Bitcoin Forum

How would capital controls work in the bitcoin era?

Right now, we have restrictions on how much FX an individual can transfer out of India. Since banks and authorized forex dealers are about the only way a person can procure FX, the government is able to monitor this.

Once bitcoins are easily available, what prevents a person from buying BTC and sending them across to another person outside India. Would you need an established and trusted 'hawala' operator to transfer funds outside India?

To put it mildly Bitcoin is a Internet currency, no borders no central control.  So no Capital control.

Countries will have to adapt to the change in this environment.

They will no longer be in control.

lol....n thats what they are afraid of  ;D

The only tap comes in my mind is that world regulatory authorities keep a close tab on the wallet companies.

Do u mean, IMF, World Bank are going to regulate blockchain.info and coinbase.com ? ;D

My worry is that they will look suspiciously at places where BTC is traded for INR - the exchanges.

This could be their view
Sellers of BTC - Possible money launders
Buyers of BTC - Possible hawala operators
Operators of Exchanges - Possible facilitators of illegal transactions

One approach that is open to them is to regulate exchanges in India and track the addresses from there on the Blockchain
If stuff has been moved on the Blockchain in a FY, you may have to explain the movement to IT
But yes not easy to regulate

Yes, their first point of regulation will be the exchanges.
Which is why exchanges will have a heavy compliance burden.

In a country like India where corruption is wide spread, and black money is an issue, Its gonna be hard for authorities to consider bitcoin as an option unless they try to understand what exactly it is and how it can help minimize above mentioned activities.
 The reason behind most of the exchanges asks for your ID is avoid any conflict with govs sooner or later if the person found indulged in any tainted activity. We all know what happened with Liberty reserve last year same can happen to any exchange.
 

At some point, I predict our tech-savvy, corrupt politicians will start using bitcoins. :D (if they haven't discovered it already)

You would be surprised :-) trust me .

:)

Who knows tomorrow you'll get up in morning and there will be a breaking news on every news channel that someone like A. Raja get caught accepting bitcoins in some string operation. 

That chap is already in jail. Please dont overload him with more allegations :P

I would like to know too ;)

We still hear of recovery of gold/cash from politicians.
That is why I assumed they are not into bitcoins.  ;D

Some of the big scams are larger than bitcoin's market cap. So if pay-offs in one of these scams gets denominated in BTC, you know what could happen. :P

haha that would really take bitcoin to the moon first and then drag it down to the hell.
but sooner or later I believe we will see this happening for sure. just keep an eye.

This is definately going to happen if the current goverment is really serious in passing the legislation and signing a treaty to bring back the black money, then I really see use of bitcoin by corrupt politician to hawala their funds. This is actually the real concern and which will also happen. The problem is if these corrupt bureaucrats take the bitcoin route then they will benefit and the community will really suffer at large, because on incident is going to start the fall of bitcoin dominos.

This is the way to go for politicians right now. At least until there is some form of regulation of the exchanges operating out of India IMHO.

If this happens, there could be restrictions on the use of bitcoins in India. But I doubt if the overall value of bitcoin will get affected. You might have to scout for an overseas exchange to liquidate your bitcoin holdings.

I agree to Polynesia

Also to add the market depth is increasing for bitcoin and hence the rates are so stable even after FBI sale and Dell news. However to make a difference in the rate it will be too much of fund movement required.

Here I'm assuming your 'capital control' in negative connotation. Okay?
'Black Money' makes approximately 51% of our GDP which makes mandatory for government to control capital flight. Usually, capital control is done by controlling transfer of money and monitoring it to find illegal activity. Accessing 'black money' is simple in India, but clearing them internationally is almost impossible. Our government executes controls capital by controlling transfer. When it comes to Bitcoin, 'black bitcoin' is inaccessible to most of people which is needed for capital flight. I believe, government cannot control transfer for Bitcoins but then can control out access to it. Therefore, in future, they'll limit access/monitor for capital control which will be done by regulating Buysellbitco.in, Unocoin.com, Igot.com etc. Simple to execute then said!

In a long run, miners will help do it.

Cheers,
ZeroSum Believer

I believe it would be difficult to segregate bitcoins into 'black' and 'white'. There effectively would be a premium for bitcoins bought in exchanges and sold for 'cash'. It would be very difficult for the government to track the flow of bitcoins from exchanges.

Edan Yago at work! It is very very very easy for government to track flow of Bitcoin from exchange(s). Among all, you must have known my friend.

I doubt it is going to be easy once people stop hoarding coins and actually start using them. Plus there are always mixing services.

How done done hawala with aid and consent of bank manager? I've done during last election. My point- you can keep anonymity using tor, how many else can do that? Their will always be financial illiteracy, technology illiteracy, mixing service illiteracy and other illiteracy in making. These are services for few not masses.

Ask yourself, in what proportion you've used mixing services for transactions done?

Kanoon kay haath bhout lambe hote hai, dost. You must not confess publicly.  ;D