The only reason the EU haven't already got regulation in place is because BTC popped up out of nowhere in a relatively short space of time and regulation takes time to implement.
That to one side - why do you want strict regulation on cryptos? What are your concerns?
I understood bitcoin exists mostly to deny governments and corporations the type of control that this article describes. Precisely what gives the EU any authority to regulate a global currency they do not own and cannot control?
I am still trying to find legitimate reason why someone will want anonymous pay. Bitcoin is almost always associated with underground markets, ransomware, money laundering, etc.
Can someone tell me a legitimate reason why I need anonymous cryptocurrency? Or what is used for?
I don't know, I have a feeling that there is a definite push towards banning cash. In Germany for example they plan to ban paying in cash for things over 5000€.
It is very useful when a seller has to sell directly to other users. If the seller can obtain the cryptocurrency from the user, said seller knows that he/she has the funds and that they can never be taken away. Then the seller can confidently provide the user with whatever product or service was requested. In contrast, if the seller used PayPal, the user can easily chargeback and get his/her money back after the seller has provided the product or service. Services like PayPal are seriously unreliable and become an extreme burden for some sellers who deal with intangible goods especially.
TLDR: Bitcoin makes it easy for sellers to obtain payment without the fear of PayPal account freezes or chargebacks.
The EU can still suck taxes from the transactions of Taler but at least they have no idea what you bought. Why should the payment middleman have a complete itemized dossier of your personal purchasing history just you and the merchant should share the details of the purchase beyond the total amount paid.
Do you agree that taxation is a legitimate lever with which to effect economic and social policy? Vice taxes, for example, are much saner than outright bans for everyone involves, and tax incentives can drive the adoption of things like solar panels.
Or the seller can keep the funds, which can never be taken away, and not actually provide the user with any products or service. Chargebacks protect the buyer, at the expense of the seller (in case of buyer fraud). Lack of chargebacks protect the seller at the expense of the buyer (in case of seller fraud).
For most online marketplaces protecting the buyers at the expense of the sellers may be necessary. There are usually a lot of buyers, they are reluctant about buying things they cannot see or touch from people they don't know, and most are not in a position to absorb the fraud. Meanwhile the sellers are usually companies that can absorb some reasonable amount of fraud because they can spread the cost of the fraud over the much larger number of transactions.
That's not always the case, such as in situations where individuals are trying to occasionally sell items of value and they are not in a position to absorb the fraud. For those situations it may make sense to use an escrow mechanism, because non-reversible payment methods like Bitcoin may spook the buyers (and insufficient buyers may lower the overall prices, potentially beyond the cost of escrow).
that's a good question. I guess essentially anything that you'd do for privacy reasons with cash, but online. There are a lot of things a person might want private, but aren't illegal. E.g., an affair, weird fetish. Who knows.
It's used for the same things as that much more widely exploited anonymous currency, cash. If you've ever bought gum without using a credit card you're associated with underground markets, ransoms, money laundering, etc.
The assumption that anonymity is inherently an indicator of criminality is toxic to an open society.
I'm not so much worried about criminality apart from tax evasion - I pay 50-70% taxes including payroll and VAT but I don't mind doing so, because I trust everyone else does too.
The moment I suspect there is a group of people that get paid and purchase goods outside the tax system I have lost that trust. Full transparency in my opinion is the lesser evil. Completely anonymous currency and transactions solves a problem but creates a bigger one.
Fair enough. But you use your own address and name to deliver stuff from the internet. Where is the anonymity in that? Or i am missing something?
Also... you get your cash from CC and transfer it to BTC, you pay someone else, you encourage money laundering because that seller doesn't have to pay any tax for that.
For me the most important factor is where the cash is going. IF we all switch to bitcoin and government can't keep track of the money, big criminals, bit corps will never pay any taxes, and how we are going to have free schools, free medical care, police, etc? Am I over thinking this?
Privacy is important but either we have to find a way to change the economy as it is, or regulate BTC properly.
Just because someone has a fetish and wants to keep it "anonymous" is not enough for me.
> and how we are going to have free schools, free medical care, police, etc? Am I over thinking this?
Well it isn't free if you have to pay for it. Here in France we pay 80% taxes and then we like to brag about having free school, free healthcare etc. It's not free if 80% of your hard earned money goes to these institutions and the bureaucracies that manage them. Worst thing is that we still need a private insurance on top of that because our welfare system is going broke and can't even pay for anything despite the 80% taxation. So yeah, it is not free after all, it is even super expensive.
Here is the thing that people do not understand: quality healthcare or quality education are expensive, there is no way around that, no magic welfare taxes will fix it. Whether private or public, it will cost you an arm and a leg. Only thing that could fix it would be innovation but unfortunately these sectors are highly regulated and this is a barrier to innovation so things will progress very slowly.
That's an average. This is not taking into account VAT and the other gazillions insults (also known as public services) that are forced on you because state monopoly, healthcare which is mandatory and public here and is more like a tax than insurance (you don't pay according to risk but according to how much your earn, and you still need a private insurance on top), and then there are of course tariffs that helps colluding and failing industries, employment taxes that makes up already 50% of your salary pre-income tax, ridiculous gazillions regulations that make everything more expensive and so on and so forth.
> Here is the thing that people do not understand: quality healthcare or quality education are expensive, there is no way around that, no magic welfare taxes will fix it. Whether private or public, it will cost you an arm and a leg. Only thing that could fix it would be innovation but unfortunately these sectors are highly regulated and this is a barrier to innovation so things will progress very slowly.
Everyone complains about regulation in health care until you get faulty medical equipment or contaminated pills and a couple dozen people die.
> Everyone complains about regulation in health care until you get faulty medical equipment or contaminated pills and a couple dozen people die.
As usual there are the deaths you see and those you don't. How many people died because a new medical equipment required years to get approved and many people who could have benefited did not and died? It is very shortsighted to only mention and count deaths caused by approved medicines and not by unapproved yet working ones.
> IF we all switch to bitcoin and government can't keep track of the money, big criminals, bit corps will never pay any taxes [...]
The biggest companies do not pay much taxes already; while I get your point, I consider it invalid until everyone who is doing legal business is paying taxes. The mafia will never pay taxes on illegal business, but it is irrelevant as long as big corporations can get around paying taxes by constructing legal international constructs.
> Privacy is important but either we have to find a way to change the economy as it is, or regulate BTC properly.
So let's go for the easy thing and regulate BTC even though it promises the smallest of all gains for society? Can you point me to any reports about BTC being used for terrorism? If there are any, do they really warrant a regulation?
> Just because someone has a fetish and wants to keep it "anonymous" is not enough for me.
Tell that to gay people in societies in which they face, at best, discrimination or, at worst, prison or death penalty.
Just because you don't have anything to be concerned about yourself right now, does not mean you should devalue privacy and anonymity for others: You can still be the next deviant who is hunted down. Or how Niemoeller put it:
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Some governments are more restrictive than others in term of censorship and what people are allowed to see or say on Internet. I see the value of allowing anonymous bitcoin in that it allows people to get access to VPN or other methods of going around censorship in a way that cannot easily be traced back by their government.
But this is the eternal debate about free speech, what's illegal in a certain country might not be illegal in other countries and is not necessarily unethical.
Every time you conduct a transaction with a normal card you're taking the risk that sometime in the future whoever you did business with may have their transaction history on pastebin. I'm sure you can think of plenty of situations where that wouldn't be a good thing.
Yes, here are four reasons that only took a minute of contemplation:
(1) Because not all masters are benevolent
(2) Because it removes the possibility of charge backs
(3) Because not everyone enjoys being monitored by companies and/or governments (foreign or otherwise)
(4) Underground markets are only "underground" because of laws. If a society outlaws birth control and abortions, but a women wants an abortion she probably wants an alternative (I.e. something an underground market with provide). An anonymous crypocurrancy (or cash) is the easiest way to do this. If it's not a crypocurrancy or cash, they can always trade goods. So in all honesty, there's no way to stop it.
There may even be other reasons, but it seems pretty obvious it can inherently good to have.
Keep in mind the amount of monetization that occurs around purchase data in the present system. The ease with which you can associate transactions to real identities isn't even comparable.
Despite the "firewall" between the bank and the marketers, information is being sold - it just requires an extra step on the part of the marketers (leaving the banks legally in the clear).
So basically there is only mainstream benefit: removing chargebacks.
The rest are just ideological and/or about facilitating illegal activity and irrelevant to most people. This is the problem with Bitcoin and other digital currencies. There is just not enough focus on making something better and simpler than the existing system.
> So basically there is only mainstream benefit: removing chargebacks.
You mean mainstream disadvantage.
I think most people using VISA are happy that they won't lose all their assets to fraud or theft of their credit card. Mainstream retailers accept a certain amount of fraud as a cost of doing business, only disruptive or greymarket vendors face significant risk from chargebacks.
Removing chargebacks is a positive benefit to a tiny fraction of the participants in legitimate financial services.
If you define legitimacy so that it perfectly coincides with the law, there is little legitimate reason to use Bitcoin. But do you really think the law has always been just?
If you're a business that's commonly listed on 'prohibited businesses' lists[1], you might want it. That phrase sounds nefarious, but as an example porn sites are often prohibited. People might want to buy porn anonymously.
If you need to send a bunch of money to someone in the Philippines, your only easy choice is an expensive wire transfer through Western Union or similar. My bank will do it for a small fixed-fee, but only because I've had an account with them for almost a decade. You don't need a verified history and strong identity to use bitcoin.
If you don't give out your personal information when buying something, then when their site later gets hacked by the Chinese your name and address won't be sold on underground trading sites. That is, even if you trust the government and banks with your personal information, you don't necessarily trust every little ecommerce site.
It's none of the government's business what I spend my money on.
If you go to a clinic specializing in mental health, cancer, abortion, or substance abuse, your medical treatment is nobody's business but you and your doctor's.
You ate at restaurants and bought gas at gas stations along a multi-state route leading to a city where there's a big protest about race relations, or income equality, or a convention where a controversial politician is going to be nominated. The government, or particular people inside it, might care -- and not in a way that's good for you or for the democratic process.
Your aggregate purchase history reveals a great deal about your personality, relationships, political activism, physical/mental state, sexual activity and many other aspects of your life.
Because being able to call someone a terrorist (or a hacker, in 5-10 years time) as a reason to turn off their credit card when it's the only method of payment left will be a dystopian nightmare.
But this is a contrived and frankly ridiculous premise.
Situations like this are why we have an independent judicial system. And even if we didn't who is thinking that credit cards are the only way to buy things ?
Yeah, tell that to the guy who wrote "ISIS beer fund" on his PayPal transfer to his mate that we have an "independent judicial system".
No - we have an outsourced judicial system, where Facebook and Google will spy on you more than the USGov, the bank will control your money more than the Government, and the insurance company will have you in an autonomous car faster than a mandate will. That's modern neoliberalism.
My reason is that I'm quite tired of paperwork and suspicion from payment processors when doing totally mundane things (like buying a PDA manufacturered by a small European company). The more of these laws that exist the more shit I have to do as a law abiding citizen. I use bitcoin because I like just not caring.
The legitimate reason is not having a big brother control everything you do. They should access this information only when there is a valid reason, not by default.
To preserve your possessions against confiscation when power abuses the people.
One of my family members lived and worked in Cuba before Fidel Castro got into power. He had a house and a three people company. He actually supported Fidel because he talked a lot about democracy and himself(Castro) not being communist.
Once Fidel got into power, he established himself as a dictator, killing anybody on their own side that was against a new dictatorship, like Cienfuegos.
Fidel nationalized everything. My family member and his family leaved the country with money from my family overseas. All his possessions were stolen by Castro.
The people in power should not have the power to easily confiscate your wealth.
Today with negative interest rates, those in power are stealing from the people, but only a little. Central banks want to ban cash so they can steal 20 to 30 per cent of every single deposit as the system is totally bankrupted.
With physical cash, gold confiscation, they have a harder time. Some people will not be happy to give the police their hard earned money.
This proposal is moot. Whether or not it's a good idea, the EU is technically unable to effectively regulate bitcoin. Sure, you can place rules on exchanges, but since anyone with bitcoin can send it to any other person, identified only by one of an infinite number of wallet IDs, the EU will never be able to stop peer-to-peer bitcoin sales.
While true, no company would offer bitcoin transactions without tracking for fear of asset seizure. Governments still have power in the physical world.
So if you want Bitcoin (or any cryptocurrency) to have wide legitimate adoption, you have to play by the rules. Governments basically exist for the purpose of enacting economic regulation; so to pretend they don't have a right to do so is a little silly.
> no company would offer bitcoin transactions without tracking for fear of asset seizure.
No company within the EU perhaps, but that doesn't mean you can't just send the money to a russian exchange like BTC-e who really doesn't care what the source is and accepts things like webmoney, libertyreserve, etc. Which are trivial to get into if you know what you're doing.
> things like webmoney, libertyreserve, etc. Which are trivial to get into if you know what you're doing.
And have very few protections for consumers, and the percentage of the population that "know what [they]'re doing" is actually pretty low.
So yeah, if you're into criminal activity it's still pretty easy to do. But it also means it's easier for law enforcement to watch those avenues of access to catch criminal activity in the act.
Sorry? I think we're talking about entirely different things. Basically what I'm saying is that the same people who are interested enough to buy bitcoin are often times the same people who will know how to get it, even if they have to go outside of more traditional and direct means.
I have a doubt: say you are a UK citizen, you can send BTC to the Russian exchange but what in return would you get from that russian exchange and how would you evade the UK government? Curious to know.
Unless you succeed to make them ship "some products" to you in some other country where BTC is "legitimate" such a transfer would be one-way only.
Basically using a proxy product which is easy to exchange on both sides. You can trade in various forms of web currencies like WebMoney, PerfectMoney, etc. The standard sketchy web wallets, you just find a local exchanger for one of those of which there are plenty and then buy and sell PM/WM through them, then send that PM/WM to your exchange. At the point you've got the money into a russian exchange, you're pretty much safe. Just trade it and draw it to your bitcoin wallet.
>>At the point you've got the money into a russian exchange, you're pretty much safe.
That's not a point that bothers me. I understand that I can easily get my money into a Russian or other such exchange.
What bothers me is being a UK citizen, what can I do with that money?
>>Just trade it and draw it to your bitcoin wallet.
What to trade? How to purchase physical goods? e.g. a TV or something else?
Can I at least get my money back in the form of other tradable currency in the UK?
I don't see a way to use bitcoins outside the drugs market as far as purchasing physical goods are concerned unless the government approves bitcoins. Please correct me if I am wrong.
Webmoney is Russian paypal in that they seize accounts all the time and demand notarized ID if you move more than a few hundred dollars. Libertyreserve is long gone and the owner(s) in prison. They also seized accounts if you moved over $9k without ID.
Using BTC-e is essentially rolling the dice. The Russian/Bulgarian operators can disappear at anytime they like with the entire current volume they are anonymous and also not insured, existing on rep only which doesn't mean very much. They could easily put up a million worth of bitcoin as insurance somewhere held in a trust and refuse to daily trade over that insured amount, that they don't says they plan to just disappear one day.
> Libertyreserve is long gone and the owner(s) in prison
Sorry, I meant PerfectMoney. Are they at risk of disappearing? Probably, but it's essentially an exchange medium to you.
> Using BTC-e is essentially rolling the dice. The Russian/Bulgarian operators can disappear at anytime they like with the entire current volume they are anonymous and also not insured, existing on rep only which doesn't mean very much. They could easily put up a million worth of bitcoin as insurance somewhere held in a trust and refuse to daily trade over that insured amount, that they don't says they plan to just disappear one day.
You don't need to have money in the exchange for that long, just move it in and out. Yes, it's a risk, but a fairly small one as long as you don't store money in the exchange long term.
Just because it's impossible to effectively regulate in all circumstances doesn't mean that it cannot be effectively regulated in many or most circumstances.
You can compare this to most laws - people have the capability to break the law, but sufficient enforcement reduces the incentives to do so to the extent that for many classes of crime the number of people who commit them is pretty small.
In particular, if all businesses dealing with bitcoins are required to KYC and large transfers are tracked and prosecuted where possible, then there probably would not be a huge amount of anonymous transfer.
> In particular, if all businesses dealing with bitcoins are required to KYC and large transfers are tracked and prosecuted where possible, then there probably would not be a huge amount of anonymous transfer.
Or, more likely, a huge number of bitcoin businesses will go where these laws don't exist and interact with other services to get in.
I've managed to avoid any exchange that follows KYC practices with no issue so far.
> I've managed to avoid any exchange that follows KYC practices with no issue so far.
That's because no-one has made a serious effort to regulate this so far. I'm not arguing that there wouldn't be grey market bitcoin exchanges operating on a pirate-bay like basis, just that a serious attempt at regulating would have a serious effect on how bitcoin is used.
This is even leaving aside ideas where a government could declare particular bitcoins to have been involved in illegal trading and claim the right to confiscate them from anyone under their jurisdiction.
I imagine that this would take the same form as money laundering regulation, which while not perfect still has a massive effect on how easy it is to launder money.
> That's because no-one has made a serious effort to regulate this so far.
Some places certainly have, it's just that you'd basically need a global effort between many countries to do so to have any real effect. Until then most of these regulations are just a joke.
While there is a bit of truth to that bitcoin will inevitably need to interact with the real world, so it needs to be convertible into other currencies. This will in the end require interaction with regulated institutions. If this were to be implemented at the bank level it would become difficult (not impossible) to get around. The way the US went after poker sites will probably be the model. While it was not impossible for US citizens to play online poker there were enough barriers that most opted not to.
They would go after p2p sales obviously starting with localbitcoins which is operated out of an EU country.
For IRC/forum trades they would do periodic crackdowns posing as phony buyers and arresting/fining the seller to scare away enough casuals that only a handful continue to offer it, effectively shutting down any threat of mass bitcoin adoption to their tax cartel.
Bitcoin is not a closed ecosystem. There are multiple touch points between bitcoin and fiat and those can be (and already are to some extent) regulated.
Wonder how long it will take before they realize that current tax system won't last in the long run. Right now only rich have the resources to offshore the profits, but technology will drive the cost down.
And they don't even need to close them. They can just request that data be shared with other countries for the purpose of identifying tax avoidance.
This idea that the future will consist of everyone using tax havens is ridiculous. Most ordinary people are scared of the taxation impacts of using them (and rightly so).
it appears to me that the current tax system is actually getting better at getting hands on offshore profits.
I.e. the success of the OECD "grey list" thing, the amendment of banking secrecy laws in Switzerland and the closing of at least some tax loopholes like the one Apple used to use in Eire.
Having read all the comments below, it appears to me that people most fervently pro-bitcoin are the kind of people who convince people towards the other directions with their arguments. Whatever merits cryptocurrency might have, "we need no goddamn taxes or governmetn" is likely NOT bound to convince people FOR bitcoin etc.
central banks really don't care about anonymous bitcoin trading. the question is whether or not you can trade bitcoin for another major currency.
i mean, reagan outlawed unregulated private barter clubs in the 80's so the IRS and TREASURY CARES but the private central banks don't really care because they remain firmly in control. how so? consider what happens when a central bank prohibits money services to bitcoin.
Let's take the EU.
Once the eu closes the gates for the euro, it is because the euro is going to be debased rapidly, which means, this is a signal that people will sell euro for dollar, gold, swiss franc, krona, and possibly some of it going to bitcoin in a one time push out of euro.
however, rest assured, 'closing of the gates' is bad for bitcoin so long as bitcoin remains a speculative asset unlike gold or the dollar.
eventually the federal reserve will close dollar-bitcoin money service. and that is the REAL x factor.
the presumption that global coordinated debasement is good for bitcoin may be true, but only in an environment where one can readily convert bitoin and currencies legally back and forth or easily in large volume (miami cash or euro 500 notes).
once this window closes, BITCOIN BECOMES LIKE THE RUSSIAN RUBLE ; a very weak currency that no one wants to store value in because it is isolated and cannot easily be used to purchase assets around the globe.
that bitcoin is not subject to rapid debasement remains a HUGE bonus on its side for SURVIVAL AT A BASEMENT PRICE. it DOES NOT guarantee the price will go up indefinitely.
bitcoins single largest risk to price drop remains the ECB, BOE, and FED coordinating an end to bitcoin-(major currency) money service
Bitcoin has been around for YEARS. It is not going to gain broad acceptance.
Bitcoin right now is like the stock market before the Securities and Exchange Commission was created in 1934, due to the fallout from all the fraud that led to the Great Depression.
A regulated currency market has both pros and cons; no question about it. But consider this:
- A decree comes down: "From this point forward, bitcoin users can no longer use any other currency. All transactions, savings accounts, etc. will have to be bitcoin-based."
Assume, hypothetically, that this could be enforced.
Would you agree to stop using any non-bitcoin store of value?
If you say "no, I'd still want to be able to use non-bitcoin currencies"
.....then you need to take a look at that. Because it proves that bitcoin fails to perform some type of monetary function for you.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 163 ms ] threadThat to one side - why do you want strict regulation on cryptos? What are your concerns?
Can someone tell me a legitimate reason why I need anonymous cryptocurrency? Or what is used for?
You know - for your safety.
Replace anonymous crypto-currencies with cash, and realize how ridiculous you sound.
TLDR: Bitcoin makes it easy for sellers to obtain payment without the fear of PayPal account freezes or chargebacks.
The EU can still suck taxes from the transactions of Taler but at least they have no idea what you bought. Why should the payment middleman have a complete itemized dossier of your personal purchasing history just you and the merchant should share the details of the purchase beyond the total amount paid.
Because the government has a legitimate interest in taxing different goods at different rates.
For most online marketplaces protecting the buyers at the expense of the sellers may be necessary. There are usually a lot of buyers, they are reluctant about buying things they cannot see or touch from people they don't know, and most are not in a position to absorb the fraud. Meanwhile the sellers are usually companies that can absorb some reasonable amount of fraud because they can spread the cost of the fraud over the much larger number of transactions.
That's not always the case, such as in situations where individuals are trying to occasionally sell items of value and they are not in a position to absorb the fraud. For those situations it may make sense to use an escrow mechanism, because non-reversible payment methods like Bitcoin may spook the buyers (and insufficient buyers may lower the overall prices, potentially beyond the cost of escrow).
None of this requires anonymous payments.
The assumption that anonymity is inherently an indicator of criminality is toxic to an open society.
The moment I suspect there is a group of people that get paid and purchase goods outside the tax system I have lost that trust. Full transparency in my opinion is the lesser evil. Completely anonymous currency and transactions solves a problem but creates a bigger one.
Because police does not need to know that I pay for and run an anonymizer.
Because my bank does not need to know that I bought a butt-plug.
Because I don't want my house raided just because I bought potting soil from a gardener that was later busted for growing weed.
Also... you get your cash from CC and transfer it to BTC, you pay someone else, you encourage money laundering because that seller doesn't have to pay any tax for that.
For me the most important factor is where the cash is going. IF we all switch to bitcoin and government can't keep track of the money, big criminals, bit corps will never pay any taxes, and how we are going to have free schools, free medical care, police, etc? Am I over thinking this?
Privacy is important but either we have to find a way to change the economy as it is, or regulate BTC properly.
Just because someone has a fetish and wants to keep it "anonymous" is not enough for me.
Yes you are, you're missing the addition of a trusted party. I may trust someone I'm trading with to keep me anonymous, mail my order out, etc.
But what if I do not trust my bank to destroy the transaction and keep me anonymous if someone comes looking later.
You trust the first out of necessity, but you only trust the second out of convenience.
This of course only applies to physical products as electronic products can be delivered completely anonymously.
> and how we are going to have free schools, free medical care, police, etc? Am I over thinking this?
Well it isn't free if you have to pay for it. Here in France we pay 80% taxes and then we like to brag about having free school, free healthcare etc. It's not free if 80% of your hard earned money goes to these institutions and the bureaucracies that manage them. Worst thing is that we still need a private insurance on top of that because our welfare system is going broke and can't even pay for anything despite the 80% taxation. So yeah, it is not free after all, it is even super expensive.
Here is the thing that people do not understand: quality healthcare or quality education are expensive, there is no way around that, no magic welfare taxes will fix it. Whether private or public, it will cost you an arm and a leg. Only thing that could fix it would be innovation but unfortunately these sectors are highly regulated and this is a barrier to innovation so things will progress very slowly.
It's 44.2% tax burden and 56.1% government spending. Percentages are fractions of GDP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending
It's not atypical for a western country. You still pay less than the Danes.
Everyone complains about regulation in health care until you get faulty medical equipment or contaminated pills and a couple dozen people die.
It is a tired and irrelevant complaint.
As usual there are the deaths you see and those you don't. How many people died because a new medical equipment required years to get approved and many people who could have benefited did not and died? It is very shortsighted to only mention and count deaths caused by approved medicines and not by unapproved yet working ones.
The biggest companies do not pay much taxes already; while I get your point, I consider it invalid until everyone who is doing legal business is paying taxes. The mafia will never pay taxes on illegal business, but it is irrelevant as long as big corporations can get around paying taxes by constructing legal international constructs.
> Privacy is important but either we have to find a way to change the economy as it is, or regulate BTC properly.
So let's go for the easy thing and regulate BTC even though it promises the smallest of all gains for society? Can you point me to any reports about BTC being used for terrorism? If there are any, do they really warrant a regulation?
> Just because someone has a fetish and wants to keep it "anonymous" is not enough for me.
Tell that to gay people in societies in which they face, at best, discrimination or, at worst, prison or death penalty.
Just because you don't have anything to be concerned about yourself right now, does not mean you should devalue privacy and anonymity for others: You can still be the next deviant who is hunted down. Or how Niemoeller put it:
But this is the eternal debate about free speech, what's illegal in a certain country might not be illegal in other countries and is not necessarily unethical.
(1) Because not all masters are benevolent
(2) Because it removes the possibility of charge backs
(3) Because not everyone enjoys being monitored by companies and/or governments (foreign or otherwise)
(4) Underground markets are only "underground" because of laws. If a society outlaws birth control and abortions, but a women wants an abortion she probably wants an alternative (I.e. something an underground market with provide). An anonymous crypocurrancy (or cash) is the easiest way to do this. If it's not a crypocurrancy or cash, they can always trade goods. So in all honesty, there's no way to stop it.
There may even be other reasons, but it seems pretty obvious it can inherently good to have.
So the solution to that is publishing all your transactions to a public ledger?
(yes I know there are "tumblers" etc, but these come with operational and practical issues)
The bank isn't authorised to provide that information to third parties.
http://www.cardlytics.com/technology/
Despite the "firewall" between the bank and the marketers, information is being sold - it just requires an extra step on the part of the marketers (leaving the banks legally in the clear).
The rest are just ideological and/or about facilitating illegal activity and irrelevant to most people. This is the problem with Bitcoin and other digital currencies. There is just not enough focus on making something better and simpler than the existing system.
You mean mainstream disadvantage.
I think most people using VISA are happy that they won't lose all their assets to fraud or theft of their credit card. Mainstream retailers accept a certain amount of fraud as a cost of doing business, only disruptive or greymarket vendors face significant risk from chargebacks.
Removing chargebacks is a positive benefit to a tiny fraction of the participants in legitimate financial services.
Being able to host web pages for a causes you believe in, but getting fired for them if your names pops up (lets call it the Internet Mob Protection).
If you need to send a bunch of money to someone in the Philippines, your only easy choice is an expensive wire transfer through Western Union or similar. My bank will do it for a small fixed-fee, but only because I've had an account with them for almost a decade. You don't need a verified history and strong identity to use bitcoin.
If you don't give out your personal information when buying something, then when their site later gets hacked by the Chinese your name and address won't be sold on underground trading sites. That is, even if you trust the government and banks with your personal information, you don't necessarily trust every little ecommerce site.
[1] https://stripe.com/us/prohibited-businesses
If you go to a clinic specializing in mental health, cancer, abortion, or substance abuse, your medical treatment is nobody's business but you and your doctor's.
You ate at restaurants and bought gas at gas stations along a multi-state route leading to a city where there's a big protest about race relations, or income equality, or a convention where a controversial politician is going to be nominated. The government, or particular people inside it, might care -- and not in a way that's good for you or for the democratic process.
Your aggregate purchase history reveals a great deal about your personality, relationships, political activism, physical/mental state, sexual activity and many other aspects of your life.
Bitcoin is the primary source of payment.
It's starting to grow, there are listings of physical goods, electronic goods and now even rental listings, they are calling it OBNB lol.
I'm sure as time goes on, more and more types of listings will emerge.
People are finally coming around to the idea that middlemen don't have to tell you what you can and can't do.
I cannot wait until things like TOR and Integrated wallets are included.
Version 2 of OB is soon and there is a hangout on the 7th [2].
One last thing. Sure there may eventually be "bad" listings and also customers may not be fully protected. But with everything in life. Caveat Emptor.
[1] - http://openbazaar.org
[2] - https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenBazaar/comments/4qmsan/openbaza...
Situations like this are why we have an independent judicial system. And even if we didn't who is thinking that credit cards are the only way to buy things ?
Tell this to the legal porn producers (or legal marijuana sellers/producers) who get their accounts frozen and shut out of the banking system.
http://www.cosmopolitan.com/politics/news/a24813/porn-star-b...
No - we have an outsourced judicial system, where Facebook and Google will spy on you more than the USGov, the bank will control your money more than the Government, and the insurance company will have you in an autonomous car faster than a mandate will. That's modern neoliberalism.
To preserve your possessions against confiscation when power abuses the people.
One of my family members lived and worked in Cuba before Fidel Castro got into power. He had a house and a three people company. He actually supported Fidel because he talked a lot about democracy and himself(Castro) not being communist.
Once Fidel got into power, he established himself as a dictator, killing anybody on their own side that was against a new dictatorship, like Cienfuegos.
Fidel nationalized everything. My family member and his family leaved the country with money from my family overseas. All his possessions were stolen by Castro.
The people in power should not have the power to easily confiscate your wealth.
Today with negative interest rates, those in power are stealing from the people, but only a little. Central banks want to ban cash so they can steal 20 to 30 per cent of every single deposit as the system is totally bankrupted.
With physical cash, gold confiscation, they have a harder time. Some people will not be happy to give the police their hard earned money.
So if you want Bitcoin (or any cryptocurrency) to have wide legitimate adoption, you have to play by the rules. Governments basically exist for the purpose of enacting economic regulation; so to pretend they don't have a right to do so is a little silly.
No company within the EU perhaps, but that doesn't mean you can't just send the money to a russian exchange like BTC-e who really doesn't care what the source is and accepts things like webmoney, libertyreserve, etc. Which are trivial to get into if you know what you're doing.
And have very few protections for consumers, and the percentage of the population that "know what [they]'re doing" is actually pretty low.
So yeah, if you're into criminal activity it's still pretty easy to do. But it also means it's easier for law enforcement to watch those avenues of access to catch criminal activity in the act.
Unless you succeed to make them ship "some products" to you in some other country where BTC is "legitimate" such a transfer would be one-way only.
That's not a point that bothers me. I understand that I can easily get my money into a Russian or other such exchange.
What bothers me is being a UK citizen, what can I do with that money?
>>Just trade it and draw it to your bitcoin wallet.
What to trade? How to purchase physical goods? e.g. a TV or something else?
Can I at least get my money back in the form of other tradable currency in the UK?
I don't see a way to use bitcoins outside the drugs market as far as purchasing physical goods are concerned unless the government approves bitcoins. Please correct me if I am wrong.
edit: typo, clarification
Using BTC-e is essentially rolling the dice. The Russian/Bulgarian operators can disappear at anytime they like with the entire current volume they are anonymous and also not insured, existing on rep only which doesn't mean very much. They could easily put up a million worth of bitcoin as insurance somewhere held in a trust and refuse to daily trade over that insured amount, that they don't says they plan to just disappear one day.
Sorry, I meant PerfectMoney. Are they at risk of disappearing? Probably, but it's essentially an exchange medium to you.
> Using BTC-e is essentially rolling the dice. The Russian/Bulgarian operators can disappear at anytime they like with the entire current volume they are anonymous and also not insured, existing on rep only which doesn't mean very much. They could easily put up a million worth of bitcoin as insurance somewhere held in a trust and refuse to daily trade over that insured amount, that they don't says they plan to just disappear one day.
You don't need to have money in the exchange for that long, just move it in and out. Yes, it's a risk, but a fairly small one as long as you don't store money in the exchange long term.
Out to where? Your EU bank account? Oh wait..
You can compare this to most laws - people have the capability to break the law, but sufficient enforcement reduces the incentives to do so to the extent that for many classes of crime the number of people who commit them is pretty small.
In particular, if all businesses dealing with bitcoins are required to KYC and large transfers are tracked and prosecuted where possible, then there probably would not be a huge amount of anonymous transfer.
Or, more likely, a huge number of bitcoin businesses will go where these laws don't exist and interact with other services to get in.
I've managed to avoid any exchange that follows KYC practices with no issue so far.
That's because no-one has made a serious effort to regulate this so far. I'm not arguing that there wouldn't be grey market bitcoin exchanges operating on a pirate-bay like basis, just that a serious attempt at regulating would have a serious effect on how bitcoin is used.
This is even leaving aside ideas where a government could declare particular bitcoins to have been involved in illegal trading and claim the right to confiscate them from anyone under their jurisdiction.
I imagine that this would take the same form as money laundering regulation, which while not perfect still has a massive effect on how easy it is to launder money.
Some places certainly have, it's just that you'd basically need a global effort between many countries to do so to have any real effect. Until then most of these regulations are just a joke.
That didn't stop them to start the war on drugs and spending trillions on it.
For IRC/forum trades they would do periodic crackdowns posing as phony buyers and arresting/fining the seller to scare away enough casuals that only a handful continue to offer it, effectively shutting down any threat of mass bitcoin adoption to their tax cartel.
This idea that the future will consist of everyone using tax havens is ridiculous. Most ordinary people are scared of the taxation impacts of using them (and rightly so).
I.e. the success of the OECD "grey list" thing, the amendment of banking secrecy laws in Switzerland and the closing of at least some tax loopholes like the one Apple used to use in Eire.
Where are you getting this from? You don't have to be particularly wealthy to offshore your income.
i mean, reagan outlawed unregulated private barter clubs in the 80's so the IRS and TREASURY CARES but the private central banks don't really care because they remain firmly in control. how so? consider what happens when a central bank prohibits money services to bitcoin.
Let's take the EU. Once the eu closes the gates for the euro, it is because the euro is going to be debased rapidly, which means, this is a signal that people will sell euro for dollar, gold, swiss franc, krona, and possibly some of it going to bitcoin in a one time push out of euro.
however, rest assured, 'closing of the gates' is bad for bitcoin so long as bitcoin remains a speculative asset unlike gold or the dollar.
eventually the federal reserve will close dollar-bitcoin money service. and that is the REAL x factor.
the presumption that global coordinated debasement is good for bitcoin may be true, but only in an environment where one can readily convert bitoin and currencies legally back and forth or easily in large volume (miami cash or euro 500 notes).
once this window closes, BITCOIN BECOMES LIKE THE RUSSIAN RUBLE ; a very weak currency that no one wants to store value in because it is isolated and cannot easily be used to purchase assets around the globe.
that bitcoin is not subject to rapid debasement remains a HUGE bonus on its side for SURVIVAL AT A BASEMENT PRICE. it DOES NOT guarantee the price will go up indefinitely.
bitcoins single largest risk to price drop remains the ECB, BOE, and FED coordinating an end to bitcoin-(major currency) money service
Bitcoin has been around for YEARS. It is not going to gain broad acceptance.
Bitcoin right now is like the stock market before the Securities and Exchange Commission was created in 1934, due to the fallout from all the fraud that led to the Great Depression.
A regulated currency market has both pros and cons; no question about it. But consider this:
- A decree comes down: "From this point forward, bitcoin users can no longer use any other currency. All transactions, savings accounts, etc. will have to be bitcoin-based."
Assume, hypothetically, that this could be enforced.
Would you agree to stop using any non-bitcoin store of value?
If you say "no, I'd still want to be able to use non-bitcoin currencies"
.....then you need to take a look at that. Because it proves that bitcoin fails to perform some type of monetary function for you.