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Singapore To Regulate Virtual Currency Exchanges
SpankiMonki writes "Following on the heels of the Mt Gox bankruptcy, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) plans to impose new regulations on currency exchanges dealing in bitcoin and other virtual currencies. Virtual currency exchanges would need to verify their customers' identities and report any suspicious transactions under the new rules.
The MAS said its regulation of virtual currency intermediaries — which include virtual currency exchanges and vending machines — was tailored specifically to the money-laundering and terrorism financing risks they posed. However, the new regulations would do nothing to ensure the solvency of virtual currency intermediaries or the safety of their client's funds."
The MAS said its regulation of virtual currency intermediaries — which include virtual currency exchanges and vending machines — was tailored specifically to the money-laundering and terrorism financing risks they posed. However, the new regulations would do nothing to ensure the solvency of virtual currency intermediaries or the safety of their client's funds."
It's the death of the free market, and the government will ruin everything we built!
This is Singapore, the country continually rated as one of the world's greatest countries for economic freedoms... soo
Bye!
Virtual currency includes that stuff they use in video games... so watch out.
The main benefits are: the government is not allowed to print money (devaluing what you own), and there is no centralized middleman that is able to block your transactions or freeze your assets (as Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal usually do).
The currency was ruined in design and philosophy. Don't blame the gov't
... and the ledger is public, everyone can check for possible corruption schemes.
How is that working out in the Mt. Gox investigation? It seems like nobody knows shit.
MtGox would be a footnote if people had not been using them as a online wallet. With bitcoin you are supposed to be using a local wallet.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
Yes, you're supposed to cut out the middleman. Let the hackers steal directly from you instead of going through a third party.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
A bigger problem in my mind than government controlling money, is money controlling governments.
Anyway it seems that you are far more at risk of not being able to access your wallet with Bitcoin than you are to having your assets frozen with traditional currencies, - assuming that you aren't actively engaged in some illegal activity. And it would also seem that Bitcoin has found a number of very effective ways of getting devalued in spite of the fact that you can't print more of it.
There are a lot more things that a currency needs to be protected from than just the government.
I made a similar currency: I call it '$hitcoin'. It's not the first one I made, but version number two.
It's a craptocurrency, but one based on alimentary, time-tested economic principles, real old-stool. IANAL, but it rests on a strong fecal foundation, with minimal risk of law sewage.
That's irrelevant. 6% of the total bitcoins were involved in a "possible corruption scheme". In theory, the public blockchain in supposed to shed light on the situation. But that does not seem to be happening.
... and the ledger is public, everyone can check for possible corruption schemes. And the cost per transaction is much lower.
I thought that verifying the transactions took a lot longer and that currently there's a cap on the number of transactions that the Bitcoin network can handle. So while the fees charged today might be lower, the real costs of handling Bitcoin transactions is high and it may not be scalable enough.
Lower transaction fees.
it would be pretty hard to steal from my BC wallet if it was on a thumb drive in my pocket all the time...
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
*yawn* Pirate Bay is still up. And thanks to namecoin, it always will be.
Inflation devalues your money in a predictable way. While that may not be optimal, it is much better than not knowing how much your currency can buy you from one minute to the next.
Having people be their own bank is fraught with problems and is not a realistic approach to storing currency. How many people do you know that even have adequate backups for their personal data? Why do you think banks exist in the first place?
Yes, it takes a brand new invention called a pickpocket. Or a weapon. True, that happens with cash too- but it happens to a fraction of what you own, because the rest is in a bank. With the wallet on a USB stick, its your life savings.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
of course they can and do, steal real wallets at knifepoint. also, knife wielding home invaders aren't the most technologically adept demographic, and are more likely to just steal your laptop and pawn it.
You are supposed to encrypt your wallet. In fact you should be able to leave your encrypted wallet in a public place it doesn't need to be on a thumb drive. You can have it freely available on a website.
Then you have the same problem with the encryption keys. Someone will compromise your keys or the encryption and you'll be fucked.
Encryption is harder to crack than other ways of stealing from people. We use encryption for almost all e-commerce and banking right now. It's not impossible to circumvent it, but it's hard enough that it happens only rarely.
The best you can do is make the human the weakest link in the chain (i.e. everything else is stronger), and mitigate the number of things that a human must do correctly to achieve proper security.
of yeah...becuz of course most junkie pickpockets are looking for nerdy thumb drives and not cold hard cash and credit cards.
and on top of it, of course my thumb drive..in the pocket...with my bitcoin wallet...is going to be nicely encrypted with a 1024-bit key
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
Money controlling governments can be used to control money controlling people.