified Patrick Murck of the Bitcoin Foundation.\r\nAnd it\u2019s this potential for \u201coff-the-books\u201d transactions and unique anonymity which make Bitcoin so controversial \u2013 and simultaneously fascinating.\r\n+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++\r\n\u201cCriminals will always seek to hide their crimes,\u201d said Acting Assistant Attorney General Mythili Raman to the committee. \u201cThis will be another vehicle through which criminals may try to launder proceeds or commit additional crimes.\u201d\r\nJennifer Shasky Calvery, who heads the Treasury Department\u2019s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), noted that \u201cvirtual currency has been exploited by criminal actors\u201d and that regulation is essential to probe potentially questionable transactions.\r\nAll of this comes a little more than a month since the FBI took down the \u201chidden\u201d service called the Silk Road, an anonymous underground website decried as the \u201ceBay of drug sales.\u201d The Silk Road was a digital venue, virtually untraceable via its coding. In addition to drugs, customers could purchase child porn, stolen credit card numbers, cigarettes, and even weapons on the Silk Road. The Feds contend that cybercurrencies served as the Bitcoin of the realm in this blackest of markets.\r\nBut Murck disputes suppositions about Bitcoin\u2019s potential as the preferred medium for vice and lawlessness.\r\n\u201cBitcoin is not some magical cloaking device that simply allows criminals free rein,\u201d he said.\r\n++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++\r\nAt the hearing, Carper told the story of watching the movie \u201cDillinger\u201d some years ago about legendary gangster John Dillinger. Carper described a scene where Dillinger seeks out one of his old bank robbing buddies and discovers that his pal retrofitted the lair he once used. It\u2019s now lined with long tables and telephones, populated by men in suits and jackets. Dillinger\u2019s friend tells him he doesn\u2019t knock off banks any longer. He\u2019s upgraded to bookmaking. He tells Dillinger that this is the emerging wave of criminal activity and scams.\r\n\u201cI suspect for some people, they see this (Bitcoin) as the future to make them money,\u201d said Carper. \u201cWe figured out how to deal with those guys in that film, wearing their shirts and ties and doing illegal activities, not robbing banks any more, not shooting people any more.\u201d\r\nThe question Carper had for the panel, is how does the U.S. government deal with a new criminal enterprise, much of which could be rooted in secret currencies like Bitcoin? And that\u2019s to say nothing of everyday consumers and businesses.\r\n\u201cIt\u2019s still very much an experimental currency,\u201d said Murck. \u201cIt\u2019s not quite ready for mass consumption. It\u2019s coming. But not today.\u201d\r\nWhich is why Murck asserts that efforts to integrate Bitcoin into traditional financial services systems are met with suspicion.\r\n\u201cThere is currently a chill in the banking system and in the banking industry that is preventing businesses from getting just simple checking accounts,\u201d Murck said. \u201cThere are stories that if you have the word Bitcoin anywhere in your name, your applications will be immediately placed in the circular file.\u201d\r\nIt\u2019s not clear if that\u2019s a virtual trash can as a part of some Windows program\u2026or perhaps an actual metallic one sitting underneath a banker\u2019s desk.\r\nNo one is really sure who invented the \u201ccircular file,\u201d as Murck put it. And the same goes for who crafted Bitcoin.\r\n\u201cWho was the creator? Who were the creators?\u201d questioned Carper of the panel.\r\nSomeone (or someones) using the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto conjured up the first Bitcoin. No one knows if Nakamoto is male or female and whether or not they\u2019re even Japanese. The only certainty is that they know a lot about cryptography, economics and writing computer code.\r\n\u201cWho Satoshi is is largely irrelevant to the story of Bitcoin going forward and I think that was intentional and possibly why a pseudonym was chosen in the first place,\u201d said Murck.\r\n\u201cIt\u2019s a little strange that with the Bitcoin, we don\u2019t know who the creator is,\u201d replied witness Jerry Brito of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.\r\n\u201cYou don\u2019t think it was Al Gore, do you?\u201d deadpanned Carper, eliciting laughter.\r\nCarper closed the hearing a few minutes later. Two-and-a-half hours had passed and the Delaware Democrat was the only senator to attend the hearing, virtually or otherwise. Carper gaveled the hearing out by quoting Albert Einstein\u2019s wife. She once told him that when her husband spoke about complex quantum theories, she \u201cunderstood the words but not the sentences.\u201d\r\nCarper said that with the hearing on virtual currency, \u201cI\u2019m starting to understand more than the words, but a few of the sentences, too.\u201d\r\nIn the 1999 movie The Matrix, Morpheus asks \u201cWhat is real? How do you define real?\u201d\r\nThe potential for virtual currencies opens up new questions about what is \u201creal money\u201d and whether it actually carries monetized value. Value which could be converted into dollars or Euros or pounds or krone.\r\nIs that money you\u2019re holding in your hand which you can feel? Or is it something tucked away in a digital wallet? Which may have value \u2013 because other people want it.\r\nThe Treasury Department\u2019s Jennifer Shasky Calvery told the hearing that despite Bitcoin\u2019s arrival on the scene, \u201ccash is probably the best medium for money laundering.\u201d\r\nAnd despite the criminal attraction of virtual currencies,\u00a0 Shasky Calvery\u2019s words form a sentence which most on the black market can understand.", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.carper.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/news-clips?ContentRecord_id=54adf075-806d-4f7f-a5b4-d5b1675c53d6"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.56697491183877, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}