Thought I'd go through and summarise some of the stuff said in this thread and add some extra thoughts as to why Bitcoin isn’t as widely traded and accepted in the UK as elsewhere and a bit on places to get bitcoins in the UK.


Legal
Bitcoin is subject to AML/KYC laws. This has caught out a lot of people in the UK. (e.g. http://bitcoinmagazine.com/interview-with-glbses-nefario/ )

On top of that AML/KYC is expensive to do properly and is a very unsure market. Try going to raise some capital from investors for an idea that revolves around a currency which can fluctuate 25% in a day, and could (and has) loose half of it's value in a matter of days and remain below that level for nearly a year.

Most of us here have faith in Bitcoin. But nobody can deny it's risky. There have been a lot of cases of people losing a lot of money with Bitcoin through hacks, market crash and fraud and unfortunately, they're the sort of stories that make the news in the UK. This makes it harder to get the cash required to overcome the AML/KYC hurdles, as well as money for proper legal and financial advice

It's not formally recognised as a currency, but it is recognized as a virtual currency scheme (http://www.ecb.int/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes201210en.pdf) but that comes with very little legislation.

For VAT, someone wrote to HMRC. It may have been in the thread, or another, the tab was still open in my browser and I can’t figure out where I found the link, but here it is (https://www.dropbox.com/s/wmpjyym7xztqygx/IMG_20130324_131647.jpg) suggests that if your turn over is over the VAT limit then you must pay VAT.

In theory, Bitcoin shouldn't be affected by Electronic Money Regulation 2011 (because it's not technically e-money according to EU definition - see ECB document above.) EMR is targeted at emoney issuers, if Bitcoin was covered, I suspect the issuer may technically be Satoshi, since an issuer refers typically to initial distribution (e.g. you local shop isn't a money issuer when they give you change.)

With laws governing money, people really need to NOT take the “shoot first, ask questions later” with regards to applicable laws like a lot of now defunct UK Bitcoin services have. If you make any money with anything, your bank and HMRC will be after you for their cut and ignorance is not an excuse. Services that have done such things like Britcoin/intersango do more harm than good, inconveniencing themselves, their customers and the entire Bitcoin community.

Some other laws related: we are protected by the Fraud Act. If you've been scammed with Bitcoin, there is a law that in theory can be used in court. Fraud Act revolves around "misrepresentation of value." Pick any site handling Bitcoin as your evidence for value.

Also protected (as above) from wallet theft via Computer Misuse Act '98 unless you gave the person permission to use your computer (in which case, you could probably still get them with Fraud.)

Another interesting little law overlooked but worth mentioning: Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, part III. It’s basically a crypto key disclosure law. The police can legally force you to hand over all your private keys or face 2 years in prison. I don’t think this has been used in a case with Bitcoin yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see it happen in the future. This could be used to prove that a person received or sent Bitcoins or effectively steal or recover bitcoins gathered through perceived illegitimate methods.



 Social
bank/government and customer relations
There's a lot of mistrust of the banks right now in UK as well as the rest of the EU. As you're all aware Bitcoin got quite a boost from the Cyprus hoohaa, so lack of faith in UK banking is a good thing for Bitcoin uptake in the UK to some extent.

However, the Banks and Government don’t trust us as customers. Bitcoin makes it very challenging to do tax. Initially most people will say “why is it a problem? Stick it on your tax return and all is good.” With the exception of figuring out how to put it on the tax return, that would be true. However, the problem arises in that the Banks and Government can’t/won’t/don’t trust us to all be honest.

Bitcoin makes doing a tax audit more challenging. E.g. they audit Alice because they believe Alice is not being honest with regards to the value that she holds, specifically the amount of BTC. HMRC (the taxman) can’t just go to the banks and ask for a bank statement of Alice’s BTC because banks don’t have that info. Also, they can’t just ask the bank for a log of all transactions out to an exchange, because that doesn’t account for bitcoin price rises or money paid to them through Bitcoin.

There’s also the argument that “Blockchain is public, go look it up on there” – that again relies on Alice being honest about her keys. They could try getting the keys through RIPA, but it’s not hard for Alice to write down a few private keys with a huge balance in UTXOs and hide it behind some wall paper or something and deny all knowledge.

This point is a little bit void though because one could argue that it’s just as easy to set up off shore bank accounts and hide money there to avoid tax. True, it is, and offshore banks are a massive pain in the ass for govs/banks, so why would they encourage another system that causes the same problems?

(I may generate some hate here, but here goes) This all again comes back to trust. One could say “well they should trust us to be honest with our tax.” Why should the gov/banks trust us to pay our taxes or fees, just look at this thread. There’s a lot of talk about how to wing it to not pay tax. I, like the next person, dislikes paying tax. However, it’s a necessary evil (alright, maybe not in the amounts they charge) and I think morally, if we’ve ever walked on a road, been to a public school, been treated by the NHS etc.etc.etc. then we should all pay at least SOME tax.  However, the tax issue is not really specific to the UK. UK gov apparently needs all the money it can get these days.

In the news
Interest in Bitcoin is definitely going up. The news is featuring it more, particularly BBC, with articles that aren't all bad - although a good portion are related somehow to hacking. (To any non regular BBC-UK news readers, on behalf of the people of the UK, please accept my apologies for the lack of spelling, grammar or fact checking in any of the articles linked to in the link below.):
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=site%3Awww.bbc.co.uk%2Fnews%2F+Bitcoin

Although the general tone is getting more positive, most people were aware of the first few articles about silkroad, mtgox hack, and other hacks. Now, even a good article is probably acknowledged by lots as “oh that currency that got hacked and is used for drugs.” That is changing I think, but it’s a hard image to shake off.


 Spokes people for Bitcoin and its image in the UK
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/video/2013/mar/22/bitcoin-currency-video
People like Amir Taaki. As much as I appreciated him when Britcoin was going fine, I don’t think Amir is a suitable public character for Bitcoin in the UK. Videos like the one above mean when people think of Bitcoin, they think of people like Amir.

 Imagine if your bank came out with a promo, and spokesperson lived in a squat, wears a beanie, speaks with AQI, say things like “I had loads of Bitcoin, but I sold them for $100 and I was like ‘woooo!’  then it went up to $30 and I was like ‘fuck they’d be be worth like half a million dollars – but whatever, but it’s not about the money...” and “stopping people taking drugs is like stopping people having sex”  and “I feel responsibility because I have this skill that not many other people have.” Whilst I agree with the sentiment of most of what he’s saying, and his style of dress and presentation is not too dissimilar to my own, I don’t think he presents the right image for larger adoption in the UK. Having Amir do high profile videos in UK news relating to Bitcoin I think is generating an image which is not an image 75%+ of the UK like, agree with or are willing to follow or subscribe to. (Just to clarify, I have no problem with how Amir chooses to live or present himself – I even have some respect for him in some way – I just don’t think it’s the image to help Bitcoin in the UK.)

Similar to what someone said earlier in the thread, people are to some extent indoctrinated in that they haven’t questioned the alternatives to the current system. I’m not sure they’re wanting or willing to either. As a result I think Bitcoin adoption in the UK would be helped if it wasn’t sold as an anarchists wet dream to overthrow the banks, but more as a fast cheap way of sending and receiving money or paying for things, as well as a potential investment opportunity.


usability
Due to the lack of large adoption, there are not many convenient UK based Bitcoin services, very few online wallets or genuine legitimate exchanges or places to buy things. A lot of people aren’t tech savvy and may not inherently trust themselves to look after a single file that maybe worth a lot of money. I think it would help if there were some services or documents targeted specifically at the UK luddite. “Transfer money from your bank to this account, see your bitcoins here” level of simple, non of this “first go download a client, wait for the blockchain to finish synching, go try find an exchange, figure out the niche obscure payment system they accept etc.etc.etc.”

Also, I believe the average Joe likes a lot of features provided by services such as PayPal. I don’t think they want to be under the impression that if they pay for something, they don’t have a bank or similar to complain to if they’re scammed or lose their money. There’s no reason a decent centralised 3rd party system that offers protection such as PayPal couldn’t be setup for Bitcoin. For users of Bitcoin now, that may undermine the point of Bitcoin as a decentralised system with no authority of transactions, but the average UK citizens doesn’t care for that sort of stuff too much right now, they want to know their money is safe, regardless of the own incompetence.


For buying bitcoin
WikileaksDude posted earlier this url which seems really useful – takes 48 hours to get money into Bitstamp, and minimal fees along the way (maybe 1 – 2%):
www.bitcoinuk.blogspot.com

Also:
https://bitbargain.co.uk/
https://localbitcoins.com/

If you’re feeling risky:
http://www.ebay.co.uk

Thanks,
Dom.

Disclaimer: above is largely my own (and others) opinions and observations, not legal advice or even necessarily objective facts.

I'm confused.... are you being sarcastic... or?

As you said, there's no malicious activity, so there's no 51% "attack"

The community came together to cover a bug.

That's a pretty bold claim. Perhaps you should provide some evidence to support your argument quick before you're flamed into oblivion...

May I suggest having a long hard think about your current hosting setup.

A couple of people have mentioned bits of downtime, and chrome dev tools are suggesting an uncached page is waiting about 2.5 seconds for the first response from the server and up to 9 seconds to load the entire page. This is early days for the site, but your traffic is only going to get heavier.

http://www.akamai.com/html/about/press/releases/2009/press_091409.html
Suggests ~50% of users will leave an ecommerce site if it takes more than 2 seconds to load, and this was in 2009...

The fact that it is early days means it's crucial that you show you have a reliable, fast and resilient website.

Other than that - I like it, adequate design and a nice big selection of items. I've not ordered anything so can't comment on the checkout system.

More on the alert system in the Bitcoin protocol and when it's been used (this page probably needs updating now!)

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Alerts

Is it not potentially dangerous for Satoshi if he/she/they are identified?

Think of the legal ramifications. Although Bitcoins legal position is at least a little bit hazy in most jurisdictions, there's bound to be some jurisdiction at some point that puts responsibility on the service provider, failing that, the service creator.

There's potentially a lot of tax that has gone unpaid because of Bitcoin and I'm sure the tax people would love to have someone to at least try and blame and recoup their losses from....


I'd love to know who Satoshi is, even if it's just to buy them a beer for their work. But I think, as mentioned previously, the selfless mystery creator(s) sacrificing fame and fortune for the good of mankind adds a certain element to Bitcoin, even if it just makes for good publicity.

Whilst a Satoshi Witch Hunt maybe interesting, novel etc. it's pretty selfish. He (she/they) created something for us all and all they asked for in return is a bit of privacy, for whatever reason. Leaving their identity unknown is the least we could do for them. If he/she/they wants to be known, I'm sure he/she/they will do it in their own time and on their own terms.

(aside: "selfless mystery creator(s) sacrificing fame and fortune for the good of mankind" conjures up images of religious folk knocking on my door offering me a flier with a picture of a man nailed to a cross on the front.)

This one?

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Common_Vulnerabilities_and_Exposures#CVE-2010-5139

I understand what you mean, and you're correct, I am writing, researching and living from the point of view of someone in the western world, that pays taxes (as much as students have to pay) and does my shopping at the local Sainsbury's. In the UK at least, I believe that these large corporations will act as gatekeepers, and should a paradigm shift come, which "forces" them to change, I don't honestly believe it will be portrayed in that way - I think it will be portrayed as "we've got some new research suggesting this isn't THAT bad, so we'll make a new legislation for it." I don't believe they will admit defeat and just let it happen, they will grudgingly, in the face of research an public outcry, concede that they need to legislate and accept it.

You are right though, I do need to bear in mind the large portion of the world which do not consider or believe in the legal system of their jurisdiction. I've never really thought of the benefits of Bitcoin for such people - suppose potential long term cause of academic research may not be of direct benefit to them. It is sometimes cited as an inherent pitfall with the nature of higher education that research conducted is typically going to be in favour or at least from the eyes of those that support the legal system or government in some way.

But I stand by my belief that the "average joe" (who is probably better off than the majority of the world) isn't going to be able to go down to his local Tesco and spend his Bitcoin in all its free, pseudonymous, unregulated glory without some some legal confusion or some legal formalisation at it. I don't think it's totally impossible, more improbable. There's the example of the up and coming BitInstant credit card, but that requires formal identification of yourself and a small fee  to get (justified by the cost of the card - understandable) which sort of goes against the concepts of privacy and free money management that Bitcoin tries to advocate. I'm aware there's more to Bitcoin than just privacy and free money management though.


Brilliant, there tends to be quite a lot of web relevant conferences in the states - if I go to one over the next 3 years, I'll try swing by:) thanks.


Whilst my research is influenced and partly informed by the media, as any research on not-very-well-documented things is inherently going to be, I've seen (probably the very tip of) some of the sort of forums your talking about, I've seen the adverts selling batches 1000+ credit cards. You seem to be making a great amount of assumptions based on the little information I've provided about my research. I'm aware that my research doesn't include all kinds of crime - as with any research, nothing is perfect. As with any good research, I also have to critically analyse my own results - as well as that, I have to analyse my own methodology and the flaws, including  specifying exactly what my research can and cannot be applied to - which would include corporate scale money laundering. I will be have to acknowledge the limitations of approaching crime and from the outside position of a researcher with a time limit, e.g. I'm not going to be able to get right down to the big players in 6 weeks of practical work.

Silkroad has an estimated monthly revenue of over $1million. You're right, even if you scale it up for other sites and boards like SR, it's still a drop in the ocean compared to corporate theft, but it's still an amount, a large amount for some. But just because there are bigger crimes out there, does that mean we should ignore the smaller ones? Stop trying to catch the drink drivers because there are serial killers out there? You're correct the AML/KYC are probably just a tiny blip on the radar of skilled blackhats, but something like that with Bitcoin would pose a big problem to the majority of casual users of SR. (Just for the record, I'm not necessarily supporting AML/KYC laws for Bitcoin.)

It's funny you should mention HSBC. When chatting to one of my colleague about my research in trying to understand what people use to pay for illegal things - he pointed out that I know longer need to do it because the stuff in the news suggests they all use HSBC:)


I'm not entirely sure I understand. Surely it depends on which way the regulation goes. E.g. if the government were to endorse use of Bitcoin through legislation and keeping Bitcoin in it's current form, all the big chains would jump on it. I believe that's very unlikely to happen, but it's not an impossibility. But assuming it did happen, it would pickup millions of users over night - millions of people otherwise unaware of Bitcoin, would be enjoying the same benefits as you by using Bitcoin. I believe there is such a thing as "good legislation" - I'm not so sure how good legislation of Bitcoin will be when it does come around though.


That's a very good point, and in hindsight, should have really been addressed - I should have really sent it out to more places. But it's an inherent problem with an sample - you can't sample anyone. You're right though, I definitely could have got a wider sample in retrospect. I'll be sure to mention that in the analysis.

Thanks for the input - extremely useful and appreciated:)


I appreciate the support:) I discovered Bitcoin out of my own interests. I like it - I don't want to see an end to it. I've committed to spending at least 4 years of my life to formally researching around it (along with other things.)

Despite it being mainly critical, the feedback you're all providing in this thread is incredibly useful and I do welcome it. Valuable input and feedback here will help shape the way I conduct future research, hopefully with you folk:)

Hi,

I'm aware it has a significant amount of momentum and there is a possibility of a paradigm shift as a result. However, most organizations at the moment, are at the mercy of their banks, which are in turn (supposedly) at the mercy of the policy and legislations. I personally believe the majority of corporations that use a bank, and have a legal team and legitimately declare their money and tax will not accept Bitcoin without some form of legislation change. I have no evidence to backup this claim, although the EFF is an example instance. So there maybe a paradigm shift, but for large scale adoption (e.g. your local tesco's accepting it) there's going to have to be a legislation change.

It's definitely possible that a potential paradigm shift created by Bitcoin could lead to a change in legislation, which could then lead to larger scale adoption. But that would still require a legislation change, which I personally believe should be informed by academic research. Most large corporations should (an typically do) do what the law says and the law says very little about Bitcoin, so I believe they will do very little about it.

When online publishing changed the media business, when legislation and policy making was attempted without any academic input or evidence, the US government came up with SOPA... I'd like to do research into Bitcoin to stop something like that happening.

Thanks,

Dom.

Hi,

I apologize for not making myself clear, however, the discussion on these forum leads me to believe that people here already understand the pro's and con's of Bitcoin legislation. Personally, I thought the first sentence talking about legislation and policy making clearly implies that the people I'm talking about are the legislation and policy makers. I'm neither a legislation nor policy maker. I'm not necessarily saying academic research will make them listen, just that I believe in an ideal world, academic research should at least have some influence on legislation/policy making (although I would say that - academic research is my job!)

Making Bitcoin accepted by legislation and policy makers (and it therefore being legislated etc.) is hugely relevant to Bitcoin users. A key reason why a lot of organizations don't use Bitcoin is because it's not seen as legal tender. This causes legal issues with tax and general money management. E.g. the EFF don't accept donations in Bitcoin any more for this exact reason.

Thanks again for the input and feedback, communication has never been my strong point:)

Dom.

Hi Yankee,

Thanks for your input. Over the next 3 years, I will most likely be contacting different people and approaching the problem from different angles. The aim of this survey is to assess the community opinion.

As I stated earlier, this is effectively preliminary, exploratory research. There is very little formal research on the issue of crime with ecurrencies, so this is an attempted start. There is more to my research than just a survey - it will hopefully be available to be released, along with some information on how it was received (E.g. what mark I get - this is my Master dissertation.)

I chose to post here directly on community forums, as opposed to individually contacting bodies such as yourself and mtgox for a few reasons:

• This is a relatively short project, with relatively tight time and budget constraints
• I'm aware the Bitcoin community is relatively active, this community includes bodies such as yourself
• There's no guarantee that the biggest source of knowledge is contained in you, mtgox or any other big companies - particularly in such a large community
• The community opinion and the opinion of the users is, to me, just as valid when gauging the opinion of a community, as the opinion of the big players like yourself
• I'd like this survey to reach a wide range of people in the community. Contacting big players would give an inherently biased result: e.g. it's a possibility the big players have less direct association with crime, whereas some respondents on here will have first hand experience in buying/selling illegal things online.

For future reference, would have any issues with me contacting you over the next 3 years in the interest of research - maybe for something like an interview? As you pointed out, people like you are on the front line and therefore have a very valuable insight and domain of knowledge.

I'm aware of big parties within Bitcoin such as yourself are working with authorities. I wasn't at all implying that there aren't attempts by the community and such to curb criminal transactions. I can also appreciate why you perceive bias within the questions, I can understand how the questions can be interpreted as me implying that a lot of criminal transactions take place on Bitcoin. This is because the first part of the research has found strong evidence that Bitcoin is a primary payment system for a lot of illegal products and services bought and sold online, when compared to things such as western union, liberty reserve etc.

This survey isn't meant to assess the amount of crime within the community, or to even support the idea that there is crime in the community; it's purely to gauge community views and get some informal starting points for future approaches and research. As I said, hopefully, I'll be able to publicise the full research when it is complete.

Thanks again for taking the time to look at the survey and for your feedback - it would be good to talk further with you at some point:)

Dom.

You seem to both be taking a similar point here: it's not a crime if you don't get caught, and why should it be a criminal problem if both parties are fine with it - if they wern't fine, someone would call the police.

I think this is a big contributing factor as to why Bitcoin in it's current state wont be accepted. Through no fault of it's own, if someone does want to contact the police to inform them they're not happy with, there is no real means to. This isn't just a problem with Bitcoin, but with the internet at large. If someone sees something dodgy on the internet, typically they don't know who to call. But because Bitcoin isn't seen as a currency, when people do call because they have an issue, then authorities will be reluctant to step in. It's the same argument someone raised previously - the authorities need to accept the value of virtual goods.

I think the argument that both parties are happy with a transaction so it's not a problem, is a little short sighted. A portion of the criminal transactions with Bitcoin include weapons. I'm sure the person selling the weapon was happy, I'm sure the person buying the weapon was happy, but what about the person or people then murdered with said weapons? There's also evidence of people selling hacking services - e.g. botnets, tutorials on hacking, doxing, framing services. Again, I'm sure the hacker selling his services with Bitcoin is happy, and I'm sure the person buying them is happy, but what about, for example, the system admins and the other people trying to access a resource such as an eprints repository that was taken offline temporarily because of a DDoS?

I don't think the solution personally is to try and stop all criminal transactions or shutdown Bitcoin. I don't think it's as straight forward as saying people shouldn't be able to trade weapons. But the measures need to be in place so that should someone buy a weapon, use it in a way which is indisputably criminal (whatever that means?) then there needs to be measures in place to ensure that person can be caught. Knowing that a person has just bought that weapon might provide the crucial bit of evidence required to give a fair and honest trial that may result in the restricting a truly sick or criminal individual.

Personally, I think all people should be allowed freedom, but I don't personally believe it's possible for everyone to be totally free, because some persons idea of freedom will involve oppressing or impeding someone else's idea of freedom.

Thanks for at least taking a look at the survey though - you're time, input and feedback is hugely appreciated:)

Dom.

Excellent response:)


 I agree - that's one of the things I'm having to learn. I found computing science to be largely logical, and found it relatively easy. Social sciences, and human based sciences to me require a lot more of something that doesn't seem like straight forward logic - like an art form as you say. One thing I've definitely learned from this survey on these forums, is that in future, I will try and approach the community with a problem or question before or at the same time as considering the methodology. Something I've been very aware of, which I think is hugely underestimated by governments etc, is the amount of knowledge and intellect present in communities, particularly open source ones.

The points you listed regarding features are things that I already planned on discussing. As part of integrating the computing science approach with the social/criminological approach, I'll be talking about the technical side behind the features, and how then some of these features work as a doubled edged sword, providing and excellent, free, distributed anonymous service for the everyday individual, as well as providing a good platform for more nefarious intentions. I'll also ensure I emphasize that this double edged sword isn't necessarily a unique feature to Bitcoin, and is present in recognized countries because of cash.

I appreciate defining crime and such is a problem, and that a lot of large corporations get away with things that done on a smaller scale by less powerful people would be considered a crime. This is something I must address briefly, but at the same time, this research is slightly higher level (but obviously still affected) than the lower level criminological issues such as what is crime? It's the same way in computing science research, you typically don't have to talk in too much depth about how semi conductors come together to form logic gates if you're doing research on say, efficient compiler engineering.

Thanks again for the feedback, responses and discussion. This is all proving to be a really valuable learning experience for me. As I said, I intend on doing more research into Bitcoin, so even if I learn nothing else, just conducting this survey is helping me understand better how to approach the community.

Dom.

Sorry you smell bias - as I said, I'm not trying to prove any hypothesis with this survey. It's a follow up to results I've got already in the study. I don't quite understand what you mean how if it's seen as biased then it's better. Showing biased in research, particularly when gathering the data is a very bad thing, because it affects the validity of the results.


As I said in the original post, I'm not trying to blame Bitcoin for crime, I personally believe Bitcoin doesn't cause crime. I'm not even anywhere implying that Bitcoin is used for more crime than standard pounds & dollar. (small aside: we had some interesting discussion on technological determinism vs social construction of technology, and personally, the most legitimate sounding theory is social shaping - e.g. people create technology based on social requirements and such, and the technology changes the social requirements and such, so it's cyclic.)

 But, a possible reason as to why people don't blame pounds or dollars for crime is because there's measures in place to try and reduce crime with them. There aren't as many of these measures in Bitcoin, and it's a possibility that this could mean more criminal transactions with Bitcoin as opposed to PayPal. E.g. pirateat40 may not have been able to get away with what he did with a recognized currency with the necessary measures. It is a possibility that if it was considerably harder to pay for illegal things online, then not as many people would do it, and if they did, they maybe easier to catch.

It maybe interesting to see what amount of people support measures to curb criminal transaction which may help towards policy making and recognition of Bitcoin as a proper currency.

Thanks again for taking the time to fill it out and providing some feedback, it's really appreciated.

Dom

That's not the case, my study is exploring the use of different virtual payment systems. The bulk of the research is looking at different systems used to pay cybercrime services. My findings from that suggest that Bitcoin seems to be the most commonly referred to payment system when people buy/sell illegal products and services online. The survey is to further understand what the community thinks on the problem and how to tackle it, as you guys probably know more than anyone else about Bitcoin, the way it works, and it's problems.

So, it doesn't matter what the results are from this survey are with regards to the validity of my research.

As I said, I'll try make sure I get it made available publicly do you can all take a look. It's really good that you're all pointing out issues such as closed systems where Bitcoin only operates on the boundary - these will be things to include in the analysis and discussion of the validity of my findings - it's all hugely appreciated.

Thanks again,

Dom.

I agree. The study is part of my Masters which is leading into a PhD, so I will hopefully have the next 3 years to explore the question more gradually.

Web Science is an interdisciplinary subject so we're encouraged to approach web based problems from multiple disciplines. My research over the course is done with the Criminology department, along with the Computer Science department. My first degree was Computer Science, so I'm having to pickup and learn the criminology + social side quite quickly. But the benefit of the course is that I can effectively utilize and draw ideas from all disciplines, including things like law, economics, philosophy etc.

Part of the aim of the Masters is to explore a question or problem, to allow further in depth informed research over the course of the PhD.


Yup, I agree. Also, I think it's worth mentioning, in an ideal world, a lot of legislation and policy making should be made based on academic research, which is why so much money is invested. Personally, I believe academic research into Bitcoin is a "must" for it to be accepted as a currency.

Hi,

I was using the definition "Non-repudiation is the concept of ensuring that a party in a dispute cannot repudiate, or refute the validity of a statement or contract." So someone may use Bitcoin so that the other party can't question, track or reverse a transaction. In retrospect, it maybe a little stretch to get it to what I mean. I put the clarification next to it in brackets just in case.

Thanks for filling it out, and the feedback is muchly appreciated:)

Dom.

The survey is now closed. I'm writing up the research. Once I've got it marked with some feedback and confirmed it's okay to republish, I'll stick it up on here for you all to scrutinize.

Thanks to those that took the time to look at the survey, and even more thanks to those who provided feedback and criticism on it - muchly appreciated:)


Hi,

I'm doing my Masters Project as part of a PhD in Web Science at the University of Southampton, in which I'm investigating the use of Virtual Payment Systems in cybercrime.

The aim of this survey is to try and understand how the Bitcoin community perceives criminal transactions along with possible ways to reduce criminal transactions.

The study is part of my Masters project, which is funded through the Web Science Doctoral Training Centre which is in turn funded by the EPSRC. I'll see if I can get it self archived after so it will be available to everyone.

I'd really appreciate it if you could take the time to fill it out. There are 9 questions, 7 of which are multi-choice so it shouldn't take long (between 2 - 15 minutes).

The link for the survey is:

Now closed

If you visit that link, there's a bit more information and then if you want to take part, you must tick a box for consent, and then you will be taken to the survey.

Just a few clarifications based on issues raised when others have taken the survey:

• Personally, I support Bitcoin, I have no interests in stopping or shutting down Bitcoin - I would love to see it accepted as a currency.
• The reason I'm sending this survey out to Bitcoin community forums, as opposed to PayPal community forums, as my research so far has suggested a large amount of illegal products and services traded online are typically paid for with Bitcoin. I'm not implying that all, or even the majority, of Bitcoin transactions are criminal, but I'm also not denying that criminal transactions do happen with Bitcoin.
• When I talk about cybercrime and online crime, I'm referring to actions that a user takes part in online, which is illegal in their current jurisdiction.
• The survey will be available most likely until Wednesday 5th Sept, maybe longer if required, but I need to get the data analysed and written up to be handed in on the 14th September

Any feedback regarding the survey, the study or any useful comments or questions, don't hesitate to ask on here, or there's a contact e-mail address on the survey information page at the start.

Thanks in advanced

Dom.