What are the Canadian regulations that apply to the bitcoin trading services of Cavirtex and other Canadian exchanges (apart from common laws, such as fraud, property theft, money laundering, etc.)? (Serious question.)
They pretty much have to adhere to the same regulation as banks, if not more. They' got their MSB license as well.
Thanks! However, those regulations do not include insider trading or fractional BTC holding, correct? Banks do those things all the time, and the Canadian "Fed" surely does not regulate BTC holdings. Insider trading laws are specific to stock and commodity markets.
When the market wants more tightly regulated exchange they'll occur we already have the Winklevoss and Silbert funds which are just beginning. NY or Texas will probably launch a North American exchange that will foster growth due to many people not investing because of the arguments you pointed out with regulation abroad and other uncertainties.
Great, we will see...
More so generally the financial markets that claim to have regulation have enough loop holes that we have already got lots of Ponzis from the likes of Madoff to Merriman, taking peoples "safer" Fiat currency.
The Euro bosses and Cypriot banks, IIRC, "stole" 6--10% from all bank accounts in Cyprus. Neo & Bee's Danny Brewster then told Cypriots that his bitcoin-based bank would keep their money safe from further bank and government theft. Eventually he disappeared, leaving behind many debts to contractors and staff, having spent all the 12,000 BTC he got from investors without any accounting or revenue, and after allegedly selling to two Cypriot citizens several thousand euros's worth of bitcoins that were not delivered. Oh, and there are also allegations of insider trading of Neo & Bee shares on his own bitcoin-based securities trading platform, which of course was unregulated.
So much for bitcoin protecting us from greedy and unscrupulous bankers.
