Topic: Does Bitcoin Require Regulations? (Read 3548 times)

I share your pessimism as regards the odds of completely getting rid of web wallets, exchanges, brokerages, etc.  It just won't happen. 

But there is still a lot we can do in that direction to take away opportunities to steal.  Businesses that are mainly doing some kind of accounting etc, don't require anything that intrinsically has to take place off the blockchain.  So while the blockchain can't enforce that, eg, someone gets a pack of gum or a pizza or a suit or something physical like that when they pay bitcoin, it could enforce that, eg, someone gets a futures contract or a bond or a stock or a title deed or something.

So while the blockchain can't be extended to cover commerce in physical goods, it could be extended to cover most uses of an investment portfolio and wealth management.  And in doing so it could remove well over half the opportunities to steal currently endemic to the system.

There will always be a certain number of people that want everything done for them. They will keep these kind of institutions around. We still even have people in bit coin that keep everything they own in an online wallet after MT GOX.

That's simply not possible.

Ultimately what we have with bitcoin is the blockchain protocol.  

It means that whatever rules we all agree to (at least about things that can be checked via the blockchain) can be enforced by the laws of mathematics.  No temporal authority is required to prevent violations of those rules.

But there is a difference in kind between that clean, simplistic mathematical universe and the physical and contextual universe that everybody actually lives in.  

Banks etc. exist in a world of temporal security.  The mechanisms that (mostly and most of the time) prevent them from stealing their customers' money are all about laws and licensing and legal conformance and barriers to entry and professional accounting practices and, yes, courts and fines and possibly even jail time.  

Both of these models are limited.  But for particular subsets of applications, both work.  So far the biggest problem is that the handoffs between them have been abysmally bad.

It's the brokerages and exchanges and banks, err, excuse me I mean online wallets - people who handle other people's bitcoin - who have been the biggest stealers of it.  At some point it comes out of that mathematical-security world because someone is holding bitcoin on behalf of someone else.  And that is where it gets stolen, so far because it's not going from there into an environment with a solid framework of temporal security.  

So we need to figure this out.  Either we need businesses at the endpoints (meaning brokerages and exchanges) that are fully a part of that regulatory framework, or we need to extend the mathematical security model until those businesses have nothing left to do and can be done without.  

I was speaking in general terms and am unfamiliar with these events.

You keep saying that, but it still doesn't make it true. Show evidence to support that statement and show that evidence to falsify that statement are fallacious.

The best protection for consumers is competition which is exactly what regulation destroys. 

Except for the USG of course 

What's your point? If someone held 99.9% of the bitcoins, it wouldn't change much except that the price would skyrocket until they let go of some of their coins.

Privacy != Anonymity. Privacy needs protection. Anonymity needs regulation.

You can't spend a million dollars worth of anonymous gift cards in any practical way, so you shouldn't be able to easily spend millions worth of bitcoins anonymously. I'm not saying it can be made impossible, but there should be regulations restricting the use of mixing. If that isn't done, then the law of unintended consequences will slap the Bitcoin community hard. Folks may really believe that anonymity yields more freedom, but the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

Maybe... or they're just trolls. I'm sure there will be services that pop up that offer consumer protection though.

the three that voted yes, probably do not know the difference between regulation, and consumer protection. they probably want consumer protection but think its all the same thing. when in fact is it not

they'll be barked at and they know it...
probably trolls

Almost certainly trolls. Bitcoin doesnt need regulation, but some will inevitably come.

I love how only three people voted yes. |Who were they? Reveal yourselves!

I am sad to say you hit the nail on the head. The only thing worse than a nanny state is a population that gets comfortable with it.

People are always begging the government to enslave their neighbors.

The thing is, so are their neighbors.

I don't know that it "serves him right," but he would have definitely been better off staying in crypto currency.

He-he You mean your one of the three that clicked agree and not one of the forty three users that voted
I disagree which is NO

he was converting to FIAT, so serves him right for ignoring FIAT rules. if he converted bitcoin to litecoin, no one would have touched him.