Bitcoin Forum

The bitcoin community is capable and creative in so many ways, but when it comes to the legal field and the interfaces with real world entities, it seems like we accept everything as a force of nature. Currency is all about trust and no trust can be built if the second biggest exchange can go down so easily. Since bitcoin was born there were countless incidents of illegal confiscation of funds by banks, Paypal and others. None of them was supported by court order or any official regulator. Entrepreneurs and investors will avoid bitcoin as long as the legal cloud is hanging there. The bitcoin experiment is doomed if we won't be able to defend it legally and if we won't support each other in such cases.  

The good news are: bitcoin, in most countries is perfectly ok and has a good legal case. Banks and other financial entities are not allowed to refuse bitcoin business just because they don't like it. In the open source spirit, lets join forces and resources.

What do you think is the right way to go about it?

Citation needed.

http://eprints.ucm.es/6428/1/9.Cuenta_corriente.pdf

It depends mainly on what you have signed with your bank.
Are bitcoins different from any other product?
Have banks a legal base to freeze your account if you follow AML and fiscal regulations?

No hablo español.
True, if you have an account they can't keep your money for following regulations. But they don't have to let you set up an account in the first place, if they don't want to, and if they kick you out and return all your money, that is not illegal either.

The US government forced all Swiss banks to conform to their rules about how private they want to be. Please. There is no country or bank on this planet that isn't controlled by the status quo. What makes you think a legal team can change that.

They can and are doing what they want and we will either overcome their roadblocks or get defeated by them.

Just a thought:

I saw some lawyers accepts BTC for their services, perhaps contacting those lawyers with this idea and see what they says ?

I think just as Tor, BitTorrent, and Silk Road scoff at laws and exist outside/despite them, Bitcoin will exist in the same way. It's getting to the point where the government is passing laws or threatening lawsuits to try to stop something they can't control (SOPA is a great recent example), and the people are just completely ignoring them, since they will have little effect in the end (not counting the anti-SOPA protests, though if it had passed, switching to I2P or Namecoin would've meant the government would have lost even more control).

I'm not sure how it works in the US. In Israel, where i'm from, banks are regulated and can't refuse business without legal ground. About a month ago the regulator "released the banks from their duty to provide service for gambling sites" - http://www.yogonet.com/english/2012/01/11/israel-banks-can-refuse-to-handle-transactions-for-suspicious-websites (http://www.yogonet.com/english/2012/01/11/israel-banks-can-refuse-to-handle-transactions-for-suspicious-websites)
And take my word for it, Israel is not the most liberal country when it comes to human rights...
A quick search brings similar results for the UK and Canada.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/2010/03/a_legal_right_to_a_bank_accoun.html
http://settlement.org/sys/faqs_detail.asp?faq_id=4000635
But, if it was that easy, i would not bring the subject up. The legal case should demonstrate the contradictions of such actions with Freedom of occupation the Bill of Rights etc.

I disagree. How can you compare bitcoin to silkroad? this is exactly what we should fight against if we want bitcoin to get anywhere. bitcoin is to silkroad what cash is to street dealers. not more, not less.

SOPA is indeed a great example, but saying the people completely ignored it?? The efforts to stop it - probably the biggest campaign in the history of web rights - was successful! This is exactly what i'm hoping to see with bitcoin.

If it bitcoin survives like Tor,BT and SR then we have lost the battle to making Bitcoin a real alternative.

Just wait till somebody "up there" hears about bitcoin.  The Israeli regulator will whip up a bitcoin clause in the same way
faster than you can say Satoshi Nakamoto.

SOPA has been stopped...

Problem, ACTA is not being stopped

http://www.stopp-acta.info/english
http://www.stopacta.info/

Maybe they will. Why just sit and watch it happened? And why letting the banks do what ever they want when it didn't yet happen?

It won't happen in the same way as there are rules in Israel against gambling and no rules [yet] against bitcoin.

And, such rules are not that easy to pass. They'll need to define what bitcoin is, to explain how it differs from facebook money and the gaming industry money, why people living in democracies can't buy bits with their money, etc. It will be even harder if we put up some fight.

good point

Bitcoin is used by terrorists and criminals, it must be stopped for national security. Who use it must be a terrorist and must be arrested.

As an attorney, I think that something like the EFF, but to defend the interests of bitcoin projects would be a good idea. At the very least, the threat of a law suit would make companies think twice about how they deal with bitcoin businesses.  The problem is, like everything lawyers do, it wouldn't be cheap.

Silk Road - legal or illegal, no matter what laws are passed or what politicians say about it, they can't do anything about it, and it will continue to exist, simply because people don't think it's wrong, and want it to exist.
Bitcoin - legal or illegal, no matter what laws are passed or what politicians say about it, they can't do anything about it, and it will continue to exist, simply because people don't think it's wrong, and want it to exist.


It was successful, but had it failed, things like Tor, I2P, and Namecoin would have seen a huge surge in adoption, and once they became mainstream, "legal or illegal, no matter what laws are passed or what politicians say about it, they can't do anything about it, and it will continue to exist, simply because people don't think it's wrong, and want it to exist."


Just as we have lost the battle to making BitTorrent a real alternative for file sharing... wait...

agreed!

It would probably be a good idea to try and get organizations like EFF and others on board with the idea of Bitcoin and defending it.

You forgot illegal gambling, kiddieporn and tax evasion.

They are not going to do shit. They barely have money to stay in session. Plus, stopping bitcoin is a global effort, good luck organizing that.

I haven't read this thread yet and I don't think I need to, but this is a direct response to the title only:

You don't want an organization to "defend" a utility, you want a standards committee to maintain it unofficially. The more legal issues there are, the bigger a target any 'official' organization would be. What you want is something like the FED, not the Treasury.