Bitcoin Forum

The European Parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee (ECON) held a public hearing on Monday, January 25th 2016 on virtual currencies and the role of regulators.

The role of virtual currencies in abetting illegal activities such as money laundering and terrorism funding was the central idea discussed during the meeting. 

The ECON policy-makers took a balanced and careful consideration of the impact of virtual currencies and crypto-technologies, taking into account both the advantages and underlying risks of using the technology.


See the full thing here : http://cointelegraph.com/news/eu-regulation-bitcoin-hearing  and tell us what do you think ;D

The institutions will keep ignoring Bitcoin at best for a while, but this will not be forever... if Bitcoin starts creating an economy that is outside of the GDP, you gotta be pretty delusional to think that the regulators are going to sit back and see how this happens. Nope, they will try to destroy bitcoin, this is why we must support Core, with their conservative block size approach, and not crapcoins like Classic which do nothing but weaken the node decentralization.

Once banks have a full grasp and finish tinkering with their product copy,the regulation game will go into complete drive. Right now I would think they are still 2 years out from getting serious with the idea of copying bitcoin.

Bitcoin is notorious for its use in money laundering purchasing illegal drugs and guns but it's not its fault. The people are to blame for this they should regulate the people not the virtual currencies.

Slowly this is what is happening to the world.

They never gonna believe in bitcoin because will alway remember a Silkroad experience from US..EU already have big problems with immigrants, political instability.. l think they will let it live for some time..
Surveillance is nothing new in time of big brother!

And so is any fiat currency around the world. Bitcoin is not even as big as the tip of the iceberg for money laundering...

To blame bitcoin for making it easier, ok. But blaming it for the problem is just stupid.

Besides, people tend to make a mistake sooner or later, such as cashing out too many bitcoins to fiat so they can be easily traced again.

"Socialism is the gradual and less violent form of communism, and socialist is the project of the European Union, which was born in Maastricht in 1992. The intent was to save socialism in Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the predictable bankruptcy of the welfare state in the West as well". - Vladimir Bukovsky

Wherever government tries to surveil people, they are tightening the siege. They are trying to tear off people freedom.

This is just a general discussion with no intentions of interfering in the crypto business .I really appreciate them for taking the time out to praise the positive impacts of the virtual currencies.However I do agree there could be negative usage and probably is happening which is sort of a threat.Any steps taken further by the union is likely to impact the illegal trades,the worst could happen is,we would need to submit documents and proof to start exchanging and stuff which will destroy the anonymity .

Great post.  Socialism does not work, it impoverishes and oppresses.

Were I in Europe, I would be backing up the truck buying BTC quietly.  Buy whatever I could afford, transfer it around (include mixing!) and HODL it in a couple or more of hardware wallets.

It is now hard in the USA to buy BTC without having to show pesky ID, etc.

Get, while the gettin's good.

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People suspicious of .gov and .fed who enjoy reading might want to browse through G E Griffin's masterpiece The Creature from Jekyll Island, which I finished yesterday.  It is about the USA's central bank: the Federal Reserve.  Eye opening.  Yes, it is a conspiracy.  And who are the Silent Parties behind the Fed? 

Yep, the Socialists.

You might be off with 1 year, with that prediction. These banks are already in the final stages of development for their <private ledgers> and they will go live within this year. I think Citibank were the first bank, who deployed some sort of Bitcoin based technology.

The regulation are always behind innovation and will come into full swing within say the next two years. By this time the mechanisms to influence decision makers will also be working hard to push their technology and stopping other similar technologies.

Regulating Bitcoin would be the best thing that the EU could do in the situation. Why do they want to surveil Bitcoin?

Yes, Bitcoin needs surveillance like fiat, for which succeeds being supplements of fiat! Crypto currencies are money and play the same role of our existing fiats! Regulating it is for the ppl who are using it.

because they can not regulate it immediately, they said that they need further research to identify the best regulation for bitcoin, for them for example it's not a property liek for the usa, they are working on this i believe

based bitcoin can always escape from any regulation

Easiest way for them could be banning of BTC.
But they know this is good for the economy,
 and l expecting EU will find their way in adopting bitcoin in legal business..

I am glad to hear that Sean Ennis perfectly mentioned about how less centralization like in the case of Britain having low regulatory requirements for peer-to-peer lending would let virtual currencies grow, he has also pointed out exactly how the benefits of using Virtual currencies outweighs the negatives.

But, what confuses me is that by monitoring Virtual currencies for "price volatility, platform stability, and cyber risks like theft and hacking" what are they going to achieve? Why monitor in the first place? Are the monitoring now just to regulate later?

They want nothing but the best for their stupid kids. This is why they wanna observe how true innovators and pioneers make money on the internet so they can copy them.

The banking industry fears bitcoin. They would like nothing else, than for it to simply just "dissapear", unfortunately for them, it's not going anywhere.

Let's hope everything is going to be good. They feel pressure of the people, and i'm sure they know that they can also make money from it, l don't see why they not gonna accept bitcoin like some kind of payment..

In my opinion, Bitcoin is the ideal "money of people" not the "money of government"... no government can surveil the whole world... it has started pretty small and one by one it is huge now... what our old regime made in seven centuries, Bitcoin did in seven years.

Well, I hope you are right, kanazawa.

Unfortunately, I think that the .govs of the world could indeed kill Bitcoin, by banning merchants (anyone) from exchanging their BTC for cash.  I have bought gold a few times, paying Bitcoin.  In each case, the merchant instantly turns that into CA$H because that's what they need to run THEIR own business (there is a thread around, that O/P asks that we shop at merchants who do NOT exchange their BTC for cash).

The governments could just outlaw Bitpay (and similar) for example.  Bitpay is who Provident Metals uses to get US$ for their incoming BTC payments.  No Bitpay (etc.)?  No one would take BTC, at least in my opinion.

THAT seems to be the pressure point.  Who (merchants in the USA let's say) would take Bitcoin if the larger companies offering excchange of BTC into dollars were to disappear?

The point is that if governments feel that they can't maintain surveilance, they may just go ahead and make bitcoin transactions illegal. Then bitcoin will have to move to the fringes and will be used only for drugs and other illegal transactions. Bitcoin may not be dead but governments can make it stunted.