Bitcoin Forum

As we all know, Bitcoin is an innovative payment network and a new kind of money. It uses peer-to-peer technology to operate with no central authority or banks; managing transactions and the issuing of bitcoins is carried out collectively by the network. Bitcoin is open-source; its design is public, nobody owns or controls Bitcoin and everyone can take part. Although many of its unique properties, it still faces some dificulties.
Recently, a number of publications posted about an economic note on bitcoin regulations. Different people hold  different ideas for it.David Descôteaux of the  Montreal Economic Institute suggested that bitcoin would require regulation, but according to the Canadian Bitcoin Foundation, they would much prefer if the government kept out.
In my opinion, I agree with David Descôteaux. In order to develop and thrive, Bitcoin requires regulations. The Bitcoin network is decentralized, which has two sides. On the one hand, it is good for free development of Bitcoin. However, on the other hand , it brings lots of big risks, such as cheating ,crime,etc. Therefore, Bitcoin requires regulations.The regulations requires government intervention to some extent. The measures kook by government can promote healthy development of Bitcoin.

Welcome to Bitcoin.

I suggest you learn about the protocol by reading the white paper.

  Thanks for your suggestion.

It doesn't require regulation but it is inevitable that that's what will happen if it's going to become a mainstream currency. Governments ate going to want their cut at some point. Whilst they can't really regulate the technology directly they'll obviously put regulations on purchasing and exchanging it for cash etc.

I'll add to Elwar's post and link to the whitepaper
https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

And also Welcome to Bitcoin

Math has been used for some pretty bad things throughout history.

It should not be regulated.

regulation is really required, but how much?

much that it does not hurdle innovation and become a problem for startups

its required to some degree if you want to start interacting with the fiat side of the world which all real businesses do. People saying adoption will happen without some regulation are mistaken I believe.

Regulations apply to people, not things or ideas. You should rephrase your question like this:

1) Should legal shops accepting Bitcoin adhere to certain regulations?
2) Should online exchanges adhere to certain regulations?
3) Should two individuals on the p2p network adhere to certain regulations before sending transactions?
4) Should individuals writing and deploying software that does automated Bitcoin transactions adhere to certain regulations?
5) Should ISPs and proxy servers that pass Bitcoin traffic through them adhere to certain regulations?

Etc.

regulation will kill bitcoin for sure. so no.

You just cannot kill bitcoin in a specific country since it is peer to peer. Unless the government completely cut of internet access. Bitcoin can never get regulations.
-ranochigo

Horseshit.

Bitcoin is currently the target of all sorts of government regulation.

Right, more like no regulation at all will kill Bitcoin if you want it to be adopted wider. I dont think anyone with any real sense is petitioning for 0 regulation.

Depends on your definition of "sense".

"Absolutely not! Those making this argument totally misunderstand the way that Bitcoin adoption will proceed and are consequently wrong-headed about how to market it."

http://nakamotoinstitute.org/mempool/how-to-market-bitcoin/ (http://nakamotoinstitute.org/mempool/how-to-market-bitcoin/)

The protocol itself can't be regulated unless the majority of users agree to it, so "no".  The only thing that can be regulated are the entry and exit points when you convert to and from fiat.  Governments can place restrictions on that part if they like, but they'll find considerable downsides in doing so.  Innovation will naturally flow to regions with the least obstacles to overcome, so any nations wanting to suppress Bitcoin will lose out economically, as companies will just go elsewhere.

People here really tend to flinch at the word 'regulation'. Regulation is not always a bad word. It's probably ineviotable if we want bitcoin to grow as a currency.

And that's exactly what will happen. No point trying to fight it really. May as well accept it of part of reality really.

Why are we so intent on begging governments to meddle with bit coin? Does it lend some false sense of legitimacy? Why do battered animals curl up beside abusive masters?

Bit coin does not need permission to exist and it certainly does not need a bunch of bureaucrats meddling with how we use it.

Nobody is begging them nor does it need their permission, but the powers that be wont just let us use it whilst avoid paying taxes on it. If it's going to be a legitimate currency then it's to be expected that they will try and regulate it.

Always the same pro-regulation bullshit  :-[. Moaning about cheaters, criminals and pedos... yeah these things surely didn't existed before 2009 and actually nobody used cash, gold, whatever store of value for cheating, trading drugs and buying pedophile stuff, right?

Are we really stuffed with idiots here, or this feeling is just my paranoia :)?

Eventually even regulating exchanges won't matter.  More trades will just be done peer-to-peer and they can't regulate that.  If they can't stop p2p filesharing, it stands to reason they can't stop p2p money.

Exchanges weren't part of Bitcoin's design plan anyway.  They're just an unfortunate throwback to peoples' bizarre willingness to trust third parties with their money even though they don't actually need to, but that's another subject.

Bitcoin doesnt require it at all. It'll manage fine without it, but the governments will  obviously be looking at how to best regulate it.

You can never expect to regulate everything 100%. You can do plenty of deals in cash that would never leave a papertrail or see govenments taking their cut. It's called money laundering, and they'll come after you if you try get around paying what you owe to them.

They cant really stop them but filesharing is still illegal and youll be punished if caught.

No punishment in Canada for F sharing :).

To be widely adopted by every schmo in the country that wants to buy a bag of peanuts with the cool new technology: regulation desired.

To be a tool for people to avoid the persecution of governments and the control of their subjects: regulation subversion necessary, mass adoption by the moral majority undesirable.

I think that having regulations for exchanges is the only thing that Governments can actually do at this pint. Since it's pretty much impossible to stop the protocol itself,the weakest links where Bitcoin comes into contact with governmental currency is at the exchanges. But such regulations may also help lend credibility to third party exchanges,since without any regulations,if you lose your money,there'd be a total lack of accountability.

And I think both ways will work together nicely. If you want to buck the government and go full anarchist then you can do so, but if you want to play good little citizen and pay your taxes to your leaders and get on with your life you can do that too  :D.

Of course it needs some regulation, mainly the way people interact with bitcoin.

Like these pump and dump schemes, for instance, are clear examples of issues that should be regulated.

I would say that it does not need regulation. But since it involves commerce, it will have regulation.

Will regulation really stop pump and dumps though?

The whole term of "Tax Avoidance", "Tax Evasion" etc. if a weird one to begin with. You aren't called a "Death avoider" or something like that by not joining the military and going to wars either. People don't "avoid" Tax, they just decide to not bribe a bunch of people for not getting their land and possessions taken.
However, this is a medieval way of life with the only difference that back then it was easier to hide and you the thieves were less organized.

Bitcoin is a tool, do with it what you will. Remember, tools are always neutral - you bring the morality. You shouldn't let anyone tell you how to use your tools, you need only your own ethics.

Let truth be your authority, not authority your truth.

I like the saying every tool is a weapon if you hold it right.

If you're a member of chineese or russian government, your answer is "yes"  :)

bitcoin does not need financial oversight, such as Fincen Fintrac, FCA etc

what is needed is that businesses follow the rules of consumer rights, better business bureau and all the other consumer/business stuff.

I've slowed down my frequent buying/selling of BTC due to the tax laws in the US.

As long as there are people that believe they can fall into money and that eventually it will be their turn, as long as there are people who's greed is stronger than their rationality, there will be pump and dumps and all manner of cons. No laws, no regulations will ever change that.

Precisely this.  Not only does it not need oversight, but because Bitcoin is global, a single sovereign government or smaller subsidiary body couldn't impose oversight upon it, even if it wanted to.  Plus there would likely be disagreements with other sovereign nations with what those oversights should or shouldn't be and they would never reach agreement anyway.  

Companies, on the other hand, are subject to the laws of the jurisdictions in which they operate.  Regulatory bodies should act upon any such business which aren't treating their customers well.  That should be more than sufficient in terms of how far regulation should go.

Exactly. We all ready have structures to protect consumers. We really don't need bit coin specific ones. It is all ready hard enough to operate a regular business in the western regulatory climate.   

You can regulate the bitcoin related exchange/business, but you can't really regulate bitcoin since it can travel across the whole internet. Currently all the government's regulation only apply domestically

Just so everyone is clear, "regulation" is a euphemism for government castration of Bitcoin.

No, Bitcoin does not need the same corrupt fuckers who ruined the dollar meddling with it, thanks.

What you wrote!

Technology will be our regulator.

In cryptography we trust.

Now there is a very good thought!

Of course it has gone right over the heads of the gaming types.

I forget the details, but some legislature somewhere enacted a law that pi would henceforth be exactly 3.14. I'm sure they were well-meaning, and they were just 'doing it for the children'.

But the could not see the folly in their regulation.

Such would be with Bitcoin regulation.

Tax laws of BTC ?

Yep.

Too late though.

A new "underground" cometh.

I agree with you to some extent. Technology will be our regulator.

I'll tell you this: regulation will kill it faster than a politician can kiss a baby.  The kiss of death.  And yes, a whole global underground cometh after that. 

Yep and I will be at the forefront but you will not know it is me.

And what if it's me?  This town ain't big enough for two undergrounds, brother.

The best thing will be to create a Libertarian paradise, where there will be no regulations on the Bitcoin. If that is not possible, then let us welcome the regulations and laws on Bitcoin, in order to eliminate the taxation-related complications.

I think there's a misconception here. Contrary to what some of you seem to think, Bitcoin is already regulated. However, unlike other types of money and payment systems, Bitcoin is not regulated by a single person or institute (like a central bank, or government, or politician) but by the transparent, crystal clear, universal mathematical and cryptographic set of rules that constitutes the backbone of Bitcoin.

This is a new paradigm for many people, especially for lawmakers. It's a new kind of regulation - and a better kind for that matter, as far as I'm concerned. Better as in: more equal to all participating parties (nobody in particular is in control, or everybody together), more transparent, more universal, and much less prone to corruption, abuse or fraud.

So, yes, Bitcoin needs regulation. And fortunately, in a very clever and innovative way, it comes packed with all the regulation we could wish for.

Bitcoin doesnt require any sort of regulation at all. Thats why I like it.

Exactly. Eventually, the radical transparency and funds-control offered by the blockchain and crypto will make much of what regulators do in the legacy financial system redundant. Proof-of-reserves, multi-sig, blockchain audits, etc, will allow consumers far more immediately verifiable information about the entities with which they choose to transact, plus more secure control of funds. Providing that sort of transparency and info to consumers was one of the main drivers for the existing regulatory body.

bitcoin is not money. governments have said it out loud in the US, UK, and multiple countries of Europe. so they and all of us agree that bitcoin itself will no be regulated by financial regulators, because its an ASSET! (which is a good thing)

so lets close the book on discussions of financial regulation of bitcoin.

now then, the oversight of BUSINESSES however will be apparent, for exchanges that use FIAT deposits/withdrawals they have to follow the current FIAT rules. also the business ethics side (consumer rights) there are already agencies in place such as BBB(better business bureau) OFT(Office of Fair Trading) etc.

so as long as businesses run ethically and control FIAT responsibly, then bitcoin can be left to do what it does best.

"so as long as businesses run ethically and control FIAT responsibly......."

Yeah, right.

Leave Bitcoin alone anyway.

your depth perception seems limited. :D

personal bitcoin transactions will remain free to do whatever they want. same goes for personal loans, and other peer to peer stuff.. but businesses... ACTUAL businesses do need some ethics.

take BFL for instance. wouldnt you even agree that if BFL didn't do the 1 year 'pre-order' but instead only offered pre-orders for no longer then a month (which is an acceptable reasonable time in regards to BBB policy) then consumers would be happier.

take intersango for instance, if as a business they had to register a business with companies house and get audited, wouldn't you and everyone have been happier that they were legit and be held legally accountable

in both cases these 'companies' acted like dodgy hobbyists taking large sums and acting like they are not accountable for anything.

this is not about bitcoin. this is about businesses treating customers correctly

Welcome to the forum. I had a similar experience and I made posts kind of like this. Everyone is a noob at one time or another.

Anyways,

No, Bitcoin does NOT need regulations. Regulations just helps to gain control over it. It is decentralized for a reason.

Think of it like this;

If you give privacy to the masses, some will corrupt it.

If you give information to the government, some will corrupt it.

But who controls the people? The masses, or the government? Who can change the people to bow to their will? The government, or small groups of people?

What are your thoughts on the recent Erik Voorhees SEC ruling and subsequent fines?

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. 

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 :)

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

People are always begging the government to enslave their neighbors.

The thing is, so are their neighbors.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

Except for the USG of course  ;)

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

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.

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

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.  

That's simply not possible.

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.

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.