Ask Slashdot: Should Bitcoin Be Regulated?

Nerval's Lobster writes "Federal regulators are starting to make noise about Bitcoin, the digital currency that's gained in recognition and value over the past few years: the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) is offering up 'guidance' for digital currency and those who use it as part of commerce. But the Bitcoin Foundation, which is devoted to standardizing and promoting the currency, doesn't like that idea; as Patric Murck, the organization's general counsel, wrote in a March 19 blog posting: 'If FinCEN would like to expand its statutory authority over "money transmitters" to include brand new categories such as "administrators" and "exchangers" of digital currency it must do so through proper rulemaking proceedings and not by fiat.' If Bitcoin continues to gain in value, it could spark a rise in virtual currencies—and force some very interesting discussions over regulation. But here's the question: would regulation actually be good for Bitcoin, if it made organizations and businesses more comfortable with using it as a currency?"

Comments

I don't know, but

[Anonymous Coward]

the number of /. articles about it should be.

Put it this way

[roman_mir]

Put it this way, the rest of the population is even dumber than /., for that reason alone nothing should be regulated, because who do you think comes up with regulations and votes for people that set regulations?

The lucky thing is that Bitcoins cannot themselves be regulated, but the end points can be. Stores, exchanges, those can be regulated, and that's a problem. Bitcoins will be used by people as means of exchange, some may think they are a store of value, I do not know that it is so, they can go up to be 1 million or 1 billion dollars for 1 Bitcoin, they can be 1 cent, I can't say.

However I can say that Bitcoins have value in one very specific way, it is precisely that they cannot be regulated themselves in the sense that the government cannot issue them.

However do not forget, governments can buy up all Bitcoins to try and shut down the idea, they can even drive the prices very high because of it and remove most of the coins from circulation by producing huge amounts of inflation. What they can't do is stop people from cloning the code and restarting it again.