Thailand Government Declares Bitcoin Illegal

hypnosec writes that the government of Thailand "has declared Bitcoin illegal following which all trading activities related to the electronic currently have been suspended indefinitely. Through a message posted on its website, the Bitcoin Co. Ltd. has said officials of the Foreign Exchange Administration and Policy Department cited absence of applicable laws, capital controls "and the fact that Bitcoin straddles multiple financial facets" as reasons because of which the virtual currency is illegal. This ruling implies that activities such as buying & selling of Bitcoins, buying or selling any service in exchange of Bitcoins, sending Bitcoins to anyone located outside of Thailand, and receiving Bitcoins from anyone outside of Thailand are illegal. This has forced the company to indefinitely suspend operations."

Comments

Can any government really stop BitCoin?

[ArcadeMan]

Kids are always curious about things their parents forbid. Adults are always curious about things their government forbid.

The Streisand effect on BitCoin is going to be huge.

Re:Can any government really stop BitCoin?

[elucido]

Kids are always curious about things their parents forbid. Adults are always curious about things their government forbid.

The Streisand effect on BitCoin is going to be huge.

Easily.

Re:Can any government really stop BitCoin?

[elucido]

Kids are always curious about things their parents forbid. Adults are always curious about things their government forbid.

The Streisand effect on BitCoin is going to be huge.

A government can make it illegal by proving it's only used by criminals, pedophiles, terrorists, and gang members. A government can prove this by entrapment, and other corrupt practices, to make anyone they want look like that.

So a few big stings of pedophiles and child pornographers using Bitcoin and that is all it would take to kill Bitcoin. The reason being is when you have the words pedophile and Bitcoin in the same new story over and over again whether it's true or not it forms a subconscious association in the viewers mind. It's classical conditioning.

Re:Can any government really stop BitCoin?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thailand is run by a military junta with a thin coat of democracy paint on the outside, for appearances' sake. They can ban whatever the fuck they want, at least within their own country. Just don't go there.

Re:Can any government really stop BitCoin?

[Rob the Bold]

Don't pedophiles use hard currency, credit cards, cars, clothing too? I'll bet they use household cleaners all the time. Shouldn't government ban those things as well to prevent pedophilia?

Like Tide.

You can't make this stuff up.

Re:Can any government really stop BitCoin?

[bunratty]

Governments can make anything they want to illegal. The U.S. government still claims marijuana is a highly dangerous drug with no known medicial properties, and therefore it is a Schedule I drug. The government doesn't have to prove anything to make something illegal.

Re:Can any government really stop BitCoin?

[BrokenHalo]

Like Tide [schneier.com].
You can't make this stuff up.

How cool is that? A currency with actual intrinsic value. Easy to launder, too.

*ducks*

Re:Can any government really stop BitCoin?

[IamTheRealMike]

That's a nice theory. In practice what happens is one special interest or another does their own research that tries to demonstrate that something is harmful. Then they go lobby politicians who go "ooh err a study shows $X is harmful, maybe should ban it". Then the other side lobbies to try and undermine that study or convince the politicians not to go ahead. You can call this process the government proving something if you like, but that's not really correct.

To demonstrate this point, please find me a serious, government-sponsored cost/benefit analysis of anti-money laundering laws. I've yet to find one. Wikipedia's take. There are various attempts by academics and accountancy firms, but they are all hobbled by the fact that nobody can even measure how much money laundering takes place (heck even defining what it actually is, can prove troublesome).

Here's a statistic for you to chew on. The concept of money laundering was first invented by the USA in 1970, so about 40 years ago. It has been constantly ratched up since then. Yet in the last 20 years the street price of cocaine has more than halved (page 81, adjusted for inflation and changes in purity). In other words, despite the massive effort put into the war on drugs and all the effort put into AML, it hasn't been enough to even balance increased efficiency of the drug cartels. We can perhaps consider that the price would be even lower if it were not for AML. But that hardly seems to matter against a backdrop of such utter failure.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Rule of Law

[niftydude]

In a country where insulting the king carries a 10 year penalty, as far as the king is concerned, the concept of Rule of Law essentially means: I rule, you follow the law.

Re:Rule of Law

[kaatochacha]

Uh, no. You underestimate the Thai king's power. He's a special case. Legally, he's a figurehead. However...
If, for whatever reason, the current King stood up and said "I want all politician's heads on my porch by Thursday, in a big square pile", they would be there Wednesday night.
I"m not kidding, Thai people would mostly kill for this guy.

Its inevitable

[Chrisq]

Countries that tightly control moving money in and out will restrict or ban bitcoin

This has forced the company to indefinitely suspe

[Dthief]

" This has forced the company to indefinitely suspend operations"

huh? which company....bitcoin doesnt only run out of thailand, does it?

Re:That's fine, no karma points for you!

[Geoffrey.landis]

/. karma points are worth something?

How do I trade them in for valuable stuff?

"Bank of Thailand" != "Thailand government".

[Anonymous Coward]

next we'll hear that "american goverment outlaws high interest savings" when Bank of America won't give someone a decent rate.

Re:"Bank of Thailand" != "Thailand government".

[cgt]

Bank of Thailand is the central bank of Thailand. Bank of America is not part of the US government.

TFA

[Meneth]

At the conclusion of the meeting senior members of the Foreign Exchange Administration and Policy Department advised that due to lack of existing applicable laws, capital controls and the fact that Bitcoin straddles multiple financial facets the following Bitcoin activities are illegal in Thailand:

• Buying Bitcoins
• Selling Bitcoins
• Buying any goods or services in exchange for Bitcoins
• Selling any goods or services for Bitcoins
• Sending Bitcoins to anyone located outside of Thailand
• Receiving Bitcoins from anyone located outside of Thailand

Based on such a broad and encompassing advisement, Bitcoin Co. Ltd. therefore has no choice but to suspend operations until such as time that the laws in Thailand are updated to account for the existance of Bitcoin. The Bank of Thailand has said they will further consider the issue, but did not give any specific timeline.

Re: This has forced the company to indefinitely su

[slashmydots]

I was thinking the same thing. There are no Thailand-based bitcoin companies at all. And they say "trading activities related to the electronic currently have been suspended indefinitely." Um, no, it's encrypted and mostly unblockable. So unless they inspect every computer and remove the bitcoin client software, they can't block it.

I think the BS news that they're puffing up is that the Bank of Thailand is no longer accepting electronic fund transfers from the bitcoin exchanges. As for "stopping trading or use" all I have to say is lol, no.

They (probably) don't need to

[sjbe]

The Streisand effect on BitCoin is going to be huge.

No it isn't. Ordinarily I would agree with you but frankly very few people care about Bitcoin or have any reason to care about Bitcoin. NOBODY who is doing meaningful amounts of currency exchanges is going to want to bother with it. Since I don't buy or sell illegal drugs I honestly cannot conceive of any circumstance under which I would use it, even if I ignore the inherent exchange rate risk and liquidity problems.

Re:They (probably) don't need to

[Cajun Hell]

I would agree with you but frankly very few people care about Bitcoin or have any reason to care about Bitcoin.

You probably don't care much about Yuan-Dollar exchange rates much either, but you sure as hell have reason to care about it!

We used to see the (approximate and debatable) 3% that Visa and Mastercard skims from nearly all sales transactions, as merely the cost of doing business, and a worthwhile expense in exchange for the service they offer. And yet, now The People have the tech to avoid that charge, so what used to be a 3% expense is considered 3% economic damage, a parasite. Most of us probably don't really have visceral bad feelings about Visa quite on the scale implied by the word "parasite" and yet, whenever you're buying a larger ticket item (a house, a car) you negotiate like hell over figures much smaller than 3%. And when I think about how much money I spent on my car, compared to how much money I have spend on fueling and maintaining my car with a plastic card, the plastic card's costs dwarf anything I ever negotiated with my car dealer. Visa and Mastercard's expenses are right there in your face, for anyone who looks into it. There's reason to move to something cheaper.

Or threaten to move to something cheaper. You don't necessarily have to do it, as long as you can prove you're willing to do it. Who knows, maybe Bitcoin is what'll get Visa merchant charges down to 0.3%. Isn't it interesting that your grandparents had the same percentage skimmed off their lives, whereas you today live in a higher tech world where the expenses of providing transactions services, are tiny by comparison.

In the end, Bitcoin is just another market force. There are plenty of indirect ones out there (exchange rates, decisions made by central banks, etc) that you don't think about much, or ever take actions on, and yet they have a profound effect on your economic well-being. It's fine to say you don't care, but for fuck's sake, don't say people don't have reason to care!

Re:They (probably) don't need to

[lgw]

Bitcoin is digital cash, not the equivalent of a credit card nor checking account. It's cash that you don't need a checking account to spend at a distance, and some people think that changes the world (I'm a bit unclear why). The primary use today seems to be for the "anonymousness", though I think that debatable - just as the US government requires all serial numbers to be recorded by banks for any large cash transaction, making it not so anonymous by analysis, the NSA no doubt records the "serial number" of every bitcoin exchange that has ever happened, and the associated IP addresses.

If Bitcoin ever took off, companies would offer fraud protection and customer service and even actual credit cards - those are services measured in some currency, not a property of the currency itself.

Re: This has forced the company to indefinitely su

[Anonymous Coward]

You might say that bitcoin operations are "thai'd up" at the moment.

Re: This has forced the company to indefinitely su

[Anonymous Coward]

Thai as I might, I can't ignore that pun.

Re: This has forced the company to indefinitely su

[LaminatorX]

You seem to be unaware that the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997 was touched of by the collapse of the Thai Bhat. That is not unimportant.

Re: This has forced the company to indefinitely su

[Jon_E]

That would be the Bitcoin Co Ltd exchange (https://bitcoin.co.th/) .. that's having issues with the Bank of Thailand (Thailand's central/reserve bank) ..bahtcoin is still open for the moment

This appears to be ramping up - last month bitspend had it's accounts frozen from Chase citing potential money laundering, and new allegations of ponzi schemes are making all the federal regulators nervous - as they should be

This is how some legal systems work in Asia

[sethotterstad]

Many Americans are surprised to learn that in many Asian countries such as Thailand, Vietnam, and China, what is not specifically legal is viewed as illegal. If there are no laws about something, it is illegal there. Obviously the authorities do not choose to enforce the law against the vast majority of people's illegal actions, but that is the way their legal system works.

Re:That's fine, no karma points for you!

[maroberts]

Despite my occassional (lame) attempts to troll, mine has stayed glued on "Excellent" for several years now - does that give me a AAA karma credit rating?

Re: This has forced the company to indefinitely su

[slashmydots]

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Now it makes sense! Bitcoin for years has been using the Bhat symbol on the keyboard to represent Bitcoin similar to $ for dollars. That explains why they're not thrilled.

Re:Offline payments

[fredprado]

$360 a year for a smartphone data plan

If you spend something around U$20K yearly in your credit cards you pay U$600 for this privilege, my friend.