[2018-01-17] Is Global Front on Bitcoin Regulation Possible?

[cybersofts]

Is Global Front on Bitcoin Regulation Possible?



On a day where confusing news continues to emanate from South Korea and China on new proposed bans and restrictions on Bitcoin, a member of the board of Germany’s Bundesbank has called for a united global regulatory front.

Joachim Wuermeling of Bundesbank believes there is very little chance of containing this digital global phenomenon with differing national rules across the globe. With international co-operation in regulating Bitcoin comes a chance for regulators to take control, says Wuermeling.


The effect of regulation

There has been increased regulatory pressure on Bitcoin and the entire cryptocurrency market recently, which has been felt across the board. The confusion that began in Korea caused a major dip, and even the retraction of those statements helped the market grow.

Within these regulatory moves, from individual national countries, there are often powerful moves seen across the entire global cryptocurrency market. However, they are never really big enough to bring it under full control.

These are case-by-case regulations, and these instances are not strong enough on their own for the free running cryptomarket to be constrained by.

“Effective regulation of virtual currencies would therefore only be achievable through the greatest possible international cooperation because the regulatory power of nation states is obviously limited,” Wuermeling said.


Two sides to the digital coin

The issue is that there are two very different views to regulating Bitcoin, and these views can differ from country to country.

Japan is one of the strongest supporters of the digital currency market, giving Bitcoin currency status last year. However, just across the Sea of Japan, on the mainland, China has been the lead actor in the war against Bitcoin.

First there was the ICO ban, then the ban on exchanges, and now there is more bad news for those who even deal in exchange-like services.

It is hard to find an agreeable position on digital currencies for nations with so many torn between different ends of the scale. This is one of the reasons why regulation is so difficult.


Is it needed?

There is also the discussion of the need for regulation as it seemingly flies in the face of what Bitcoin is trying to accomplish with its decentralized nature. Cal Evans, an International Technology Lawyer from London, says:

    “As the cryptocurrency “grows up” it has had to overcome some serious compliance and regulatory problems internationally. These regulatory issues are numerous in nature depending on which country you read this in. Yet one problem seems to slip under the radar time and time again. Money Laundering.”

Adding to the devious nature, an unregulated currency brings London’s Kingston University economics professor Steve Keen echoes similar sentiments.

    “You can’t be deregulated in a system where there will be criminal attacks. The code itself is clearly not foolproof. People will find their way in, forks will be forced upon them, whether they want them or not. In that situation, regulation may be the only future.”


Is it possible?

It is clear that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies will continue to exist in ways that many regulators disapprove of unless there is a united front on wresting the digital currency economy under global control.

Even banning the stuff in countries in China has only proved to be a speed bump in the road, Bitcoiners, and the likes can always find a way.


Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/is-global-front-on-bitcoin-regulation-possible

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[Carlton Banks]

There's only one united front: and it's Bitcoiners

As long as we continue to refuse to bow to pressure from governments, then governments will continue to be in disarray on the issue. Even if there was a uniform, worldwide totalitarian regime established to fight Bitcoin, Bitcoin could still survive it. The Bitcoin concept is too powerful, and it was deliberately conceived that way.


These are the croaks and groans of crooks and drones, publicly dying in slow-motion for all to see. They're terrified: of a ~15 MB piece of computer software.

[hatshepsut93]

There's only one united front: and it's Bitcoiners

As long as we continue to refuse to bow to pressure from governments, then governments will continue to be in disarray on the issue. Even if there was a uniform, worldwide totalitarian regime established to fight Bitcoin, Bitcoin could still survive it. The Bitcoin concept is too powerful, and it was deliberately conceived that way.


These are the croaks and groans of crooks and drones, publicly dying in slow-motion for all to see. They're terrified: of a ~15 MB piece of computer software.

There's no doubt that Bitcoin will survive any attacks launched by governments, but they can disrupt it and make it less usable and secure.
First, Bitcoin needs markets to establish price, and if governments will cut those markets from banking, it will result in lower volumes, higher volatility and risks of p2p trading.
The second problem is mining - if it will become illegal globally, it will be harder to achieve bigger amounts of PoW, so PoW might become a limiting factor for growth of underground Bitcoin economy.
A good analogy here would be drugs - outlawing them didn't make them disappear, but instead just made this market worse for consumers. So, while I'm not going to sell my coins if governments will start banning Bitcoin, I hope this will not happen.

[squatter]

There's only one united front: and it's Bitcoiners

As long as we continue to refuse to bow to pressure from governments, then governments will continue to be in disarray on the issue. Even if there was a uniform, worldwide totalitarian regime established to fight Bitcoin, Bitcoin could still survive it. The Bitcoin concept is too powerful, and it was deliberately conceived that way.

These are the croaks and groans of crooks and drones, publicly dying in slow-motion for all to see. They're terrified: of a ~15 MB piece of computer software.

My hope is that the inherent nature of geopolitics and competition among nation-states will prevent any such coordination like the German central bank is suggesting. But I won't lie. I'm not completely confident that we can rule it out. At some point, if the trend of money flow continues, I think that Bitcoin/cryptocurrencies will begin to uniformly degrade governments' perceived control over national monetary policy/sovereignty and economic stability. I worry that this could give global powers shared incentive to form a united front against them.

I'm tempted to believe that Bitcoin will survive regardless, but I wonder sometimes what a coordinated attack by nation-states would look like and how detrimental it could be. They could potentially cripple much of the meatspace service and mining infrastructure. It makes me think of one of Satoshi's posts:

As a thought experiment, imagine there was a base metal as scarce as gold but with the following properties:
- boring grey in colour
- not a good conductor of electricity
- not particularly strong, but not ductile or easily malleable either
- not useful for any practical or ornamental purpose

and one special, magical property:
- can be transported over a communications channel

If it somehow acquired any value at all for whatever reason, then anyone wanting to transfer wealth over a long distance could buy some, transmit it, and have the recipient sell it.

Maybe it could get an initial value circularly as you've suggested, by people foreseeing its potential usefulness for exchange.  (I would definitely want some)  Maybe collectors, any random reason could spark it.

I think the traditional qualifications for money were written with the assumption that there are so many competing objects in the world that are scarce, an object with the automatic bootstrap of intrinsic value will surely win out over those without intrinsic value.  But if there were nothing in the world with intrinsic value that could be used as money, only scarce but no intrinsic value, I think people would still take up something.

(I'm using the word scarce here to only mean limited potential supply)

Inevitably, Bitcoin is backed only by the faith of its users (who have simply picked Bitcoin as their money rather than something else). Thus, the trick for TPTB is to shatter that faith. Is that impossible? I'd be curious to see them try.

[Stegobit]

Global regulation is impossible! Many countries will use prohibitive regulations in other ones as competitive advantage, attracting Bitcoin and other crypto projects.

[AK47-]

Bitcoin regulation on a global front may or may not be possible but it is extremely important for bitcoin’s acceptance and adoption. The more these manipulations take place; unethical activities continue it undermines mainstream audiences faith in bitcoin. Take a look at any security in history. Regulation always causes increase in interest from public be it regulation of F&O by CBOE & CME, equity by NYSE. Always.

[Carlton Banks]

Inevitably, Bitcoin is backed only by the faith of its users (who have simply picked Bitcoin as their money rather than something else). Thus, the trick for TPTB is to shatter that faith. Is that impossible? I'd be curious to see them try.

So, both you and Satoshi highlight that the demand for Bitcoin is as a medium of exchange only, it has no other purpose. As Satoshi suggests, this makes Bitcoin very desirable as a medium of exchange, because in contrast to it's perfect uselessness otherwise, Bitcoin plays all the parts that a medium of exchange needs to so well.


The whole rationale for Satoshi's design for Bitcoin was to outclass (and hence outcompete) existing forms of money entirely. This present clamor to "regulate" Bitcoin signals Satoshi's victory in his design decisions. Policy chiefs saying "we must unite" when they are otherwise so divided is a highly effective admission of how powerless they are to stop Bitcoin.


When the entire modern way of life is sold to the modern day underclasses on the basis of fairness and stability, the underclasses are beginning to see the sales-spin more clearly. Assets pushed on them by the finance world and the media are looking increasingly questionable in value.

So, this is the other side of the faith argument: the authorities who would have us believe in the value of bonds, real estate, stock market or fiat currency are looking less authoritative now than ever. In today's world, yesterday's liars won't get so far convincing people of anything when grassroots movements like Bitcoin demonstrate so effectively how heinous their previous lies were. The faith in old institutions is eroding, and increasingly so. And the door is wide open now for new paradigms to step in. It's the perfect time for something like Bitcoin to establish itself.

[superjeyy]

Bitcoin regulation on a global front may or may not be possible but it is extremely important for bitcoin’s acceptance and adoption. The more these manipulations take place; unethical activities continue it undermines mainstream audiences faith in bitcoin. Take a look at any security in history. Regulation always causes increase in interest from public be it regulation of F&O by CBOE & CME, equity by NYSE. Always.

I agree with AK47- that whether  a regulation is to be initiated globally or not, it is important to establish a united idea towards the structure and concept of Bitcoin beforehand to allow acceptance and adoption of this currency as different perspectives would hinder making a comprehensive regulation towards Bitcoin management and control. How would a global law be established if each country has a different stand on Bitcoin? I truly believe that having a global front towards the regulation of Bitcoin is appropriate since it caters the virtual world that is globally accessed. What I think we should put more focus on is how to make everyone understand the nature of Bitcoin and how complex but assuring this cryptocurrency can be.

[Qartersa]

I think there will only be 'majority' but there can never be global front because countries across borders have different cultures, mores, religions, socio-economic status and all other extraneous factors you can ever think of. With the latter enumeration alone, how can there be a common ground? We cannot even reconcile with our religious affiliations, what more when it comes to regulating Bitcoin? Well, my stand on this may change depending on the progress of Bitcoin in the sooner years to come but as of writing, I guess creating a global front on Bitcoin regulation is just not feasible.

[Hell-raiser]

There's no doubt that Bitcoin will survive any attacks launched by governments, but they can disrupt it and make it less usable and secure.
First, Bitcoin needs markets to establish price, and if governments will cut those markets from banking, it will result in lower volumes, higher volatility and risks of p2p trading.
The second problem is mining - if it will become illegal globally, it will be harder to achieve bigger amounts of PoW, so PoW might become a limiting factor for growth of underground Bitcoin economy.
A good analogy here would be drugs - outlawing them didn't make them disappear, but instead just made this market worse for consumers. So, while I'm not going to sell my coins if governments will start banning Bitcoin, I hope this will not happen.

But these problems are already present in Bitcoin even without government intervention, especially the last one related to mining. And both problems can be tackled by purely technical means. If we want to escape government regulation, we should remove the only thing which they can regulate. This is centralized exchanges. As soon as we have genuinely decentralized exchanges with atomic swaps between currencies and which are accessible directly on the blockchain right from your wallet, this problem will go away. The problem with mining can be efficiently solved by switching to POS blocks.

[gentlemand]

What one country sees as a threat, another will see as an opportunity. You can't even get every country to sign up to the Geneva Convention. What makes anyone think they'll all align when there's money to be made?

Global regulation is a pipe dream and always will be.

[Hell-raiser]

What one country sees as a threat, another will see as an opportunity. You can't even get every country to sign up to the Geneva Convention. What makes anyone think they'll all align when there's money to be made?

Global regulation is a pipe dream and always will be.

It doesn't really matter if some countries drop out. There are only three major financial systems in the world. The Eurozone, which consists of the European countries, the US dollar zone, which encompasses the whole world, and the Chinese Yuan, which spreads throughout most of Asia. As you can see, it requires only three countries or unions to collude in order to make the life of Bitcoin users completely unbearable.

[Carlton Banks]

There are only three major financial systems in the world. The Eurozone, which consists of the European countries, the US dollar zone, which encompasses the whole world, and the Chinese Yuan, which spreads throughout most of Asia. As you can see, it requires only three countries or unions to collude in order to make the life of Bitcoin users completely unbearable.

You're forgetting that those three systems are in conflict.

The euro is fragile, and depends to some extent on the dollar. And the dollar's structural importance is being eroded, the chinese government are attempting to encourage the yuan's use for settling trade between it's trading partners (which may begin to include EU countries if the dollar begins to have serious problems).  This is likely to escalate considering the US government's increasing belligerence. The IMF can't rescue the situation either, it's not seen with the same reverence as it is in the western world (the IMF is considered to be biased towards the west from the perspective of the eastern powers)

With an intractable conflict taking place between 3 major currency groups (all 3 weakening in various structural ways, and all 3 increasingly inflated away), they can be as "unbearable" as they like. Military rule in authoritarian Venezuela cannot stop cryptocurrency, and neither can a totalitarian dictatorship in China.


I seriously doubt anything can, if it was that easy, why hasn't anything effective been done already? The kids (regular folk like us) are in the process of taking away the "adult's" (government's) credit card. They should be going crazy, but instead they "want to talk", or "intend to unite" . That means they're going to lose as long as we stand firm.

[Hell-raiser]

There are only three major financial systems in the world. The Eurozone, which consists of the European countries, the US dollar zone, which encompasses the whole world, and the Chinese Yuan, which spreads throughout most of Asia. As you can see, it requires only three countries or unions to collude in order to make the life of Bitcoin users completely unbearable.

You're forgetting that those three systems are in conflict.

The euro is fragile, and depends to some extent on the dollar. And the dollar's structural importance is being eroded, the chinese government are attempting to encourage the yuan's use for settling trade between it's trading partners (which may begin to include EU countries if the dollar begins to have serious problems).  This is likely to escalate considering the US government's increasing belligerence. The IMF can't rescue the situation either, it's not seen with the same reverence as it is in the western world (the IMF is considered to be biased towards the west from the perspective of the eastern powers)

With an intractable conflict taking place between 3 major currency groups (all 3 weakening in various structural ways, and all 3 increasingly inflated away), they can be as "unbearable" as they like. Military rule in authoritarian Venezuela cannot stop cryptocurrency, and neither can a totalitarian dictatorship in China.

I seriously doubt anything can, if it was that easy, why hasn't anything effective been done already? The kids (regular folk like us) are in the process of taking away the "adult's" (government's) credit card. They should be going crazy, but instead they "want to talk", or "intend to unite" . That means they're going to lose as long as we stand firm.

I don't particularly disagree with your assertion that these systems are in conflict with each other. But this doesn't in the least mean that they won't collude to expel Bitcoin through the IMF or otherwise. In fact, they don't even need to collude or do anything to that tune at all. They can ban Bitcoin entirely on their own out of their own interests. Hasn't China already done just that? Further, as you said yourself, the euro is fragile and depends on the dollar. So it all comes down to the US going berserk at Bitcoin, and the damage is done.

Note that I don't say that Bitcoin has to die. Obviously, it won't and it will survive but in the short-term it won't feel quite well. At least until truly decentralized things with no single point of failure start to emerge like POS coins with built-in exchanges that can be traded against each other via atomic swaps. We should have had them years ago.

[Carlton Banks]

They can ban Bitcoin entirely on their own out of their own interests. Hasn't China already done just that?

No, they tried and failed to enforce a ban. Banning things seldom works.


You're forgetting too that other significant economies have something to gain from taking a unilateral stance (Japan is a likely candidate here), and also that government is much softer in many parts of the world.

Africa, for instance, is becoming an economic battleground between the US and China, and almost all of Africa is so under-developed that the old style of cash economy is dominant. Bitcoin could easily become a common currecny across Africa, or even the de facto pan-African currency, which would severely damage government power across the whole continent. Note that the breakdown in government power and legitimacy in the EU is happening in the peripheral countries, i.e. geographically adjacent to Africa.

Then, factor in the financial industry, which is either equally or more powerful than government anyway. It doesn't really matter what scenario is analysed, not all globally important actors will agree. Especially when they'll all be aware of how ineffective a ban would be (with China and Venezuela being the test cases: all that was achieved was making Bitcoin even more valuable in those countries).

Cryptocurrency cannot be beaten, and so there's no choice but to join it. The central banks in particular must be very unhappy, but what are we gonna do? Carry on riding horses when someone just invented the flying car?

[Hell-raiser]

They can ban Bitcoin entirely on their own out of their own interests. Hasn't China already done just that?

No, they tried and failed to enforce a ban. Banning things seldom works.

That's why many cryptoexchanges and Bitcoin mining operations are moving out of China? Unlike China, Japan is not an independent nation, and if things turn from bad to worse for crypto, for example, the US goes nuts over banning Bitcoin, it will have little choice if any. African countries need medicine, food, clean water and a bit of sanitation and hygiene. Can Bitcoin help them get these?

Right now it looks more like Bitcoin is a dead horse rather than a flying saucer. Still, what are the benefits that other significant economies are to gain from Bitcoin? If we forget about the speculation part, it is not very handy overall so far, at least until it moves to LN. I'm hoping for that myself but seeing how difficult it is to embrace even SegWit, a minor update to Bitcoin protocol, I doubt it will be an aha moment.

[Carlton Banks]

They can ban Bitcoin entirely on their own out of their own interests. Hasn't China already done just that?

No, they tried and failed to enforce a ban. Banning things seldom works.

That's why many cryptoexchanges and Bitcoin mining operations are moving out of China?

Bitcoin remains the most efficient way to move money out of China. Explain how that's happening if the ban was effective.

Unlike China, Japan is not an independent nation, and if things turn from bad to worse for crypto, for example, the US goes nuts over banning Bitcoin, it will have little choice if any.

Japan is taking slow steps towards independence (which is really a military issue). US political influence has never been popular in Japan, and is continuing to diminish.

Besides, you're failing to see that Japanese people have the same power to hold onto their Bitcoin that anyone else does; the situation in China or Venezuela proves that the most  repressive state actions still cannot stop decentralised cryptocurrencies. What's so magic about the US government bullying the Japanese government into failing to control people using cryptocurrency in Japan?

African countries need medicine, food, clean water and a bit of sanitation and hygiene. Can Bitcoin help them get these?

This is an exaggeration, Bitcoin has already become popular in parts of Africa. People needed computers for that to happen, those Africans had basic necessities already.

Still, what are the benefits that other significant economies are to gain from Bitcoin? If we forget about the speculation part, it is not very handy overall so far, at least until it moves to LN. I'm hoping for that myself but seeing how difficult it is to embrace even SegWit, a minor update to Bitcoin protocol, I doubt it will be an aha moment.

I'm using Segwit, and so are many people I know. The idea behind Bitcoin is deeply rooted in taking control of your own life. It's not necessary to wait for the largest Bitcoin businesses to make changes, you are actually allowed to look for others that do business how you want to do it. This is called "the free market".


Overall, you seem obsessed with the idea that Bitcoin isn't a tool more powerful than government violence. It's simple really: you're wrong. The governments of the world cannot stop it. They can make things "uncomfortable", in your words, but they're already making our lives uncomfortable, that's the reason Bitcoin exists at all.

[Hell-raiser]

Overall, you seem obsessed with the idea that Bitcoin isn't a tool more powerful than government violence. It's simple really: you're wrong[/b]. The governments of the world cannot stop it. They can make things "uncomfortable", in your words, but they're already making our lives uncomfortable, that's the reason Bitcoin exists at all.

Uncomfortable and unbearable are two different terms! Bitcoin doesn't need to be moved anywhere since it is not located in space. I can't even understand why you are saying that. But here's the gist of the matter, while you can definitely move your bitcoins around, for example, in and out of China, or whatever, to make use of your coins outside China, you have to run away in flesh. Honestly, Bitcoin can't even cope with its internal issues, and now you are talking about fighting against governments. But it doesn't mean that crypto can't fight them or future crypto won't be able to if its current incarnation fails.