Topic: [2017-12-18] Germany Joins French-led Moves to Regulate Bitcoin at G-20 Level (Read 175 times)

I'm not against regulation. I think that everything would be honestly necessary to create conditions for people who are engaged in crypto currency. And already then to demand regulation. People also risk to lose their investments, and everyone understands that they will not be reimbursed in any way. When the team conducts ICO, let it register in the country that is located, so we can weed out scams that will not run away with our money

and when they kill hundreds of thousands of civilians with aerial bombardment they're just "fostering democracy".

Exactly! It's one of those words the government has created to distinguish their own actions from the actions of the people, the worse kind, loyal subjects, the slaves of the system.

When the government prints money it's increasing the number of bills in circulation, when you do it you're counterfeiting.
When they steal from you it's seizing property, when you do it it's theft.
When they move money around secretly it's normal banking procedure. When you do it it's hiding income and laundering.
And when you finally decide to protest it's acting against authority, rioting, causing disturbance.

Are you saying no one is trading Bitcoin in China? Well that's silly, 80% of the world's Bitcoin is mined there every day!

"Money Laundering" is actually a meaningless term that describes quite well what the global banking industry does every day all day.

Whether we accept it or not, the government has the power to limit or even ban Bitcoin movement and that is why we should rather welcome the regulations on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency rather than experience what China did in September. I have no problem with regulations as long as they are not meant to kill what is being regulated but to make it more transparent and legal. In return for the regulations, Bitcoin will be openly recognized as a legal asset or currency just like what Japan did and this will actually be helping Bitcoin. The government has to recognized the fact that Bitcoin is here to stay and has a bright future ahead of itself...even brighter than the fleeting authorities in the government.

I wouldn't expect anything less from the bureaucrats of Brussels. They've been running like headless chickens for years trying to ban light bulbs because they draw too much power, pressure the countries that are using coal power plants to stop smoking and trying to force Muslim migrants into our homes. Attacking BTC is another attempt at terrorizing EU citizens and making their life harder, like it wasn't already.

Regulating this market will indeed result in next to no anonymity, but it's the only way of going forward if we want to see this market keep expanding. In these situations we have to swallow all that.

I don't see this being a big deal since there are decentralized exchanges that will offer you the privacy that you need in case you want to avoid using centralized exchanges for that exact reason.

Governments want control, and people to pay their due taxes. As long as they manage to achieve that, they won't go full nuts on crypto currencies. I definitely understand your point, but there is nothing that we can do about it.

That's why I strongly believe that peer to peer markets will gain much more traction in the coming years.

But how they gonna achieve it?

Regulating cryptocurrencies is ultimately killing the anonymity as being done in India. Income Tax department asked for account holders on local exchanges and exchanges did provide that. Didn't we want a system free of government intrusion? If government regulates cryptos, then they want information about every hodler be it bitcoin or altcoins. I don't find this is the decentralized system.

I am actually happy that they didn't jump in to regulate this market back in the days. If they considered Bitcoin to be a threat back in the days, they would have actually had a decent chance to minimize Bitcoin as much as possibly by banning it completely in the worst case. At that point the general public was looking at Bitcoin as something shady that only gets used to settle illegal transactions. Currently it's a missed opportunity for the government to do so, and from here they can only try to regulate this market to not get outruled completely. In other words, their lacking understanding of Bitcoin and what it is capable of, has translated into where we stand right now.

The sooner they start with regulating this market, the sooner we'll be freed from this money laundering nonsense. Governments could have started with regulating this market years ago already.

Due to them not having taken Bitcoin serious early enough, they have now a whole lot of catching up to do. I am perfectly fine with a well regulated market, because that will help opening the legal doors for institutions to enter.

Currently the main reason for institutions to hold back is Bitcoin's unregulated market nature, which will change once governments start with putting force behind their words ~ we're ready for it.

“There is an obvious speculative risk, we need to look at it, study it,”

No, we can't allow it. If people started to be independent of the government with their savings in Bitcoin we wouldn't be able to control them! We have to fight it and make them our slaves again.
Germany and france should rather approach other problems that they're facing because the union isn't doing well at the moment and may divide into the East and the West

Germany joined European governments pushing for global bitcoin regulation amid mounting alarm that the world’s most popular digital currency is being used by money-launderers, drug traffickers and terrorists.

Germany’s Finance Ministry said it welcomed a proposal by French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire to ask his counterparts in the Group of 20 to consider joint regulation of bitcoin. The concerns are shared by the Italian government, which is also open to discussing regulation, while the European Union is bringing in rules backed by the U.K. that would apply to bitcoin.

“It makes sense to discuss the speculative risks of virtual currencies and their impact on the financial system at international level,” the Finance Ministry in Berlin said in an emailed response to questions. The next meeting of G-20 finance ministers and central bank governors would be “a good opportunity to do so.”

Signs of growing European concern came as bitcoin took another step toward acceptability with the launch of futures trading Sunday night at CME Group Inc.’s venue. That’s a week after Chicago rival Cboe Global Markets Inc. introduced similar derivatives on the volatile cryptocurrency that was created in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis as an alternative to banks and government-issued currencies. Bitcoin was closing in on a fresh record of $20,000 on Monday.

The Finance Ministry in Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, “monitors developments in the financial market very closely,” it said. “This also applies to the current development of bitcoin.”

While Europe’s concerns have been voiced before in select forums about a currency which is stepping further into the mainstream financial world, Le Maire made those worries public in a weekend interview with France’s LCI television.

“I don’t like it,” Le Maire said of bitcoin. “It can hide activities such as drug trafficking and terrorism,” and he has concerns for savers. “There is an obvious speculative risk, we need to look at it, study it,” he said.

Money-Laundering

Italian Finance Minister Pier Carlo Padoan would be ready to discuss Le Maire’s proposal, according to a government official in Rome who asked not to be named because the ministry has yet to receive any request from Paris.

EU lawmakers and representatives of the member states meanwhile agreed on a revision of the bloc’s anti-money laundering rules Friday, extending the framework to firms that “are in charge of holding, storing and transferring virtual currencies,” according to a statement from the European Commission. These companies “will have to identify their customers and report any suspicious activity.”

Stephen Barclay, Economic Secretary to the British Treasury, told lawmakers on Nov. 3 that new rules would “bring virtual currency exchange platforms and custodian wallet providers into anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing regulation.”

For the British government, digital currencies “can be used to enable and facilitate cybercrime,” according to a note from the Treasury. “There is little current evidence of them being used to launder money, though this risk is expected to grow,” the Treasury said. “That is why these regulations will help.”

Two Nobel economics laureates denounced Bitcoin last month. Joseph Stiglitz said it should be outlawed, and doesn’t serve “any socially-useful function.” Robert J. Shiller said the attraction of the currency was a narrative akin to a “mystery movie” that draws in people who want to outsmart the system.

Germany’s financial supervisor Bafin also warned last month of the risks of cryptocurrencies for consumers. Elisabeth Roegele, Bafin’s chief executive director of securities supervision, said in a Nov. 30 speech that regulation at a purely national level was not enough because of digital currencies’ international dimension. “The Internet in particular does not know national borders,” Roegele said.
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