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WV Senator Calls For Ban On All Unregulated Cryptocurrencies
An anonymous reader writes "Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a member of the Senate Banking Committee, has called for for heavily regulation of Bitcoin. Reached for comment, his staff confirmed Manchin is seeking a 'ban' that would apply to any cryptocurrency that's both anonymous and unregulated."
Can't the free market handle this? Do we really need yet more restrictive government regulations? What are they afraid of? Could untraceable cryptocurrencies somehow encourage people who don't have a lot of money to avoid taxes, similar to what our betters do right now with offshore tax havens?
He should really work on banning the USD. It's used for commission of trillions of dollars worth of crimes every year and there's no real means of enforcement for [bona fide] money laundering operations.
I wonder if his office knows that bitcoin isn't really anonymous?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
God, lets hope so. Only then can my long term goal of transitioning the US economy to Disney Dollars come to fruition.
Ignore/Laugh/Fight/Win
Bitcoin isn't anonymous, though, and it is quite regulated. Bitcoin is arguably the least anonymous form of value transaction we have (every transaction is publicly and permanently recorded), and if you think it is unregulated try running an exchange anywhere in the Western world.
Personally, I think the first significant threat to bitcoin will be a cryptocurrency that really is anonymous.
Something to keep in mind: they can make Bitcoin flatly illegal, but development and usage will simply go underground and continue to grow outside the U.S./Russia/China. U.S. regulations delay adoption but do not prevent it.
It _is_ anonymous. Until somebody decides to trace back the transaction chain and actually finds weak/strong evidence of a connection to a person.
This is like "A book is a secret until someone reads it." It is trivially easy to trace back an exchange. Unlike, for example, cash.
A banking goon wants cryptographic currency - a technological currency the banks cannot gain any control of - to be banned. How about that. What's next? A system for banning competition in business?
Then using a credit card is anonymous too. Until someone decides to trace back the transaction, and subpoena VISA for evidence of a connection to a person. There is no real technical difference between a VISA card number, and a Bitcoin wallet id - just that generally, VISA requires you to tell them who you are when you create an account. But that's not a technical feature of the payment system, just of the rules VISA happens to place around it.
Bitcoin is pseudonymous - all transactions are tied to a publicly-visible unique identifier. If it was anonymous (like cash is) then transactions would be tied to nothing identifiable.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face