Bitcoin Forum

Help a newbie out. Banks and governments have enormous motivation to crush Bitcoin, they can't, but can't they put pressure on trading platforms?

I ask because I just learned some alt-right guy, Milo somebody was kicked off of Coinbase.

Can't the Govt/corporations just get creative and pressure exchanges to deplatform people ?

Or demand more transparency to guard against criminal activity or whatever.

Sure, you have a wallet, and can buy and receive BTC, but you can't legally buy it.

I'm in NY, we only have like 4 legal platforms to buy BTC from ! Seems incredibly fragile....and introduces all the centralized trust issues BTC was supposed to do away with !

Sure, you could get a VPN & use another exchange but this comes with it's own risks, and is too much trouble for the average Joe.

You have missed completely the decentralized platforms where you can also buy/sell Bitcoin. Are they illegal in US?
Also you can buy/see to actual persons.
Not as comfortable as at Coinbase, but it is possible and it's not illegal.

I think that the only thing that it may become harder and harder in US would be day trading.
However, as long as US remains a big market, if certain platforms would "go away", others may make the steps to comply with the govt rules and take the place. There's quite a lot of money there.

All in all, you should not be worried.

Yes, Governments and government bodies have a history of pressurizing the exchanges or persons dealing with the exchanges such as Banks/forex brokers in order to limit the cryptocurrency transactions. In India, the RBI (central bank) issues regulations to banks/forex brokers not to deal with such cryptocurrency exchanges or any person dealing in cryptocurrencies. Fortunately, the exchanges filed a case before the Supreme Court and finally the court was able to revoke RBI's notification.

While many in this forum might disagree with me, I do feel there is a requirement to have better transparency for the government in respect of guarding against any sort of criminal activity that might occur. However, this regulation could create some privacy issues. 

I guess, you need to explore certain P2P exchanges that allow you to buy crypto directly from the sellers.

Unfortunately, they could and I don't think they even need to be creative for it; they just blacklist someone and the rest of the centralized platforms have to follow it.

You're right, that indeed happened to "Milo Yiannopoulos", but it was an automated ban that happened as soon as he created an account on Coinbase.
^{- When it comes to known figures, everything that they say can/will be used against them; besides, he had a long history of receiving similar treatments from other known platforms, prior to Coinbase banning him.}

What more they'd need? They just need to look at the right places, that's it!

Government can do anything and everything if they want to seriously ban bitcoin within their jurisdiction. That includes, arresting the exchange officials, forcefully get the list of all users and ip details of the users, shut down operations, cease the funds and what not! All they need is to charge them with suspicion of money laundering. So always prefer p2p trading through an exchange that is not operating from the same country you are in. Then your identity will probably be safe and not come to the hands of your government.

If I'm a government, I see more benefits in controlling the platform and allows people to trade. I get the fees, data, etc. Being way too strict won't really help imo. If there's no user then regulations and stuff like that would be useless. I won't get any benefits and 'loophole' to get more data.

I see this as a good compromise. But who knows, probably some government bodies really think like what's been mentioned above. If that does happen, there's no other choice but do it the P2P way.

Sure, they can do anything they want including banning people from any exchange in same way like some people are banned from owning bank accounts.
Big corporations are even more dangerous than governments because they can bribe and pay politicians to do their dirty jobs.

There are some states with better regulations like Florida and maybe you should move away from NY and do some P2P trading when you want to buy Bitcoin.

Using VPN with Coinbase is very risky and they will probably detect you are using it and ban your account, so I would avoid doing that.

It has been a thing for years. Another group that sometimes has problems using exchanges, are so-called PEPs, politically exposed persons, an MP in my country couldn't create an account at one exchange due to this. One would think that governments would at least want to protect their own, but no.

I'm sure wikileaks and the like have to go through intermediaries when selling BTC (if they don't already try to pay for their expenses mostly in BTC) and don't bother risking having their funds seized at any exchange.

More than legal it's a political question now. Actually, most of the countries have now realized the opportunities that blockchain has created for the people and revenues that it can generate if properly utilized. Now the first-world countries are taking this as an opportunity to attract startups into their countries. Now if a country that claims to be modern in terms of technology bans bitcoin, every tech company would be skeptical about their future in such a country, therefore, hampering the overall politics of that country. This is a very big reason why most of the countries are not able to give an outright ban to bitcoin especially the democracies. This can be done theoretically but will never be done practically.

Yes. What they can not do, however, is deplatform you from Bitcoin. That's the whole point of cryptocurrencies. And that seems to have been forgotten over the years due to having become so complacent using centralized exchanges. If you start seeing Bitcoin as an ecosystem itself -- where you can earn and spend money, rather than just a means to move USD around -- centralized exchanges become a non-issue.

Come to think that you cant only buy on centralized platforms as you can also do these things neither on p2p or decentralized exchanges as well.

We cant really deny that government could really put pressure on exchange platforms since these things are regulated and do need to follow something when they do like for the business to continue.

Also, if you do look back on whats the whole point of Bitcoins existence then you would really able to realize for yourself that this is the sole reason on why decentralization rocks.  8)

Unless the exchange is directly under that government's license, I don't think that they will have the ability to pressure them into deplatforming their own users. Also, there's probably lot of opposition in the government that will counter the attempt to deplatform the people in the exchange.

You do know that people already get kicked off exchanges on a regular basis, right? Or at least have their assets frozen due to regulations, which amounts to the same thing.

And who do you believe gives centralized exchanges a license, if not the governments they operate under?

Read 2 of my articles, maybe they will help you
Decentralized Tokenized BTC                       
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5288914

Decentralized bitcoin trading                         
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5290331

Is this method of buying bitcoin legal in your country?
https://www.bestchange.com/

They can force regulatory pressures on centralized exchange platforms, but there will always be an avenue for people to trade their crypto with fiat or other crypto. Decentralized exchanges already exist, and P2P trades are still pretty viable if there are no other way to trade. There's really no stopping trading if you know where to find them, and how to protect yourself on possible scams and baits. It's just that currently, governments are having a hard time constructing a legal framework with regards to exchanges and cryptocurrencies because they don't fully understand it. But over time, I'm pretty sure the governments will give in and be able to provide a safe space for everyone.

That's actually how it works even at the banking or financial institution level. States and central banks tend to make strict but vague legislations. Then they go out fining banks and FIs that breach whichever regulations. Or penalise them for not doing enough controls and checks. They actually seldom make it outrightly illegal to serve customers, just very difficult.

Banks and FIs then, as a knee jerk reaction, tend to de-risk, instead of spending resources and time to manage risk. So they boot off customers they feel they can't be bothered to do proper controls for. Deplatforming's very common these days on FIs and fintechs;)

So you do have a point, and I'm sure that's exactly how it's done (and why the Binances of the world won't want to start bowing to certain jurisdictions as they'll be forced to deplatform).