Topic: Bitcoin at the US Senate - page 15. (Read 67168 times)

Ah, found it!

Monday, Nov 18th, is the original hearing with Homeland Security guys
http://www.hsgac.senate.gov/hearings/beyond-silk-road-potential-risks-threats-and-promises-of-virtual-currencies

Tuesday, Nov 19th, is a different hearing with Banking guys
http://www.banking.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Hearings.Hearing&Hearing_ID=955322cc-d648-4a00-a41f-c23be8ff4cad

My first thought, too, but there are no hearings scheduled for Monday in there.

Good thing we have CoinJoin, DarkWallet, and some future wallet integration to look forward to. Oh, and other bitcoin-using countries that don't give a crap about this. Yes, this is annoyinng and scary, but hopefully not bitcoin-threatening.

Most likely none.

Everyone knows that Bitcoiners are smarter and more attractive than most people.
How many in the senate have bitcoin?

This just proves my point. A fair number of people on this forum are smarter than the members of the senate.

From the Forbes article (http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/11/13/sanitizing-bitcoin-coin-validation/):


This is the kind of disaster we're trying to warn you about. How long will it be before pressure is brought to bear on core developers to make coin tainting part of the core software?
In a global network, who gets to decide which coins are tainted?

Please do not cooperate with this, it will be the end of Bitcoin.

Possessing money and transferring money should never have been made a crime. That act was the beginning of limitless government power over free speech and free enterprise.

Creator of Ripple to represent Bitcoin?
Makes perfect sense.

What the hell? Did they move it from Monday the 18th to Tuesday the 19th? Or is this a follow-up meeting? (I'm going to have to change my schedule at work now)

http://www.banking.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Hearings.Hearing&Hearing_ID=955322cc-d648-4a00-a41f-c23be8ff4cad

The list of people appearing at the Senate banking committee has been published. Tony Gallippi from BitPay will be there, as will Chris Larsen of Ripple and the president of BIPS.

These market places you are refering to where not using bitcon but rather paypal, moneygram, western union.

You may have already known that, just wanted to put that out there.

That's why I didn't say they are traceable. I said they are recorded. Transaction information doesn't need to be directly traceable to a user to be useful.

On another front, there are now a few new bitcoin startups choosing to domicile in Singapore due to a more favorable regulatory environment. The US still has much of bitcoin ecosystem, but it's worth observing that this may rapidly change if the US doesn't get more inline with Canada, Germany, Singapore, and others, with regard to a sensible regulatory approach (most obviously, eliminating or streamlining the onerous state-by-state money-transmission/surety-bond situation). It'd be a shame for the US to sit idlely by while legacy regulation caused the global bitcoin/crypto-currency/crypto-asset tech boom to be dominated by another jurisdiction.

Forgive me if this has been discussed (thread is too long to fully read now):

I'd be prepared to address consumer protection concerns. From the Chicago Fed's recent report (pdf), it's clear that a big concern is consumer protection, probably in several areas:

1) The high exchange-rate volatility of an unbacked asset; eg, consumers who buy/hold bitcoin may not be aware of the risk. Gov thinks it needs to protect them.

2) Theft/Loss of bitcoin; again, how to ensure that consumers are either aware of the risks, or have recourse.

3) Legitimacy of bitcoin-related businesses. This is obviously being discussed to death, but the path is fairly obvious; obey money transmission regs, at both the federal and state level. Obviously most established and VC-backed businesses are (or are getting) aggressive about this.


Personally, I'd rather let the market sort out each of the above issues, ultimately resulting in more intelligent consumer demand and consequently better companies, but the reality is that gov has taken a primary consumer protection role in the economy, and they're going to want to know how they can maintain such a presence in the bitcoin ecosystem. I think making the point that bitcoin companies are doing everything they can to be compliant and to set customer expectations appropriately can help. Additionally, efforts such as DATA should indicate reasonable goodwill.

FWIW, to all the "don't even talk to the gov" folks, it's in bitcoin's best interest to get into the most hands possible, and developing a decent relationship with existing authorities is a practical way to accomplish this.

We should proceed this way.

TradeFortress's #1 mistake was not using cold storage. Everyone will get hacked at some point in the future (or should at least assume they will) regardless of how awesome and official their security policies are. As for Theymos, you would have to assume that he knew how old TradeFortress was, or knew whether his service used cold storage or not. Far as I know, Theymos will run adds for everything (legal), since his job is to run the forum, not be the BBB and do security inspections for other businesses.
As for the foundation, Bitcoin Foundation and Bitcoin Police are two different entities. Plus the Foundation is trying hard to put on an image that they are not trying to control bitcoin or anyone in particular, and just want to educate people and promote bitcoin itself. Attacking TradeFortress would have hurt their image within the bitcoin community, even if it may have helped bitcoin itself in the long run.

Did you lose money with TradeFortress?

It aids law enforcement in that the serial numbers on bitcoin are easier to track than the serial numbers on dollar bills, and they don't need to be marked, they come that way.  Further, no subpoena is needed to look at the block chain, as they would need to pull bank records.

It is not a BIG help, so don't oversell it.

=========
Reading this before the meeting will give a bit of the perspective of what FUD the audience have already heard.
http://dailyreckoning.com/a-currency-the-fed-cant-figure-out/

Bitcoin has the potential to solve such issues to the benefit of the populace. However, the Bitcoin solution to such problems (e.g. by stopping QE Infinity) actually works against the interests of congress-critters. If QE is curbed, and sound money takes the place of the FRN, then the FED and Congress lose the power to levy the hidden tax that is inflation. No inflation masking their real costs, and the gravy train of candy handouts that seem to come at 'no' cost stops. No freebie handouts, the populace starts agitating to replace those in office.

Never confuse 'things which benefit the populace' with 'things which benefit those in the legislature'. The interests of these two classes are almost always in direct opposition.

You may not be aware long before Silk Road was taken down operators of a copycat site not so buried within Tor were arrested. If I remember correctly they were identified via use of their Hushmail account, which agents also used to introduce a trojan on their machine to aid their investigation.

People, including law enforcement, will use technology differently and with various degrees of effectiveness. Very smart (or very large) law breakers will probably find a way to do what they want to do with or without Bitcoin. Using the block chain as a potential investigation aid is not rhetoric, because the degree of accuracy of computers is very high while the tendency of humans to never make mistakes is low.

Mike,

Thanks for the information and all the hard work.

It's understandable law makers will want to try to grasp how Bitcoin will impact law enforcement and banking, as it exists outside their familiar paradigm. I do have some suggestions to emphasize.

First, emphasize Bitcoin is a global technology, very much like email. Whatever they think of it, ultimately they can't completely control it, just as they can't control email, and attempting to do so might only hurt or limit the productivity of their constituents. The US tends to see itself as the center of the world, but that's a mistaken view when it comes to this. Other countries are rapidly picking up on Bitcoin.

Second, Bitcoin can be beneficial to law enforcement and the financial system. The public block chain records transactions forever enabling forensic analysis to aid detectives. Although gold isn't used now much as a currency, central banks worldwide do hold it as a financial backstop, so it continues to play a large role. Bitcoin, as a scarce commodity, could be used similarly.

So while it may be that Bitcoin changes how we do things with regard to law and banking, this may not need be seen as a negative. After all the current track record for banks and finance isn't much to boast about.