Bitcoin Forum

What the government cannot stop (and ought not try to stop) it can still interfere with, and ruin lives in the process. Those who think it necessary that Bitcoin be regulated, even if they want to be in on making the regulations as sane and harmless as possible, need to remember that every regulation has a punishment attached for violating it. Whoever rightfully owns the resources in the account that the federal government confiscated from Mt. Gox won’t forget that.

All they'll end up spoiling is US citizen involvement. I wonder however, how they'd feel if there was a massive expat migration to other countries? Would the current fee (which was free or much lower before) to denounce american citizenship be raised? Would they just arbitrarily take everything in your bank account as some kind of penalty? (They currently make you give up a certain chunk of existing funds as a last one-off to the IRS.)

At least Bitcoin gives someone who is considering such things some latitude, which is a lot more than I can say for the current banking system.

For what it's worth, at the conference I met at two smart young enterpreneurial folks from the USA who were in the process of moving to Latin America due to concerns about future regulation of their Bitcoin business...perhaps it's the start of a trend.

And of course the presence of a Seasteading booth art the event kinda carried an implicit message.