Garzik encourages regulation

[JohnDoe]

Who is this Garzik person.  I nevaheordofem.

One of the core developers, posts as xf2_org.

[1715072392]

1715072392

[SlaveInDebt]

The regulations mentioned were clearly related to bitcoin exchanges.

I think some people are under the impression that Bitcoin exchanges equal Bitcoin network.

It doesn't matter. It's people trading their property at their leisure. Nobody is entitled to a single drop of it. To regulate it in the name of safety, is to claim people do not know what is best for themselves. Bitcoin is supposed to only further rectify man's own right to his own life and its fruits.

God damn every parasite out there who claims Bitcoin in any of its forms should be subject to regulation! Subject to the thieving regimes: even a single drop of the Bitcoin economy! Bitcoin will destroy these structures all in good time and there is nothing you can do about it! All you do is hinder our revolution and its scope when you ask for the state's approval of how we use our property and labor! I hope all of you apologists suffer when the time comes!

The state along with your brown-nosing attitude will be buried! Long-live a new tomorrow!

Shh. The regulations are just a ruse we all know are way around  it

[em3rgentOrdr]

Who is this Garzik person.  I nevaheordofem.

One of the core developers, posts as xf2_org.

Ohhh seriously?  I remmmber him posting to the forums.  Sad to hear him dissin folks.

[error]

I think most of you need to stop posting now, and go read Sun Tzu's The Art of War. Once you have done so, consider Jeff Garzik's statements in that light.

[ColdHardMetal]

So our guy gets called up to do an interview on a segment that looks like it was totally geared up to tear him a new asshole and declare to the world at large that BTC = Drugs.

He manages to divert 95% of the content away from that point, while slipping in the buzzwords to make Joe Public feel warm and fuzzy and all "Hey these BTC things don't sound so shifty at all", at the same time as explaining things in something other than a way that only a nerd would love, and you guys are complaining about it?

Really?

Really?





edit: This commentary brought to you by Tradehill referral code TH-R1507

[Anonymous]

So our guy gets called up to do an interview on a segment that looks like it was totally geared up to tear him a new asshole and declare to the world at large that BTC = Drugs.

He manages to divert 95% of the content away from that point, while slipping in the buzzwords to make Joe Public feel warm and fuzzy and all "Hey these BTC things don't sound so shifty at all", at the same time as explaining things in something other than a way that only a nerd would love, and you guys are complaining about it?

Really?

Really?





edit: This commentary brought to you by Tradehill referral code TH-R1507

^

[Jaime Frontero]

I think most of you need to stop posting now, and go read Sun Tzu's The Art of War. Once you have done so, consider Jeff Garzik's statements in that light.

+1

[CoinMan]

I think Jeff did a fabulous interview, pure genius.  Those who don't get it probably never will and should just go play monopoly or something.

[rebuilder]

If Bitcoin can be regulated and governments have the will to do so, it will be regulated. If it cannot be regulated, it won't be regulated. What anyone here says or thinks about it has little bearing on the matter.

[Anth0n]

I think it's a good strategy to be open with Bitcoin regulation when on a mainstream news broadcast. The average American has the attitude that trade should be illegal unless the government explicitly allows it.

[slush]

I fully agree with Jeff Garzik: bitcoin exchanges, and mostly the biggest one, must do steps to following government rules to survive. Central Bitcoin exchanges are very weak point of whole infrastructure, so when they will do something illegal, they can be shut down pretty easily.

Don't forget that bitcoin != exchanges (and mainly bitcoin != mtgox). So regulating exchanges isn't the same as regulating Bitcoin. Also don't forget that mtgox is already doing steps to follow USA regulations (those 1000$ daily limit of withdrawal etc).

I really don't understand people who want to keep bitcoin illegal. Following laws is key point to have bitcoin economy running. If you don't like government, you don't need to use regulated services and buy bitcoins from some random guy on the street. That's completely your choice.

I think that people writing "FUCK" to Jeff's statement are simply dumb. Or childish.

[bittersweet]

I really don't understand people who want to keep bitcoin illegal.

Bitcoin is illegal? Since when?

[Tukotih]

1) Will cooperating with government make bitcoins go up in value because it may result in their adoption by the mainstream, or will it make bitcoins less valuable because it diminishes financial privacy which is a very important motivation for a lot of people.

How does bitcoin diminish financial privacy?

[slush]

Bitcoin is illegal? Since when?

You picked the least important thing from my post, congratz.

[cloud9]

Don't worry people, the official Bitcoin client will be obsolete soon enough, just like with BitTorrent. Gavin and Garzik are figure heads. If they came out with an official client that enabled government regulation, everyone would just switch to a 3rd party client that didn't have it. So party on!

Maybe we have come to the fork in the Bitcoin road - where Bitcoin client forks and splits up between legal users and illegal users and each network only recognizes the Bitcoin keys following its rules?  Issues talked about here:

http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=8530.0

or concerns raised here:

http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=13694.0

[slush]

Don't worry people, the official Bitcoin client will be obsolete soon enough, just like with BitTorrent.

I hope not. Bitcoin client is quite difficult piece of software, by using 3rd party clients which does not implement important pieces as official client, you are risking your money and problems transfers pretty easily.

Gavin and Garzik are figure heads.

No, they are not only spokesmen. They are core developers, who understand very well what's going in the bitcoin sources.

If they came out with an official client that enabled government regulation,

If... but nobody is saying that they are going to add anything for 'government regulation' into the client. Read carefully - Jeff is talking just about exchanges.

[bittersweet]

If Jeff Garzik owns an exchange, I think he can regulate it however he wants to. But I think he should stay away from other people businesses. Exchange owners will know what's best for them.

[enki]

So our guy gets called up to do an interview on a segment that looks like it was totally geared up to tear him a new asshole and declare to the world at large that BTC = Drugs.

He manages to divert 95% of the content away from that point, while slipping in the buzzwords to make Joe Public feel warm and fuzzy and all "Hey these BTC things don't sound so shifty at all", at the same time as explaining things in something other than a way that only a nerd would love, and you guys are complaining about it?

Really?

Really?





edit: This commentary brought to you by Tradehill referral code TH-R1507

personal opinion: best PR i've ever seen. tip of the hat to jgarzik!

[rebuilder]

If they came out with an official client that enabled government regulation,

If... but nobody is saying that they are going to add anything for 'government regulation' into the client. Read carefully - Jeff is talking just about exchanges.

In my post above I was actually going to add that an effective attack vector for Government against Bitcoin might be to convince some of the main devs to include features into the "official" client that make it easier to regulate Bitcoin. I left that out, though, since I couldn't come up with anything that would do the trick.

I'm assuming any government-instigated changes would have to not break backward compatibility or they would have a hard time getting people to use new versions with such additions. So what could actually be done to the mainstream client to make it more regulation-friendly? One thing I can think of is the option to use central servers for some functions of Bitcoin to, say, remove or reduce the need to wait for confirmations (effectively an third-party wallet hosting service). As we go more and more mainstream, more and more of the  userbase is unlikely to care much about anonymity and decentralized transfers, but still I don't see any way to actually make it mandatory to use any hypothetical centralized features in future versions. If a release with regulation-friendly features immediately breaks compatibility with other clients, I don't see it gaining much traction.

So, my question is, is there anything that could realistically be done to significantly change the way Bitcoin works to make it more palatable to would-be regulators, or are we just frothing at the mouth about nothing here?

[cloud9]

Some more fiction:

Swimmer:  "But its anonymous!"  
Anders:  "No it is not!"  

Swimmer:  "But its untraceable!"  
Anders:  "No it is not!"  

Swimmer:  "But its illegal!"  
Anders:  "No it is not!"  

Swimmer:  "But you can launder it!"  
Anders:  "Yes you can! Like most assets!"  

Swimmer:  "But if you LAUNDER it, THEN it will become maybe untraceable or even anonymous!"  
Anders:  "Yes."  

Swimmer:  "But laundering is illegal!"  
Anders:  "Yes it is."  

Swimmer:  "Oh I get it!, Ghostbusters go after those LAUNDERERS and DRUG PEDDLERS at least we can LITIGATE .... THEM!"  

All legal Bitcoin crypto-commodity users:  Cheer!!