Topic: Do we want to work with money regulators, or keep Bitcoin unregulated? - page 16. (Read 19192 times)

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Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.

I see Bitcoin moving in this direction.
This quote needs to be kept bumped to the top of this thread.

To nwbitcoin:
I'm not an ideological Bitcoin user but a logical Bitcoin user. My understanding of your argument is that we will lose if we don't follow laws and regulation. The only loss i see is that 1BTC won't go up in value as quickly as if we stayed legit and connected with big businesses. But then why would you want to use Bitcoin? You're still a part of the system that Bitcoin was made to counter. I understand that some people only entered Bitcoin to get rich quick but for me it goes much deeper than this. Bitcoin in it's current state is unstopable. We can make an alternative economy and compete with todays economy which would force, for example, banks to offer better service. People that are tired of the regulated world economy which is regulated just so rich can stay rich and poor are forced to keep being poor can just leave and enter the free market of Bitcoin. I don't hate todays economy but we are facing problems that naturally come with monopolies and we need competition. Something that todays technologies like the internet and p2p can offer. My thoughts about Bitcoin has always been that you shouldn't get rich by HOLDING bitcoins. You should USE this wonderful technology to make money because it makes it much easier without the regulations of the elite made by them for you so they can keep their power.

To proudhon:
This is what scares me. Just like you and me, they know that they can't regulate Bitcoin in its current state. That is why the talk about confiscating tainted bitcoins makes me believe that they are planning to either fork Bitcoin or start a central banking type service. They probably will do it with the excuse that it is required to invite big businesses and then everybody will become rich. And most will probably agree because they want their BTC to rise in value. It shocks me that people remain calm when head devs make suggestions like these. Soon Bitcoin will be the same as fiat or gold. Regulated and manipulated by the banks and the government will keep track of everything you do.

You're both wrong.

What prevents someone from putting a bullet in your head and stealing all your stuff is that you and bulletguy have neighbors, and cameras on every street corner, and two cameras and three localizers in every smartphone, and a blockchain to trace which wallet bought the gun and the bullet, and families, and a whole fucking society of 7 billion humans who don't like to receive bullets in their heads.

So they'd rapidly stop interacting (or worse) with antisocial pieces of shit that shoot people to take their stuff.

Moreover, there are ways to implement Basic Income in cryptocoin. That alone would stop all of crime committed for purely monetary reasons, if it's enough to survive on.

NO regulation.

Not that I care. I'll still do whatever the hell I want, I'll create tumbling services, I'll run mirrors of SilkRoad, I'll fund a p2p exchange -since I can't code myself- that will happily ignore and make all existing KYC/AML laws unenforceable on it, I'll use so-called military-grade crypto in onioned layers, I'll use all the tools that exist to bring down a system that stole two thirds of all that humanity has made and gave it to 1% of humans.

The faster solution is to kill off the 1% and distribute their wealth to everyone else (90% of all wealth divided by seven billion would ERADICATE poverty overnight.)
The HUMANE solution is to simply disconnect their power from under their feet. Back btc with "all of the money" and all govts and banks are DEAD. Implement distributed markets, dominant assurance contracts and pay-to-policy outputs, and BOOM : DIRECT DEMOCRACY.

All we have to discuss is the terms of their surrender. They can't control us because they can't raid us all. They'll try to stop us by fining a handful of poorly-anonymized ones to create the urban legend that someone, somewhere got ruined for doing it. That will work exactly as well as it did to stop filesharing - that is, near-zero effect.

I refuse that we castrate a tool that can bring more equality and liberty to the world to appease the iniquitous slavers who manage it currently.

NO regulation.

This is not right. The answer is The Law.

One depends on an immutable understanding between human beings.

The other is political.

yes there are two questions at hand.
be part of creating new government regulations to the traditional financial system or help regulate the bitcoin development.

but either way once the foundation sits to the table it's a negotiation, and both options will be discussed.

I have no problem with regulating exchanges whatsoever, I think it is actually a good thing. But I do have a strong problem with the following:

I'm still confused by this whole discussion, and I think people aren't thinking this through and are failing to appreciate the nuance of what it would even mean to regulate bitcoin, or any other payment system built on the distributed, blockchain model.

Can we all pause for a moment and try to explain what it would even mean to "regulate bitcoin"?  By its nature, a distributed, majority rules rule, blockchain system is resistant to top-down, state imposed regulation of itself.  In that sense, neither bitcoin, nor litecoin, nor any other system based on this model can simply be regulated upon in the sense that some authority declares it should behave a certain way and then it is so.  Again, the system is resistant to that by design.  I get the sense that people are worried that the system will be regulated in this sense.  It practically cannot be.

On the other hand, points of contact with the traditional financial system (e.g. banks) can be regulated upon in a top-down authoritarian way.  Regulation at these points of contact is practically impossible to prevent.  In some cases regulation in this sense may even be desirable.

Can we please get clear about which sense of regulation we're talking about here.

I have been posed this question numerous times and have thus had much incentive to think about it a lot. And my answer(s) differ from your answer. Please consider:

I came to the conclusion that what stops people from stealing from me/putting a bullet in my head can be summarized in 3 points:

1. people have little reason to randomly kill me. I admit that they can have reasons to steal from me, though.
2. What stops them from stealing my stuff even when they have reasons to do so is FEAR of retribution. This is the crucial point imo. Right now this fear of retribution manifests itself as fear of getting arrested, sentenced, fined and put into jail by the authorities. This is where we fail massively as a society I think, but I won't go into detail on why I think it's not a good idea to relegate responsibilities for the most crucial parts of your life (such as protection of your property, your education, health care, retirement etc.) to a monopolistic central authority. I'm certain you can find some arguments for why that might be the case. Fear of retribution can also take the form of the belief that if found stealing my stuff, he'll get shot in the face (by me) or found out and otherwise punished by my friends or some people/organization I paid for protecting my stuff. Ultimately we don't need regulation for this, but this is what we use as of now.
3. Finally please have some trust in people. Let me ask YOU a question: is regulation the only thing stopping you from stealing other peoples stuff and shooting them in the face? Or is it just there to protect YOU against those OTHER people, who might want to do that. Who told you people are like that? Oh yes, might have been the same people, who are regulating you to keep you safe But my question still stands.

In the end I'm just allergic to central power, I heard it's a chronic condition, feel free to ignore me

You need to think outside your comfort zone.

Anything that involves people can be regulated.

Just because you don't want regulations, doesn't stop others from creating some, and enforcing it!

This is why its better to be first to the table with some suggestions!

What most ideological people don't get is that their ideas for not regulating bitcoin don't actually work - if you go and just use TOR and shun Fiat, you are removing the advantages of bitcoin, and the threat to governments - you are basically doing their regulations for them!

Think of it this way.
You have a wonderful Apple pie on your kitchen window, which is warm, and smells delicious.
If you give the bully a small slice, he will leave you alone, happy that he got some pie.
If you don't, he might take the whole pie, and give you a small slice.
If you run away with the pie, he might come after you and not only steal your pie, but also smash it into your face.
If you run away, you might out run the bully, but also end up away from the house, not able to watch TV while eating your pie with no plate, cutlery, or lemonade!

The point is, when you have something that someone else might want, the first move is to be reasonable, because it stops them being unreasonable!

better be safe than sorry, and fork bitcoin already, whoever wants to stay with the original bitcoin then which will eventually be changed to include regulation can do that

This is so important. Removing fiat from BTC exchanges also prevent future manipulations.

Buy bitcoins when they are cheap and sell them when they are expensive.
Governments may do that also.
Any other regulation is undesirable.

I have seen many users post this argument and i don't understand it. HOW can you regulate a currency that was designed impossible to regulate? To me it looks like the people in charge are trying to make either a fork or a central bank-type layer so that it can be regulated. Because let's face it, Bitcoin right now CAN'T be regulated if we don't let them regulate it. They want to close all the exchanges? Fine! We have TOR, we can meet in the streets and people will find other ways to bypass that. That's why 'm not afraid of the government forbidding Bitcoin. But it looks to me like they want to change the whole nature of Bitcoin and that is what's dangerous. And even more because many Bitcoin users have no problem with that.

Let me ask you a question.

What stops someone from putting a bullet in your head and stealing all your stuff?

The answer is regulations.

There will always be someone who breaks those regulations, and that is why we have the police, but in essence, the majority of people need some form of guidance to what you can and can't do.

Without it, there is nothing stopping me from stealing or cheating you out of your bitcoins and leaving you destitute.

Now can you see why a handful of rules and regulations might be useful?

However, I would only suggest a small number of rules, maybe 10 or so!
 

This is ridiculous. We get the ultimate gift for freeing individuals from the yoke of the power of the government/corporation complex and what do we do with it? Cry for our overlords to kindly regulate it for us?? No way in hell am I going to support this. Stay unregulated. It's time that TPTB learned that they do NOT in fact own the world are NOT free to do with it as they please. Begging them for permission to defy them kind of defeats the point, doesn't it?

Also if I read the phrase "we need regulation, because x.." one more time, I think I'm going to throw up. YOU may think YOU need regulation but WE do not need anything. Get it right.

This is a great question, and one that highlights the first major problem to be faced by bitcoin users.

They understand tech, but are very naive about politics.  We need regulation because that is how you keep others from creating regulations and it makes far more sense to create the regulations in house, than to give it to someone who has an unknown agenda.

Realistically, the governments of the world are not going to chase down every alt coin out there, but bitcoin is the big one, with the name everyone recognises.  If they regulate bitcoin, then they will be happy that they are still in control, and are able to manage the risk to the real prize, tax income.

I would suggest that the rules put in place, manage some of the major complaints against bitcoin, along the lines of money laundering, tax evasion etc.

Maybe a best practice guideline suggesting that all bitcoin transactions greater than x are made through a third party to prevent anonymous transactions.

What the ideological bitcoin believer needs to understand is that governments are not interested in their sub $1000 deals.  They want to make sure that they know about the $100k deals from South America and the extra cashflow coming from large corporates.

If the regulations are put in place now, but done in a best practice, no need for laws type of way, then everyone will be happy!

I fully agree and unfortunately i think that is the way we are heading. Just look at how the sentiment of the big Bitcoin names has been changing lately. From talks about an unregulated deflationary currency to removing all of that to invite big business. All the signs are there for all of us to see. Greed is killing Bitcoin and i don't mean the speculators. People are selling out and soon there won't be anything different between having a Mastercard and a Bitcoin address.