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Pictures: Ballyhea bondholder bailout protesters reach Dublin

The ‘Ballyhea says No!’ protest group reached the capital today, demonstrating against payments to bondholders.

THE PEOPLE OF the tiny Cork town of Ballyhea descended on Leinster House in Dublin today to bring their protest against the ‘bailout of bondholders’ to the capital.

The group from the tiny Cork town of Ballyhea have been marching once a week for the past 82 weeks against what the say is the ‘European Central Bank-enforced extortion of tens of billions from the Irish people’.

They are led partly by the Irish Examiner’s chief hurling writer Diarmuid O’Flynn who wrote about the movement in a column for TheJournal.ie in July.

Today, the group met with Sinn Féin finance spokesperson Pearse Doherty and the independent TDs John Halligan and Luke Ming Flanagan were among those pictured marching with the protesters as they marched.

Among their concerns at present are the €1 billion that is due to be paid on an AIB bond on 1 October.

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Column: We won’t stop marching until the ECB returns Ireland’s money

Read: ‘I’ve lost about a stone in weight – that’s my contribution to Ireland’s cause’

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85 Comments
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    Mute Nigel Sinnott
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    Mar 18th 2014, 1:07 PM

    Someday soon I hope to read an article on bitcoin and learn something new.

    44
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    Mute Jackie Culligan
    Favourite Jackie Culligan
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    Mar 18th 2014, 1:58 PM

    Two years using bitcoin and no trouble so far, have even made money on em

    29
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    Mute Peebear
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    Mar 18th 2014, 2:48 PM

    Bitcoins are “mined” similarly to gold, meaning there is a finite supply in the world.
    Bitcoins hold a fictional value just as much as the piece of paper we hold with €50 written on it.

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    Mute Sean O'Keeffe
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    Mar 18th 2014, 8:34 PM

    Bitcoin has democratised the process of creating currency. Once the exclusive preserve of the wealthy, powerful and politically connected.
    A bitcoin exchange goes to the wall with loses of $375 million and some commentators are writing bitcoins obituary. The western banking system is seized with convulsions but no mention of the dysfunction of legal tender currencies.
    Bitcoin is loved by criminals but no mention that this is dwarfed by the volume of criminality conducted in legal tender currencies.
    Fiat currencies are debt based. Economic expansion cannot occur unless debt expansion occurs. Currency in turn ceases to exist once debt is extinguished. Bitcoin is created through online mining and continues to exist as long as it is accepted as a medium of exchange.
    This is a banker-friendly article.

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    Mute seamus mcdermott
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    Mar 18th 2014, 8:48 PM

    Bear-creature,
    Does “mining” bitcoin generate money in the local community where the mining takes place? Are workers employed in the mining operation? Do they take paychecks home to their families which are spent in their communities and raise the standard of living for other families?

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    Mute seamus mcdermott
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    Mar 19th 2014, 1:09 PM

    I’ll take that as a “no”.

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    Mute John Conway
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    Mar 18th 2014, 1:19 PM

    whats a bitcoin?

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    Mute John Errity
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    Mar 18th 2014, 1:26 PM

    Whats a what

    17
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    Mute Nigel Berney
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    Mar 18th 2014, 2:32 PM

    They found that guy who invented bitcoin recently who is living in California, his brother said he’s an a$&hole and apparently most of his life has been a blank because he has been working with the us Air Force on secret projects.
    He said he had no involvement in bitcoin anymore and invited one of the reporters who had set up camp outside the house to come buy him sushi!
    If this guy is working on projects like that for them it makes me wonder who is linked with bitcoin architecture?

    Just saying!

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    Mute Heber Rowan
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    Mar 18th 2014, 2:37 PM

    He was proven not to be the guy in question after the original user accounts that posted the bitcoin white paper and math were re-used after many years on the TOR network.

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    Mute Drew
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    Mar 18th 2014, 2:40 PM

    Can someone explain how a company can be bankrupt if what it owes people is of absolutely no legal value in the jurisdiction in question… These conceptual things are only worth something as long as you can persuade a bigger fool to buy them from you for more than you paid. They might as well be magic beans.

    Admittedly gold is a chunk of pretty useless metal and diamonds carbon… But they’re physical things and there is 5 major global banks backing gold.

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    Mute Silent Majority
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    Mar 18th 2014, 2:59 PM

    They had other debts beyond what was lost by exchange users (start up & development costs etc.) and without the exchange being operational they had no real way to maintain cash flows to service debts.
    At any rate, nothing really has a “legal value” – markets dictate prices & values, not the law. BTCs do have a value, set by market through exchanges like MtGox. MtGox provided a service storing these valuable assets for their owners, and failed in their contracted duty, so would of course be liable to legal action from clients in the absence of bankruptcy protection. If share certificates were lost on your behalf by your broker, would you not expect to be able to pursue legal recourse? But markets, via stock exchanges, set their price too, not some legal entity, and the compensation you request will likely be associated with this market price – this is quite similar.

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    Mute Drew
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    Mar 18th 2014, 3:53 PM

    Yes it does have legal value… Look at a dollar bill it’s clearly printed ‘ legal tender for all debts both public and private’ there are laws in place in every country that says if I have agreed I owe you that $1 dollar for services and I hand you that $1 bill you cannot take me to court saying I have not paid that debt. What gives it it’s value is that legal protection it has…. Not what someone’s prepared to trade you for it.

    A share certificate is legal ownership of a portion of a company… If you acquire more than 51% of the total shares I you can claim ownership of the company. The certificate itself is worthless beyond confirming you own that share of that legally incorporated business… It’s factories, inventory, patents, cash it has in the bank, any future earnings.

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    Mute Silent Majority
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    Mar 18th 2014, 4:04 PM

    So how much is $1 worth legally then? And assuming there is a dispute on ownership of shares/a company, how will the courts decide how much the company or the shares in question are worth? Markets dictate prices, legal entities simply adopt these prices to determine actual value.
    Btw, the answer to the first question is $1 is worth $1s worth of goods and services, whatever that may at any given time. Similarly, 1BTC is worth 1BTCs worth of (some) goods and services. The markets have dictated that BTCs have a value, for the courts to ignore this value would set a dangerous precedent – could art be deemed to have no real value, as its inherent value is far less than its market value for example. And just because something is not a physical entity or asset does not make it worthless – courts award great value to IP, and that’s basically putting value on a thought!

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    Mute seamus mcdermott
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    Mar 18th 2014, 8:57 PM

    Beanie-babies. Star Wars figurines. McDonald’s toys. Comic books. Cabbage Patch dolls.

    The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on…

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    Mute Drew
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    Mar 18th 2014, 4:39 PM

    It’s worth however much we agree is one dollars worth… If I sign a contract saying I will give you $1 for 5 widgets, my obligation of that legal contract is to provide you with $1… That doesn’t change if we come to a legally binding agreement for 5 widgets or 50. This legal protection is completely absent.

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