Federal Class Action Lawsuit Filed Against Bitinstant

[ChazM]

You're not regulating the 'unregulatable'. BitInstant was a FIAT<->BITCOIN conversion business. It was not wholly anchored in Bitcoin and therefore assertions that no laws can be brought to bear on it are likely baseless.

Bitcoin maybe make-believe money but US dollars are not. When people are out-of-pocket on the scale that BitInstant was running; things like class action suits are an almost inevitable ugly consequence.

What I was saying was that the only way I think you can "regulate" is to sue someone in small claims court. How is the government going to control the flow of bitcoins? It does not seem possible.

also, if your quotes were used to imply that I was not using an actual word, my source is: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/unregulatable

The only way you could regulate the flow of bitcoins would be to stop all the exchanges from using USD (yeah, right). Now, this wouldn't shut down bitcoin, just stall any bitcoins being purchased off of exchanges. Bitcoin to fiat purchases would still happen on a personal level at least.

The regulation aspect is to control how the fiat to bitcoin operations do business. Remember that they're dealing with US money, and that is regulated. These businesses need to comply with USD money laws, and are accountable when dealing with people's USD or bitcoins held for USD. However, the government shouldn't/can't place regulation on something like bitcoin that can't be destroyed as long as people are using it, short of outlawing Bitcoin and driving bitcoin sales underground.

[Coinseeker]

Absolutely agree.  When a money transmitter company is run out of the founder's mom's basement, consumers are going to be harmed

This is correct.  It's not about regulating the blockchain, it's about regulating the entities that operate as money transmitters, MSB's and other digital currency related businesses.  Consumers and businesses need these protections.  Sure, the blockchain can exist without any of this but you can forget about mass adoption if you eliminate the ability to move fiat -> BTC and BTC -> fiat.

If you want to see BTC values rise significantly, you should support common sense regulations.  Keyword being common sense and easier said than done, I know.  If you want Bitcoin to remain small and underground, then do the opposite.

[superduh]

lawsuit is inaccurate - defendant 2 claims bitcoins were $85 on april 11- they were never that low on that day at all. do they not know they will find out she is a liar? i swear the ambulance chasers are swooping in...

most of the complaints came at the time when mtgox was being destroyed too. i doubt these people actually understood anything that's going on
mtgox was effectively not working blah blah

[crazylikeafox]

lawsuit is inaccurate - defendant 2 claims bitcoins were $85 on april 11- they were never that low on that day at all. do they not know they will find out she is a liar? i swear the ambulance chasers are swooping in...

most of the complaints came at the time when mtgox was being destroyed too. i doubt these people actually understood anything that's going on
mtgox was effectively not working blah blah

If they need to amend claims, it will be easy enough for them to find plenty more Bitinstant victims.  413 pages of them right here:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=128314.msg2766131#msg2766131