2013-08-13 bitservicex.com - Why Bitcoin needs centralized regulation

[drawingthesun]

Why Bitcoin needs centralized regulation and why I'm shutting down BitServiceX

https://www.bitservicex.com/en/news/why-bitcoin-needs-centralized-regulation-and-why-im-shutting/64

The future of cryptographic currencies is not "anonymous and irreversible" as Bitcoin. Anonymous currency will always be a criminal's currency. (By the way, fiat cash is not anonymous. If you pay cash in person then your face, clothing, language and location are known to the other party.) Instead, centralized banks will eventually distribute cryptographic "sister currencies" to their fiat currency.

Bitcoin pioneered a successful decentralized currency, but Bitcoin will survive only in a museum. By the year 2020 many commercial enterprises will have rolled out their own (centralized!) crypto-currencies.

From my personal experience most Bitcoin exchange users are money laundering criminals, scammers, drug users or terrorists. I want nothing to do with you people. Bitcoin needs centralized regulation.

I can understand his frustration that his service was abused by scammers and such. If there is a way to take advantage many people will.

What do you people think about the article (Please read the whole thing before commenting)

[CIYAM]

(By the way, fiat cash is not anonymous. If you pay cash in person then your face, clothing, language and location are known to the other party.)

Hmm... not possible to leave a bag of cash hidden somewhere and then give someone instructions on how to find it (or even easier just pay some nobody to do the cash delivery for you)?.

Bitcoin pioneered a successful decentralized currency, but Bitcoin will survive only in a museum. By the year 2020 many commercial enterprises will have rolled out their own (centralized!) crypto-currencies.

We've had centralized digital currencies for years but I don't see the Linden (or others) being something that we are going to be using to buy general goods and services with.

From my personal experience most Bitcoin exchange users are money laundering criminals, scammers, drug users or terrorists. I want nothing to do with you people. Bitcoin needs centralized regulation.

Seems like nothing more than a troll comment.

[drawingthesun]

Do you think he is wrong about Governments and businesses creating their own alternative coins and successfully competing with Bitcoin?

[bitfair]

It's a pity, and it illustrates the need for exchanges to have a reliable and understanding banking partner that will stand up for bitcoin users.

I think these guys can present an excellent solution to the problem (which appears to be a problem that all exchanges and several business are facing):
https://www.havelockinvestments.com/fund.php?symbol=CFIG

[CIYAM]

Do you think he is wrong about Governments and businesses creating their own alternative coins and successfully competing with Bitcoin?

I would not be so surprised to see things like Bankcoin^TM appearing (had written about this a year ago or so) but I think that unfortunately greed and manipulation of such coins would mean that most people are probably not going to trust them any more than fiat.

[davidgdg]

This cri de coeur is rather strange.  

Bitservicex seems to have had two main problems:

1. Reversible bank transfers resulting in fraud losses to Bitservicex (though this seems soluble by maintaining a 10 or 21 day delay before crediting funds).

2. Restrictions on its ability to pay fiat to sellers of BTC caused by AML regulations.

Neither of these problems have much if anything to do with bitcoin. Basically the service is closing because of the difficulties apparently posed by the fiat banking and regulatory environment in Europe. These are significant problems but the author is shooting at the wrong target.

The paragraph headed "Why Bitcoin is failing consumers" does not seem to follow from anything mentioned previously.  He says "Bitcoin sellers are ripped of by criminals with stolen bank accounts". But "bitcoin sellers" can't mean people selling stuff for bitcoins. It must mean people selling bitcoins for (fiat) stuff - i.e. he talking about Exchanges. So this is just a reprise of point 1 above which adds nothing.  

The paragraph headed "The future of cryptographic currencies" is just plain odd.

[herzmeister]

no, Bitcoin does *not* need central regulation, because all the problems he mentions have to do with the legacy banking system.

[hathmill]

Centralized issuing of a non-inflationary non-manipulated currency is a pipe dream. Only way of creating a deflationary digital currency is by decentralizing it. Privacy/Anonymity is needed as protection against governmental crack down on a decentralized (read uncontrollable) currency. There already IS a centralized digital currency and it is called USD and it happens to be a world reserve currency.

Edit: im neither a druggie, nor criminal. I trade currencies. Actually it would be in my trading interest to see a regulation and bitcoin public push with blessing from the gov. But then again Im not stupid and understand that what we rhen have is _not_ bitcoin. Rather just some digital gov. controlled money.

[marcus_of_augustus]

Solution: Bitcoin needs... centralized regulation and personal (non-anonymous) transactions.

Basically reads like the poor kid wandered into the wrong bar and got stuffing kicked out of him ... now he wants to cry in public about it. If he read the manual of what bitcoin was before setting up his insane business model he'd have been better placed ... who did he think he was, Elon Musk setting up the next PayPal?

[Itcher]

I don't think that's fair. This man did spend a lot of time and energy into bitcoin, and he claims serious reasons why he will shut down the exchange. Don't call him a troll, a kid, or a looser before you did run an exchange in the EU by yourself.

Discuss the reasons, discuss solutions - but don't discuss the person. That's to easy.

I for myself wondered, why he didn't wait 10 days after the sepa goes in till he let the customers trade with it.

I wondered also, why he didn't made a trust-system in which you have to be validated.

He call's for a central regulation cause he feels unable to develop a decentralized regulation. But this is, what we see everywhere. Look at bitcoin.de, where there's a peer-to-peer-exchange with validated members and trust-stars. And so on. It's good, when every exchange goes his own way to regulate, and the (bad) experiences of bitservicex are worth a lot for the new ones trying to do.

[Itcher]

you could call it "regulation by market", and it's a way, where social scientist do see the future of economy and society - in the selfregulation through peer-groups ... regulation by interest instead of regulation by principle / law.