Getting around a government ban on BTC

[kokojie]

Thailand has already banned BTC and China seems to be coming down hard on it.  The possibility of more countries banning it (including the US and China) seems very real.  What would an exchange look like that is able to get around this?

I can imagine a website in a BTC-friendly country (Denmark?) that displays an orderbook that is only updated every hour (for example).  At the top of the hour, you can see the latest status of the orderbook.  Then you click the order you want to transact with and you are given P2P payment instructions for a buy (PayPal, Dwolla, etc) or a deposit address for a sell.  The website could maintain a reputation tracking system for each member.  New members would need to built up their rep with small transactions before they are given permission for larger transactions.  The time in between orderbook updates (1 hour?) would give people the chance to complete their transaction.

My feeble mind tells me this would be a great way to enable people to get fiat into BTC no matter what the governments do, but I'm pretty sure you guys are going to poke about a thousand holes in it.

Won't work. There's the possibility of users that appear to be honest for a long time (pirateat40 had a spotless OTC trading rating, and large volume of trades), and then suddenly turn rogue for large returns.

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[Siegfried]

Spend your fiat on mining hardware. When you want to sell, sell for gold or silver.

A CPU-only altcoin will rage ahead of Bitcoin in China.

Especially one with stronger anonymity than Bitcoin.

That makes a lot of sense. I hope it happens soon.

[beetcoin]

Spend your fiat on mining hardware. When you want to sell, sell for gold or silver.

A CPU-only altcoin will rage ahead of Bitcoin in China.

Especially one with stronger anonymity than Bitcoin.

anonymity with bitcoin is not the issue here. it's getting the currency into bank accounts anonymously that is the problem. with any other crypto, you'd need an exchange that would require registration, a bank account and an ID.

[SprichtZarathustra]

Has the government ban prevented you from getting weed?

Indeed. Bans don't scare anybody.

Focus should be more and how can we use it differently other than
trading it for FIAT to get rich quick or holding it 'till the apocalypse is over.
We need actual uses for BTC. Maybe the Altcoins could play a role in this too.

Shame to see cryptosextoys temporarily not accepting Sexcoins anymore. Stuff like
this is what's going to get it going. Actual uses for all the decentralized, anonymous,
instant, worldwide characteristics of our precious coins.

LOL, I hadn't thought that far. But yes, even if you dislike weed it could be the alt-coin you need to purchase bitcoin.

How could anybody not love weed? It's the bitcoin of plants!

[smoothrunnings]

Has the government ban prevented you from getting weed?

Indeed. Bans don't scare anybody.

Focus should be more and how can we use it differently other than
trading it for FIAT to get rich quick or holding it 'till the apocalypse is over.
We need actual uses for BTC. Maybe the Altcoins could play a role in this too.

Shame to see cryptosextoys temporarily not accepting Sexcoins anymore. Stuff like
this is what's going to get it going. Actual uses for all the decentralized, anonymous,
instant, worldwide characteristics of our precious coins.

LOL, I hadn't thought that far. But yes, even if you dislike weed it could be the alt-coin you need to purchase bitcoin.

How could anybody not love weed? It's the bitcoin of plants!

I think bans do scare the weak hearted bitcoin investors, and as soon as the dust cloud settles down everything returns to normal.

[tvbcof]

I take it you've never heard of LocalBitcoins?

I have, but doesn't it require that you meet up in person?  If so, it's like comparing eBay to Craigs List.

Not necessarily.

All of those ads work by having the buyer go to a branch of the seller's bank and deposit cash. The seller then releases the escrow when they verify the deposit.

Buyer and seller never meet in person.

That's what 'bitcoin-brokers.org' does.  I used their service for a while with very good results, but now I just use Coinbase (in part because I've given up all hope of financial privacy using Bitcoin.)  I've followed them since, and so far I've not seen anyone with bad results.

The escrow agent could always decide to pack it in with all current money or get hit by a bus or whatever of course so, as always, it's best to never play with more than a guy can afford to lose.

A while ago the operator stopped taking on sellers when he had to many (and started again as conditions change.)  That was a good sign in terms of gauging his motives, but of course it could also have been a confidence trick.  One way or another if I were running a legitimate escrow, I would not want to be holding more value than necessary.  To actually do it right in terms of security and fail-safe systems and such could take a lot of focus and be a fair amount of work.

I'm guessing that the fun will come to an end if/when it becomes unlawful to deposit cash into a random person's account without some modicum of 'know-your-whatever-ness'.  I'm surprised it's even allowed now to be honest.  Probably it would be implemented by some combination of claw-backs and/or banks just shutting out customers who do this.  My guess.

[SprichtZarathustra]

I think bans do scare the weak hearted bitcoin investors, and as soon as the dust cloud settles down everything returns to normal.

I'm not interested in those people. Of course you can make some short term money with BTC (for believers, gaining FIAT on the back of BTC feels
a bit dirty), but if you understand cryptocurrency you can see a completely re-structured global society.

(PS. I think the porn-industry could really boost actual usage for cryptocoins in a way SR did, hence the SXC reference.  )

[Stinky_Pete]

China has not banned Bitcoin. It has banned exchanges from fiat to Bitcoin. The Bitcoin economy in China is in good health.

If people would take the trouble to find things out, then the recent downturn need not have happened. When the truth finally dawns then the price may go up again.

[jdbtracker]

I think getting around bans is silk road. The operator seems pretty... hmmm, Idealistic? Get under Tor, trade some stuff with trusted escrow services, deposit cash account to account, it's not illegal to buy Bitcoin yet is it? Not a good way to do illegal trades, if it ever gets that bad, but I'm sure someone will figure something out.

Hey I got a great one, setup a Bitmessage exchange site, you can send as many messages as you like using a GPU, get a good automated service started and start trading, hell no one will even know where the hell you are, and it will take them figuring out SHA512, even with pre-image that's a monster to break.

probably just setup a Open Transaction Federation of servers over a territory, hell make them decentralized, anyone who wants to start one up can and join a Federation. Setup the OT server to act as a Escrow service under a contract to setup two transactions account to account with the legacy banking system,

I wrote this some time ago, could work if implemented properly.

I'm pretty new to this, but on one of the p2p exchange threads I thought this would be a great idea.

but it would be two transactions with 2 out of the three parties acting as escrow.

so A wants to sell their bitcoins
    B is the escrow that accepts the risks they accept A's BTC
    C is the person who is going to get BTC from B act as intermediary escrow and send a wire to A

It's two transactions

C sends the cash to A and authorizes A's BTC transaction to B
A authorizes the BTC transaction from B to C to complete the loop.

A has already transferred their BTC, B has sent their money and won't get their BTC until A gets the cash to authorize the escrow.

the two original parties are holding the triggers on each other and both have lost control of their money.

what do you think, yes I know the escrow assumes a lot of the risk, but that is why they charge a fee to offset any possible probabilistic losses, but the risk is low if a reputation system can be implemented. and yeah creating a three way p2p exchange still require the relevant p2p component to match local btc holders with local btc buyers and escrow intermediaries still need to be made and this system makes it a whole lot harder to match.

I found this in one of Satoshi's threads.

If you're still worried about it, it's cryptographically possible to make a risk free trade.  The two parties would set up transactions on both sides such that when they both sign the transactions, the second signer's signature triggers the release of both.  The second signer can't release one without releasing the other.

Edit: Hell you can go crazy on it and build it on top of a Namecoin domain, serving through Tor or I2P for maximum annonymity. Those obsessed with finding out who you are can't even check the volume of transmissions to find you, because the thousands of exchanges are exiting Tor from everywhere.

You can even take it to a whole new level if implemnting SHA-3 with only 1-4 iterations of the non-linear component, those configurations are reversible; They act like compression algorithms rather than hashes, just follow the keccak community to find out how. Anything after 4 iterations gets exponentially harder to reverse. Basically you can turn a 1000 page book, turn it into a 1024bit Hash string to be reversed later.

http://keccak.noekeon.org/

[qualia8]

Localbitcoins is not a solution.
Last 24 hours BTC/USD volume:
Btc-e 144000
Bitstamp 131000
MtGox 107000
Localbitcoins 588

That volume number is misleading.  A lot of trades are arranged by localbitcoins.com, but do not use their wallet, but simply go P2P.  Those don't get counted towards volume.

[justusranvier]

That volume number is misleading.  A lot of trades are arranged by localbitcoins.com, but do not use their wallet, but simply go P2P.  Those don't get counted towards volume.

Also LocalBitcoin's only reports volume for online trades, not in-person trades - even the in-person trades which are processed through the LocalBitcoins transaction system.

[kizzoboy]

The only way bitcoin (and the ALT coins) will be successful long term is if we exercise our rights through the public policy process.  Avoiding regulation is certainly an option, but I think that the value, practicality, and usability of bitcoin would be much better if the US government WAS more open to its adoption.  The USA could be the hub for the bitcoin economy if it wanted to.  Bitcoin should be treated fairly - just like every other asset in the United States.

Media pundits are acting like no money laundering goes on in flee markets, laundry mats, dry cleaners, or car washes.  Bitcoin is an idea worth defending!  We're getting closer with the introduction (and possible revising and reintroduction) of HR 77 Free Competition in Currency Act.

[Stephen Gornick]

That's what 'bitcoin-brokers.org' does.
[...]

I'm guessing that the fun will come to an end if/when it becomes unlawful to deposit cash into a random person's account without some modicum of 'know-your-whatever-ness'.  I'm surprised it's even allowed now to be honest.  Probably it would be implemented by some combination of claw-backs and/or banks just shutting out customers who do this.  My guess.

I forgot about that ... sure, if cash deposit in China works, then Bitcoin-Brokers.org or similar service there would work pretty well.    That is .., until they start confiscating funds of people caught selling coins that way.

I wonder if cash deposit (by a third party, without providing identity) is an accepted method in China.

[headpolo]

Spend your fiat on mining hardware. When you want to sell, sell for gold or silver.

A CPU-only altcoin will rage ahead of Bitcoin in China.

Especially one with stronger anonymity than Bitcoin.

I've read somewhere that even the average people in china is trying to accumulate btc against yuans steady inflation of its value.

If exchanges are banned officially how average people would continue to buy btc or better use it as a currency? Regarding this volatility and government's oppression i cant see a future for a coin not anonymous at all.

However btc/yuan pair is still correlated with other exhanges (mtgox, bitstamp and such) and this is confusing, how on earth a currency is prohibited from exchanging to fiat still correlates in value with other markets? And volume is not getting any lower even though there is no new/fresh yuan getting deposited to the exchanges.

[Peter Lambert]

If exchanges are banned officially how average people would continue to buy btc or better use it as a currency?

There just has to be a way for btc to enter into the economy from outside the country. There are some services which people can do over the internet, those could be paid for in bitcoins (programming, translation, sexchat), the people who earn bitcoins in such a way can then trade face to face with the other people.

[luqash3]

Yea bitcoinrocks it is really unfortunate to hear that Thailand has banned biticon while other countries are giving it a tough time. Your mentioned details really seem worth trying but you know many fraudsters have got active to loot innocent users so please tell me how can I trust your source?. (make answer brief in bullet form preferred)

[Peter Lambert]

Yea bitcoinrocks it is really unfortunate to hear that Thailand has banned biticon while other countries are giving it a tough time. Your mentioned details really seem worth trying but you know many fraudsters have got active to loot innocent users so please tell me how can I trust your source?. (make answer brief in bullet form preferred)

Bitcoins are not banned in Thailand.

[jdbtracker]

Yea bitcoinrocks it is really unfortunate to hear that Thailand has banned biticon while other countries are giving it a tough time. Your mentioned details really seem worth trying but you know many fraudsters have got active to loot innocent users so please tell me how can I trust your source?. (make answer brief in bullet form preferred)

Bitcoins are not banned in Thailand.

Yup Bitcoin co. of Thailand is some sort of exchange or something that fell afoul of the Thai authorities... very likely in a mistaken assumption of what Bitcoin actually was...

[bryant.coleman]

That volume number is misleading.  A lot of trades are arranged by localbitcoins.com, but do not use their wallet, but simply go P2P.  Those don't get counted towards volume.

Are there any volume estimates available for Localbitcoins? I really suspect whether their volumes are as large as Mt Gox and BTC-E. Most of the large traders stay away from Localbitcoins. It is mostly used for low volume trades.

[Peter Lambert]

That volume number is misleading.  A lot of trades are arranged by localbitcoins.com, but do not use their wallet, but simply go P2P.  Those don't get counted towards volume.

Are there any volume estimates available for Localbitcoins? I really suspect whether their volumes are as large as Mt Gox and BTC-E. Most of the large traders stay away from Localbitcoins. It is mostly used for low volume trades.

Do you have a source for this? What do you consider a "large trrader"? I see one guy near me who is offering to exchange $10000 cash for bitcoins or bitcoins for cash, does that count as a large trader?