Regulation is not the answer-obviously

[FreedomFeens]

Those of you crying to the state for regulation may be well intentioned but you are unfortunately looking in solutions for the wrong place.  Regulation will do nothing to protect bitcoin users, it would only benefit entrenched interests and the "big boys".  Consider how regulation completely failed to prevent the following calamities:

Enron
Worldcom
Libor Scandal
Bernie Madoff
The greatest theft in human history - the bailout of the "too big to fails"
The massive derivitaives banking scam
MF Global

-These are just the few i can remember and ones that relate soley to finance, there are many more financial examples from the past few years that regulation failed(purposefully) to prevent.

All of these terrible thefts were AIDED by regulation.  Regulatory capture is a term that refers to the situation in which people demand company x to be regulated, as a result, company x colludes/infiltrades these regulatory positions and appoints previous company x employees or friends of company x to these positions.  You can look at literally ANY corporation in america and see this phenomenon; from monsanto heads who are incharge of the FDA, to ex-bankers in charge of banking and finance regulation, defense contractor heads in charge of military budget regulation, the list goes no forever, it literally never ends.  Regulator capture is very real, to think that regulation is created for the intention of protecting the little guy is naieve and akin to saying that the state exists to help people.

Regulation will only hurt bitcoin.  Do you really believe giving the power to regulate bitcoin companies to the state is going to be good for us?  Bitcoin is a dagger to the heart of all fiat currencies, it's intention is to free people from the tyranny of state ass-wipe paper which it does wonderfully.  It is astonishingly stupid to thank that those bitcoin was created to destroy should have power over bitcoin companies.

The market can and will solve all the problems we are currently experiencing.  I feel terrible for people who lost money in Gox, but seriously it was WELL KNOWN that gox has screwed people 5 times in the past.  Why in the world would you keep your life savings on an EXCHANGE for christs sake?  This is the same thing as keeping your money in a bank and then rioting when a bank run occurrs.  I am no bitcoin expert, but i can quite easily do cold storage.  The bitcoin protocol provides all the necessary security you need to keep your bitcoins safe, guides on cold storage are all over youtube and the internet.  

Bitcoin places the responsibility of keeping your coins safe on YOU, it was built with tools in place for you to be your own bank.  The age of trusting others with your money is over.  If you want to have money in a hot wallet, import the full amount from cold storage, send a certain amount to your hot wallet and send the rest back to cold storage.  This is the safe way to store your bitcoin, not in someone else bank who lost the communities trust 5 times before in the past.

The whole point of a free market is that there is no "too big to fail".  Gox is dead, as it should be.  There are already legitimate exchanges in the market like coinbase and others.  It is up to you to do your research and not to leave your money just sitting in exchanges.

Regulators have failed us in every industry, without an understanding of the true purpose of regulation-to keep out small players, protect big players, extract wealth and power-you can't possibly see the natural solutions that will emerge in the market.  Is it not obvious that we live in a fascist country?  Corporations and the state collude to squash competition and enrich themselves, they are the last people that should be in control of bitcoin.  The community of bitcoiners should be in charge of bitcoin by voting with the coins and the market should allow those who suck to fail-as it has in this instance.  We do not have capitalism in America, we have crapitalism or crony capitalism.  In true capitalism the market decides and those who fail don't get bailouts. It sucks people lost their money in a "magic the gathering" bitcoin exchange who repeatedly violated peoples trust and lied, but you are responsible for yourself in a free market and captured regulators will never gives a crap about you.

[Bitcoinpro]

yeah right buddie your obviously part of this honeypot called gox go lick the honey of mark

regulation will do nothing negative but ensure sites like this can't harbour criminals like you

[redhawk979]

OP is right. Regulations are terrible.

I inspect my own food at restaurants to ensure I don't shit blood or die of a preventable bacterial infection.
I inspect any bridges and roads myself before I drive over them.
I inspect and audit my own FIAT bank to ensure they are still solvent and haven't run off with my money.


I don't understand why everyone can't just do this.

[practicaldreamer]

Regulators have failed us in every industry,

I don't agree - there must be many examples of where a regulatory framework protects the consumer.

One example that springs to mind is the Civil Aviation Authority - the airline operaters employ actuaries to balance risk against cost -  profit margins are very tight. A lack of sufficient regulation could lead to a real danger of safety standards being compromised - some airlines are pushing the envelope already, even with stringent regulation in place.

Here is an article about the dangers (and fatalities) that occurred in hot air ballooning accidents in Egypt - where regulations are either not as stringent (as those in the UK for eg.), or not enforced to a sufficient standard.

In finance, in the UK, my understanding is that a firm must comply with the Conduct of Business Sourcebook as specified by the Financial Conduct Authority. Having had a quick skim through, the sourcebook seems to lay a lot of store by transparency; acting fairly,honestly and professionaly;disclosure of information;etc etc

   The principles of the regulation are laid out here. Please read them and explain to me how the application of these principles would have been counterproductive for the customers of Mt.Gox - or indeed any of us in our BTC dealings with third parties. Especially since it is the case that where a firm has complied with the regulations (and still gone bust) the customer maybe entitled to compensation.

[Bitcoinpro]

OP is right. Regulations are terrible.

I inspect my own food at restaurants to ensure I don't shit blood or die of a preventable bacterial infection.
I inspect any bridges and roads myself before I drive over them.
I inspect and audit my own FIAT bank to ensure they are still solvent and haven't run off with my money.


I don't understand why everyone can't just do this.

and you died in a plane crash 

oh wait you didn't because they force the airlines to do maintenance,

they don't just wait till they drop out of the sky then buy a new plane, or do they ?

[FreedomFeens]

yeah right buddie your obviously part of this honeypot called gox go lick the honey of mark

regulation will do nothing negative but ensure sites like this can't harbour criminals like you

I have no affliation with gox at all. I'm just one guy with a very small amount of bitcoin.  I don't even have a bitcoin business-yet.  Nice how you assume i'm a criminal. 

Everything regulation will do will be negative.  If you want to get truthful about it, they will steal money from everyone to pay for their new regulations, steal money from everyone to pay goons to enforce their new regulations and the state will gain more power over this powerful anti-state technology.  It's not my fault you were foolish enough to leave your coins on gox, take responsibility and stop lashing out at others.

[FreedomFeens]

OP is right. Regulations are terrible.

I inspect my own food at restaurants to ensure I don't shit blood or die of a preventable bacterial infection.
I inspect any bridges and roads myself before I drive over them.
I inspect and audit my own FIAT bank to ensure they are still solvent and haven't run off with my money.


I don't understand why everyone can't just do this.

and you died in a plane crash  

oh wait you didn't because they force the airlines to do maintenance,

they don't just wait till they drop out of the sky then buy a new plane, or do they ?

You think airlines upkeep thier planes BECAUSE the state goons force them to?  They do it so people will fly their airlines.  If in a free market if they stopped maintaining their aircraft, no one would use their airlines and they would lose business.  It's that simple, that's how the market works, if you don't like something you withdrawl your funding.  Unlike the state, which you cannot say no to.

We already have private organizations that do this function; examples: better business bureau, consumer reports, underwriters laboratories, etc.  We need a bitcoin business bureau to investigate bitcoin companies not a monopolized criminal gang with an interest in squashing competition to their fiat empire in charge of it.

[FreedomFeens]

yeah right buddie your obviously part of this honeypot called gox go lick the honey of mark

regulation will do nothing negative but ensure sites like this can't harbour criminals like you

It's not my fault you were foolish enough to left your coins on "magic the gathering" online exchange, take responsibility and stop lashing out at others.  Noone forced you to use gox, there were many warnings.  I never once used gox because I took the time to research them before buying and it wasn't a lot of time, just a few hours.  The same as i did with cold storage, it didn't take an eternity or a masters degree in programming to figure out cold storage, I think anyone who can download an MP3 or burn a cd could do it.

[redhawk979]

OP is right. Regulations are terrible.

I inspect my own food at restaurants to ensure I don't shit blood or die of a preventable bacterial infection.
I inspect any bridges and roads myself before I drive over them.
I inspect and audit my own FIAT bank to ensure they are still solvent and haven't run off with my money.


I don't understand why everyone can't just do this.

and you died in a plane crash 

oh wait you didn't because they force the airlines to do maintenance,

they don't just wait till they drop out of the sky then buy a new plane, or do they ?

You think airlines upkeep thier planes BECAUSE the state goons force them to?  They do it so people will fly their airlines.  If in a free market they stopped maintaining their aircraft, noone would right their airlines and they would lose business.  It's that simple, that's how the market works, if you don't like something you withdrawl your funding.  Unlike the state, which you cannot say no to.

We already have private organizations that do this function; examples: better business bureau, consumer reports, underwriters laboratories, etc.  We need a bitcoin business bureau to investigate bitcoin companies not a monopolized criminal gang with an interest in squashing competition to their fiat empire in charge of it.

And when your whole family is dead from eating tainted food that didn't receive any oversight, ITS FREE MARKET LOL AMIRITE? BUY MEAT ELSEWHERE NEXT TIME I GUESS! Regulations will never eradicate the problem, but proper regulations can certainly help reduce it more than FREE MARKET.

Seriously, go read Upton Sinclairs The Jungle and tell me how the "Free Market" fixed that.

[FreedomFeens]

Regulators have failed us in every industry,

I don't agree - there must be many examples of where a regulatory framework protects the consumer.

One example that springs to mind is the Civil Aviation Authority - the airline operaters employ actuaries to balance risk against cost -  profit margins are very tight. A lack of sufficient regulation could lead to a real danger of safety standards being compromised.

Here is an article about the dangers (and fatalities) that occurred in hot air ballooning accidents in Egypt - where regulations are either not as stringent (as those in the UK for eg.), or not enforced to a sufficient standard.

In finance, in the UK, my understanding is that a firm must comply with the Conduct of Business Sourcebook as specified by the Financial Conduct Authority. Having had a quick skim through, the sourcebook seems to lay a lot of store by transparency; acting fairly,honestly and professionaly;disclosure of information;etc etc

The principles of the regulation are laid out here. Please read them and explain to me how the application of these principles would have been counterproductive for the customers of Mt.Gox - or indeed any of us in our BTC dealings with third parties. Especially since it is the case that where a firm has complied with the regulations (and still gone bust) the customer maybe entitled to compensation.

Everything you said could be done and done better by an organization that is forced to respond to market demand, not by a monopolized organization.  Organizations who extract funds through violence provide little to no service at all unless it benefits them to do so.  Why should you care what you customers say if they are forced to pay you and you don't have to work for their money?  Why should you work to improve your product or service when people are forced to buy it?  Monopolized regulations will not solve these problems, just like they didn't solve them anywhere else.  The state loves to run infront of social progress and say: "look, look what we did, we passed a law and see!! see!! now its fixed", but the truth is that throughout most of history the people have changed and worked for changes and society has changed and thats why the world changed, not because a politician wrote something down on paper.

Regulation should not be monopolized, it should be distributed, examples; bbb, consumer reports, etc.  Businesses should compete to provide you the best regulation service, otherwise they don't care what kind of service they provide.

Essentially what your saying is: Without government who would build the roads? Without government who would regulate the bitcoins? People and businesses voluntarily working together for mutual benefit can.  Blockchain technology makes this exceedingly easy, given the public nature of it.  It needs only to be implemented, customers should demand this transparency from exchanges and if not provided, go elsewhere.

I have one word with regard to UK banking/finance: Libor.

Regulations have created corporations.  Entities which are immune and disconnected from the results of their actions.  A free market would never allow such concentration of wealth to exist given the ease of entry into a market without barriers.  

I don't have time to invest in learning about hot air balooning in Egypt or other places except to say that there are many factors which could influence such a reduction in fatalities; less people doing it in one area than another, poor quality materials, poor training, etc.  The list goes on, to nail it down and say "BECAUSE OF THIS ONE THING" makes no sense to me.  I am not an expert in hot air balloning and do not have time to be one.  However, market forces are the same no matter what market you are in and if the organization doing the inspecting is monopolized and coercive in nature their incentives will be completely backward-and that does not change no matter the situation.

[FreedomFeens]

OP is right. Regulations are terrible.

I inspect my own food at restaurants to ensure I don't shit blood or die of a preventable bacterial infection.
I inspect any bridges and roads myself before I drive over them.
I inspect and audit my own FIAT bank to ensure they are still solvent and haven't run off with my money.


I don't understand why everyone can't just do this.

and you died in a plane crash  

oh wait you didn't because they force the airlines to do maintenance,

they don't just wait till they drop out of the sky then buy a new plane, or do they ?

You think airlines upkeep thier planes BECAUSE the state goons force them to?  They do it so people will fly their airlines.  If in a free market they stopped maintaining their aircraft, noone would right their airlines and they would lose business.  It's that simple, that's how the market works, if you don't like something you withdrawl your funding.  Unlike the state, which you cannot say no to.

We already have private organizations that do this function; examples: better business bureau, consumer reports, underwriters laboratories, etc.  We need a bitcoin business bureau to investigate bitcoin companies not a monopolized criminal gang with an interest in squashing competition to their fiat empire in charge of it.

And when your whole family is dead from eating tainted food that didn't receive any oversight, ITS FREE MARKET LOL AMIRITE? BUY MEAT ELSEWHERE NEXT TIME I GUESS! Regulations will never eradicate the problem, but proper regulations can certainly help reduce it more than FREE MARKET.

Seriously, go read Upton Sinclairs The Jungle and tell me how the "Free Market" fixed that.

Private competeing food inspection services can do everything you mentioned and will have their incentives aligned to actually care about the little guy as opposed to monopolized services.  You are essentially saying; without violence, who would inspect the burgers?  What a wonderful state our current food is in america; disgusting fast food, GMOs, pesticides, god knows what else.  All the regulations did was create corporations that dominated the market and thus the small guy can no longer buy food from small farms at the store, no he only gets to chose from giant factory farms who got their people into regulatory positions in their respective industries and pushed the little guy out.  Then quality goes way down.  which is why our food is so disgusting. Don't forget about all the subsidies, fed money and favors these giants get while the little guy struggles to comply with all the regulations that apply to him but not them.  In a free market these giants would be accountable, but now they get that FDA inspected stamp and suddenly everything is ok. Epic fail on your part. 

[gollum]

Federal reserve and Wall street are the biggest scammers on Earth actually as they practice FRB (Fractional Reserve Banking),
but it is 100% legal as long as they are in power and decide the laws.

Mt Gox probably also applied FRB, but since bitcoin cannot be printed out of thin air,
they got problem when bitcoin rallied and people wanted to cash out their dollars or bitcoins.

[FreedomFeens]

OP is right. Regulations are terrible.

I inspect my own food at restaurants to ensure I don't shit blood or die of a preventable bacterial infection.
I inspect any bridges and roads myself before I drive over them.
I inspect and audit my own FIAT bank to ensure they are still solvent and haven't run off with my money.


I don't understand why everyone can't just do this.

You don't need to do it yourself, that's why we have the division of labor.  In the absence of monopolized inefficient regulation, private entities would immediately spring up to service you just like they do whenever there is an opportunity to provide a service.  Only the best market regulatory agencies would survive in each industry since they provided the best service to their customers, since they exist on customer funds instead of stolen money they have to be effective and responsive.  Restaurants would have incentives to have the "Food Inspection Guarantee" or "Food Safe Place" seal of approvals, because if they didn't people would think twice about going there.  Do you see now that the market can provide everything you desire and do so without inherent conflicts of interest which a monopolized system of violence has?  Once you have an understanding of market incentives, you can begin to see how these services can exist in a free market and how they will be better provided.

Also, regulations created fractional reserve banking.

You don't need to inspect roads yourself, again, that's why we have division of labor.

[FreedomFeens]

yeah right buddie your obviously part of this honeypot called gox go lick the honey of mark

regulation will do nothing negative but ensure sites like this can't harbour criminals like you

You should remove the "in crypto we trust" from your website since clearly you don't trust in cryptography to provide solutions to exchange reserve problems-which it clearly can.

[leopard2]

regulation is bad 

the only regulation we need, is to enforce transparency. transparency is important so that consumers can choose the right provider

then, bad providers will vanish from the markets automatically

KYC is bad for consumers, but good for governments. The consumer needs KYP = know your provider. Gox forced their customers to reveal personal details, but did not supply balance sheets themselves. Same with banks. In an ideal world, banks could have anonymous customers but would have to maintain detailed balance sheets!

[FreedomFeens]

A market solution is already out: coinkite stores bitcoins and provides a way for people to prove they are not operating a fractional reserve system.  

https://coinkite.com/faq/security

Regulation doesn't stop people from screwing other people.  The financial system is highly regulated and look what has happened in it in the past decade, its laughable to assume regulations are the answer.

  

[FreedomFeens]

yeah right buddie your obviously part of this honeypot called gox go lick the honey of mark

regulation will do nothing negative but ensure sites like this can't harbour criminals like you

Here is YOUR post from Feb 2013:

"once again i will say i don't think he will get past first base, please refrain from trying to insult me several forum members are trying to discredit me when its between the SCAM company Mtgox and their customer they are currently scamming, also its not my problem though i really think Mtgox is a pyramid scheme and im surprised a website with thousands of users and people of such high caliber  Cheesy like yourself cannot see it

Let put it in Basic terms

if you give me money or Mtgox  Cheesy for a service and i /they turn around and say please wait 23 days instead of 3-5 plus providing lots of identification is this ok?

why is their so many users that just cannot see the facts being presented ?"

And you want to blame others for losing your money in gox? You knew they were shady.

[tenthirtyone]

Of course, the worst part about Bitcoin gaining momentum is that the newer followers cannot keep up or won't participate in the education campaign required for them to understand basic economics.

You should hire a regulator to make a law preventing idiots from handicapping those who can care for themselves responsibly. Then you'd get all the regulation you could ever want.

[FreedomFeens]

Of course, the worst part about Bitcoin gaining momentum is that the newer followers cannot keep up or won't participate in the education campaign required for them to understand basic economics.

You should hire a regulator to make a law preventing idiots from handicapping those who can care for themselves responsibly. Then you'd get all the regulation you could ever want.

Or we could just hire a regulator to make a law saying no one can steal anyone else's bitcoin.  That'll teach em.  Or we could have the state sue them and when the state wins it'll keep all the money for us.

[sgdias]

OP is right. Regulations are terrible.

I inspect my own food at restaurants to ensure I don't shit blood or die of a preventable bacterial infection.
I inspect any bridges and roads myself before I drive over them.
I inspect and audit my own FIAT bank to ensure they are still solvent and haven't run off with my money.


I don't understand why everyone can't just do this.

and you died in a plane crash 

oh wait you didn't because they force the airlines to do maintenance,

they don't just wait till they drop out of the sky then buy a new plane, or do they ?

You think airlines upkeep thier planes BECAUSE the state goons force them to?  They do it so people will fly their airlines.  If in a free market they stopped maintaining their aircraft, noone would right their airlines and they would lose business.  It's that simple, that's how the market works, if you don't like something you withdrawl your funding.  Unlike the state, which you cannot say no to.

We already have private organizations that do this function; examples: better business bureau, consumer reports, underwriters laboratories, etc.  We need a bitcoin business bureau to investigate bitcoin companies not a monopolized criminal gang with an interest in squashing competition to their fiat empire in charge of it.

And when your whole family is dead from eating tainted food that didn't receive any oversight, ITS FREE MARKET LOL AMIRITE? BUY MEAT ELSEWHERE NEXT TIME I GUESS! Regulations will never eradicate the problem, but proper regulations can certainly help reduce it more than FREE MARKET.

Seriously, go read Upton Sinclairs The Jungle and tell me how the "Free Market" fixed that.

Why needs to be black or white ?? Can't be something in the middle, something making sense ? There are things in life that better work regulated and there are others not... The bitcoin community should develop the granularity level of detail to determine what aspect of bitcoin can be regulated and what aspects can not.