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Time To Regulate Bitcoin, Says UK Treasury Committee Report (theguardian.com) 111
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are "wild west" assets that expose investors to a litany of risks and are in urgent need of regulation, MPs on the Treasury select committee have said. From a report: The committee said in a report that consumers were left unprotected from an unregulated industry that aided money laundering, while the government and regulators "bumble along" and fail to take action. The Conservative MP Nicky Morgan, the chair of the committee, said the current situation was unsustainable. "Bitcoin and other crypto-assets exist in the wild west industry of crypto-assets. This unregulated industry leaves investors facing numerous risks," Morgan said. "Given the high price volatility, the hacking vulnerability of exchanges and the potential role in money laundering, the Treasury committee strongly believes that regulation should be introduced."
But they wanted it that way (Score:3)
The public wants bitcoin because it isn't regulated by any government.
They just don't like the risk that lack of regulation entails.
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Can't have the rewards without the risks now can we?
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Exactly what threat to society is it, such that it must be protected against at all costs?
I know it is used against drug money, which I don't really care that much about...but what real threat to our society is it?
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It's generally about money that are not being paid taxes of.
If we didn't try to stop it, every rich company owner on the planet would be doing it, and thus the only people paying taxes would be the poor. Taxes to maintain the roads that the same rich companies use to move their products from factories to stores.
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Perhaps someone should quitely pay someone to kill you and then ask you family that question or how about bribes to politician or how about the person who was paid to kill you was a law enforcer with a laundered bank account.
Unbacked crypto currencies are doomed, to be replaced by energy backed crypto currencies traded on legal exchanges.
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Can't have the rewards without the risks now can we?
You can if you're rich enough to buy politicians.
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Capitalistic society is a ponzi scheme.
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Government can only regulate how you spend their currency. Bitcoin is out of their reach. The more they try, the worse their currency looks and the better crypto coins in general do.
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If the US bans/embargos any bank which deals with a crypto-exchange then bitcoin will become worthless to Americans (and worth almost nothing to anyone else). If the only way to exchange crypto is shady person to person deals no one will be interested.
Re: But they wanted it that way (Score:2)
Haha no, clueless investors are suckered by hype. That's all.
That is why idology fails. (Score:5, Insightful)
Normally an Ideology based on absolutism fails.
Government Regulation is Bad! However without it there is a lot of abuse in the system without any peaceful ways to reconcile it.
Government Regulation is Good! However too much regulation can stifle innovation and risk taking, because Regulation takes much to long to adapt.
The thing is there needs to be a balance, and to make it worse, the balance point is never in the same spot. Sometimes the needle needs to be towards the left and other times it needs to be at the right. Fixing it in the middle is just as bad as being fixed in either direction, because in the Middle no one is happy.
We see in history good times under a particular political direction, then we see bad times under that same direction. They switch to the other side then things are good again, then they fail.
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Score: +5, Recursive sarcasm
Not quite true, IMO .... (Score:2)
People tend to assume that GOVERNMENT regulation is somehow superior to individuals making decisions on their own. But government is just made of more individuals, subject to the same ability to be corrupted and same temptations to cheat, lie or rip off their fellow man for personal gain.
Obviously, the IDEA is that people in government were vetted and selected by the rest of the public as their preferred choices to "speak for them" by taking a stance on issues. But the result is always a compromise, where a
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Not Superior in its decisions, but powerful enough to enforce them.
So people are playing the game with the same set of rules. Without Government rules and enforcement there is no recourse to bad actors and encourages additional bad actors, because then different forms of Power will take over and take control.
A democratic-republic government at least gives the the common person a chance to to control such corruption and alternate temptation.
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I don't think the public as a whole has anything to do with the creating of crypotcurrencies, only a tiny fraction of the public has anything to do with the cryptocurrency bubble, and most of them were speculating, not taking some kind of political position.
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Actually the public doesn't want bitcoin at all. The only people who want bitcoin is mostly people looking to get rich quick, those looking to nefarious things on the internet, and a few individuals that value their privacy. What the public wants is a regulated stable currency that they can depend on.
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When you say "1 bitcoin" is that Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Bitgoin Gold (BTG), Bitcoin Private (BTCP) ?
Or maybe in 20XX those cryptocurrencies and their forks will have collapsed and there is some other system that is dominate? Defunct currency is probably worth about $0 if there is no exchange to accept them and no reliable network to perform transactions.
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I have about one and a half million Flappycoins for sale.
Anyone interested? I'd be happy to let them go for 0.00000001 BTC each.
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Put your net worth into bitcoin TODAY.
Moron.
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The UK is powerless to regulate Bitcoin. They can prevent their citizens from participating in the future of money (whatever crypto that ends up being) but they cannot stop a global phenomenon.
I hope they do too - there are some smart UK'ers and who wants them competing with us? /s
Indeed. Regulate it like other forms of gambling (Score:2)
About time.
Vauge Much? (Score:3)
What *exactly* are they proposing? They listed some issues with bitcoin that come with pretty much any other kind of investment, but investors aren't protected from, such as loosing all of your principal, forgetting passwords, and getting hacked.
These all happen to current traditional investors with current regulation. What exactly are they proposing to prevent this from happening with Bitcoin?
*Vague (Score:2)
Vauge - I think I just invented a new pretentious color name.
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I think they're proposing belling the cat.
Re: Vauge Much? (Score:2)
Can't, too illiquid because of bottlenecked architecture. It's useless as money
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with a hundred bucks in an exchange called an FDIC insured bank account, it doesn't matter if there is critical failure, embezzlement, hacking.... your money is safe, liquid and read to use. even online, I use my bank account all the time to instantly pay bills online. all insured, secure (in that no money will be lost even if the bank is hacked or goes under)
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What *exactly* are they proposing? They listed some issues with bitcoin that come with pretty much any other kind of investment, but investors aren't protected from, such as loosing all of your principal, forgetting passwords, and getting hacked.
These all happen to current traditional investors with current regulation. What exactly are they proposing to prevent this from happening with Bitcoin?
I think it's more trying to sound "in the now" than actually proposing any real legislation. What can they do?
Public Education programs. Regulate advertising for bitcoin. They could try banning access to exchanges. Try taxing gains or taxing miners. They could make commercial sites not able to accept the coin, or give information about the person providing the coins.
It's very difficult to know how successful they'd be with any of those options. You'd need a concentrated international effort if you REA
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Other investment types are regulated, though, for exactly the risks you noted. It isn't the investment itself or its performance that is regulated. It's the behavior of the people working in the trade.
I used to work at a financial company. We carried insurance policies against our own negligence or accidents, and when somebody's account did indeed get hacked, we covered their loss. In our contracts and promotional materials, we made clear that the investments were investments, not a savings account, and the
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More rent-seeking. Fabulous.
And of course they actually say out loud that regulation is needed because of, among other things, hacking. That's funny. What regulatory act would have any real impact on any of the hacking efforts even now underway by whoever wants to try?
Sorry, that is obvious.
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It's not FOR investing (Score:1)
So don't invest in it!
If people decided to invest in tulips, would you regulate tulips? Or would you just say "Hey, don't do that, numbnuts. And if you do it despite everyone's advice, don't complain about the results!"?
Tulip analogy (Score:2)
I also wouldn't be surprised if tulips are treated like other agricultural commodities. Yet that seems to be missing the point, a joke about cryptocurrency being an investment bubble, since tulip mania is one of the most famous investment bubbles
Re: It's not FOR investing (Score:3)
Ignorant of history, tulip market did come under regulation in 17th century, look it up.
Arrest the money. (Score:2)
... the potential role in money laundering ...
Do they mean "money laundering" as in spending your money in ways they don't approve of, or "money laundering" as in receiving money for selling stuff they don't approve of?
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"Money laundering" has a very specific definition. It's any effort to hide the source of an illegal income.
Being completely unregulated (by design) makes it extremely easy to simply transfer Bitcoin from a tainted source to a variety of wallets, then back to a clean wallet. With no way to prove ownership of the intermediate wallets (or worse, exchanges that keep centralized wallets without ownership records), there's effectively no way to track where illicit income is going.
Yes, cash has the same issue, whi
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I think they mean "money laundering" as in receive money for selling stuff/services society doesn't approve of, then with that money buying something that people do approve of, then flipping that product again. So on paper it seems like that money in your hand was from a legit service.
It is called "money laundering" because they convert dirty money to clean money.
HOW?? (Score:1)
Re: HOW?? (Score:2)
Points of entry and egress can be monitored, records subpoenaed, traffic blocked to those and to chain servers, use made illegal, etc.
Sure that can all be circumvented but market cap would take massive hit
Re: HOW?? (Score:2)
Yes, you are. What people under the jurisdiction of the UK legislature can or canâ(TM)t do can and is legislated by... *drumroll* UK lawmakers. Goverments generally do not give two shits about âbut in this other country!!!1â. They have jurisdiction, they have the mandate, they make the rules. Apparently itâ(TM)s news to some people that many western goverments already legislate precisely the type of thing being discussed here: in some circumstances, companies are forbidden by law to offe
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The "bank" in that nation has a new law to report any UK banking activity back to the UK.
UK person fills that far away bank account with their online cyber cash conversion.
UK gov expects the UK person to report that new bank account. The new wealth and then pay tax.
No tax paid? Time for the UK gov to start asking questions.
Too many nations now have new banking tax evasion/avoidance and deep terrorism financing laws that open their entire bankin
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Re: Tyranny (Score:2)
Which is why those selling investments are also under the law, they have to be adults too. Markets are regulated, get used to it. Bitcoin isn't money, it's a game token for investment
Go Away (Score:2)
Now fuck off or I shall No you again.
Regulate who? No one holds the ledger (Score:2)
There is no such entity in crypto currencies. The ledger is what everyone agrees the ledger is.
The UK can regulate the exchanges where the exchanges interact with existing banks, that's really about it.
Finally, other than Monero, all crypto currencies suck for money laundering. Every transaction is public for everyone to see. If the UK gov
Last thing wanted (Score:2)
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The wrong angle of why it's bad (Score:2)
Crypto in general is a highly centralised waste of electricity. It's rather pointless. Regulating it is like regulating drugs, the wrong direction to go.
Feel free to try (Score:2)
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I will be able to meet someone in a cafe, receive cash, and transfer bitcoin.
This is yet another of the many motivations for governments pushing "cashless" currency/exchange systems; to eliminate side-channels for moving/holding wealth/capital outside of government regulatory & enforcement infrastructure control.
Strat
Translation (Score:1)
Bitcoin is in urgent need of taxing.
Proof UK serious about Russia and NK (Score:2)
The action to regulate bitcoin will make it more difficult for both North Korea and Russia to launder dirty money, other than at "golf courses" run by their cronies.
"regulate" (Score:1)
You mean eradicate. Cant have that anonymous stuff going on now can we?
Ha ha sure. (Score:4, Insightful)
"You know, I don't really think we need to regulate this, do we?"
-Said no government body, ever.
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There are plenty of things that governments haven't the slightest interest in regulating. You just never find them listed anywhere or hitting the news. You do get some of that if you ever despressed and bored enough to watch CSPAN.
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Actually the current UK government, the Conservative Party, favours de-regulation and has been criticised for removing important protections against things like financial irresponsibility. They have failed to regulate corporation tax properly, despite sustained calls for it.
Similarly in the US I see that the Trump administration is busy ripping up rules and trying to down-size. Wasn't one of Sean Spicer's famous claims that Trumpcare was only a fraction of the size of Obamacare, implying that less regulatio
Reagan (Score:1)
"If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." --Reagan
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Hurricanes are just getting way too destructive lately. It's time we started regulating how much destruction a hurricane is allowed to make.
You're right -- we can do so by taking steps to curtail things contributing to global warming.
Like cryptocurrency mining.
Re: Also hurricanes (Score:2)
Haha no, the real electricity use according to ieee article criticizing it is comparable to mid sized city, not the stupid exaggerated claims such as article posted here claimed with power of Denmark's consumption... That's impossible.
I'd agree Bitcoin is fool's investment, but energy use is gnat's fart in typhoon.
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I don't think it's impossible when there are whole (coal!) power plants being brought out of retirement to run mining operations. Alex de Vries' latest estimate that Bitcoin alone is using almost 0.5% of humanity's energy is actually a very conservative estimate which assumes that everyone is using the most efficient hardware possible. Cryptocurrency is an unmitigated environmental disaster.
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No that's silly. The amount of energy used to mine bitcoins won't exceed the market value of the coins, otherwise people will be going broke by mining it, thus forcing themselves out of the mining market. Do you really think the value of the coins mined account for 0.5% of world GDP?
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You've made some kind of fallacious connection between energy costs and GDP there, but you're otherwise on the right track to verifying this number. A better estimate would be to check if the value of the coins mined exceeds 0.5% of world grid power expenditure.
I couldn't find a number for total worldwide energy consumption, or the total number of bitcoins mined in any year, and the average worldwide cost would obviously be higher than the electricity mining companies are buying, but if we take the projecte
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why was this modded troll? it's pretty much spot on. Maybe the whoosh factor was a bit too high?
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Re: Time to flush buttcoin down the toilet (Score:3)
Hahaha, it's a solution looking for a problem. Superior distributed databases exist that properly scale, integrity verification is long solved problem too. Startups suckering investors with claims of block chain utility in business are going to fail next
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Damn right, let's replace it with Dogecoin!
And just to show you how fair I am, let's start Dogecoin's value at only 10% of Bitcoin's value!