governments should not get involved in who owns certain electronic devices(hardware wallets/asics)
governments should not get involved in who owns certain software(wallets/nodes/pool stratums)
any custodial business should be regulated but with regulations concerning more so consumer protections, where the authorities police the business via asking for audits and accounting regularly of the business to protect the consumer/customer..
we shouldnt be using regulations where the authorities defer their responsibility by delegated it over to the business to then police the customers whilst no one polices the business itself
as for things like barriers of entry. governments should not impose barriers of entry for small individuals/businesses to start up. there should not be a single large wall barrier of entry requiring individuals/businesses to need to reach a high bar of entry just to get involved. but instead have a tier system whereby a small business can effectively compete against a large institution, but at both levels have to atleast be accountable if they are handling peoples value
This is a great start. Let's take the points one at a time and discuss.
governments should not get involved in who owns certain electronic devices(hardware wallets/asics)
Sounds sensible enough. Are there any laws like this anywhere? Is anybody proposing such a thing?
governments should not get involved in who owns certain software(wallets/nodes/pool stratums)
Again, sounds simple enough. Again, any examples of existing problem laws here?
any custodial business should be regulated but with regulations concerning more so consumer protections, where the authorities police the business via asking for audits and accounting regularly of the business to protect the consumer/customer..
Totally agree. I would wonder where we would draw the line at "custodial" though. Would a Bitcoin node be considered a "custodian" of a consumer's value? What about more centralized (PoS) nodes like those in Ether?
As somebody who runs nodes that hold value, I personally wouldn't mind being licensed and getting certified, as long as the regulations are reasonable. Ideally this would be voluntary, but something a business could advertise as an advantage over fly-by-night operations.
we shouldnt be using regulations where the authorities defer their responsibility by delegated it over to the business to then police the customers whilst no one polices the business itself
Sounds correct--but are there example(s) of laws that violate this principle right now?
as for things like barriers of entry. governments should not impose barriers of entry for small individuals/businesses to start up. there should not be a single large wall barrier of entry requiring individuals/businesses to need to reach a high bar of entry just to get involved. but instead have a tier system whereby a small business can effectively compete against a large institution, but at both levels have to atleast be accountable if they are handling peoples value
Again, this sounds very reasonable.
I also think you could create tiers based on dollar volumes: businesses that hold only small amounts of people's money should have light regulation and the ones hold people's life savings should have a lot more.
There is precedent for this: the $10,000 trigger you get when you deposit more than that in cash in a US bank. Also, there is the FDIC insurance, which covers a limited amount. I would love to see the equivalent of "FDIC insured" for say $1000 maximum, that would be easier to get.