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California Looking To Make All Bitcoin Businesses Illegal
An anonymous reader writes A new law has been proposed in California that would effectively outlaw all Bitcoin-related businesses that don't first get "permission." The details are vague within the bill itself, which is part of what makes it dangerous. If you're doing anything with virtual currency, you may have to go line up in Sacramento to get permission first.
To do something like this and then either never issue said permissions or arrange it in such a way that getting said permission purposefully violates some other law that they can then hit you with.
"Papers Comrade!"
Enjoy. You made it that way.
That is a crafty way to describe registered and monitored.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Alternately, don't do business in California.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
If you look at the state, it's deeply in debt and politically utterly dysfunctional. Educational performance has fallen to nearly the bottom of the nation. The infrastructure is falling apart. Taxes are sky-high. The prisons are overcrowded and an embarrassment to the nation. Everything is regulated, from putting a shed in your backyard to how the hens are kept that produce your eggs. People and businesses are moving out of the state if they can.
California weather and scenery will mean that it will always remain a playground for retirees and the wealthy. And its widespread crony capitalism will keep some corporations around. But anybody with half a brain, and anybody who actually wants to innovate and accomplish something will move elsewhere.
I mean, if is approved for political donations how can California ban it?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Or is so unfamiliar with the US Political process they really shouldn't be commenting on bills. In Westminster-style democracies a bill being introduced by the government has a virtually 100% chance of becoming law, so it's very important when such a bill is introduced. But in the US there is no body in the state Legislature with the same role as the Prime Minister and his Cabinet, so all bills are the equivalent of Private Member's Bills in Canada/the UK/etc.
Which means that it's very important to know who sponsored this bill? Are they a Republican or a Democrat? What's their political point of view on the issue? What are their relationships with the rest of the State Assembly? The Senate? The Governor? These are all very important facts that the original story does not tell you, probably because the author does not know how the US Legislative process work.
The answers seem to be this was authored by Matt Dababneh, who represents a slice of the "Valley Girls" Valley in greater LA. He's a Democrat. The latter is good for the bill's odds of passage, the fact he has no Senate cosponsor is not because if it's not introduced in the Senate it can't become law. His point of view seems to be that you can use Bitcoin as a money-transfer service so any business based on changing dollars into BTC should follow the same banking rules that write-transfer services do.
Bitcoin contains features known to the State of California to cause untraceable transactions, speculation, and other financial harm.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
Have gnu, will travel.
As is the idea of tech blogs, which are perennially stupid when it comes to actually understanding the legal system, posting articles without understanding the subject matter. If you read the text it mainly says "if you're going to act like a bank, we're going to regulate you like a bank, even if you claim cryptocurrency makes you immune because it isn't real". I don't see how it seems unreasonable. Given bitcoin exchanges' track records it seems like a downright good idea, and it might help shake off the terrible reputation that bitcoin has outside of crazy people.
From the text of the bill:
26004. The following are exempt from the licensing requirement described in Section 26002:
(6) A merchant or consumer that utilizes virtual currency solely for the purchase or sale of goods or services.
This bill has nothing to do with people who wish to buy or sell goods or services in bitcoins. It is intended to regulate bitcoin exchanges, presumably to avoid another Mt Gox scenario. The bill is still in its very, very early stages, and so I'm sure there are problems with the verbiage. But the headline and summary are absolute bullshit, intended to drive readers into an anti-government rage, and thus generate clicks.
Last I checked that was unconstitutional. Feds make these rules and laws
http://saveie6.com/
What could possibly go wrong?
... with barber shops. You need a permit, and to take an exam which shows you know how to avoid electrocuting your customers with the electric clippers, and how not to transmit ringworm or scabies.
Radical stuff.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
That'd a good way to get otherwise reasonable people to pass laws like this and worse "in the memory of". Its about the same with threats because with their armed state police or secret service guards at their side, they will want to prove you cannot intimidate them with threats.
This looks like a simple case of a blogger not knowing what the fuck he is talking about. Nothing being banned in the legislation, seems to merely be trying to ensure virtual currency is regulated in the exact same way as dollars. If anything you could say this is a positive for bitcoin, but it seems the tards that support bitcoin look at anything that takes away there opportunities for fraud and tax evasion as the government stomping on their god given rights.
If you read the text it mainly says "if you're going to act like a bank, we're going to regulate you like a bank, even if you claim cryptocurrency makes you immune because it isn't real".
So to be clear, they're going to let people lend against bitcoin? Because what makes a bank is that they're allowed to take your money and then loan it out multiple times.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
They are just evacuating the state in anticipation of a series of earthquakes. They are looking for as many people to get the hell out as possible.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
... it's Bitcoin.
The only thing that makes less sense than Bitcoin is this goddam bill in California regarding it.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
After all, what is a "virtual currency" but a "good" to be exchanged? All in-game credits should be prohibited from being used to pay for items outside the game or being exchanged for cash Trading goods or services for other goods or services? Also should be illegal, since how can the Government monitor such transactions? Cash should also be made illegal, since it can not be immediately tracked and might be used for nefarious purchases and most importantly, privately held cash destabilizes our glorious economy by keeping it out of the hands of the almighty Financial Institutions who can use it to invest in hedge funds and conduct other sound business practices like lending it out to other large institutions or buy up massive tracts of property to mortgage to Wealthy Chinese Citizens thereby keeping our economy strong.
The only legal means of paying for goods or services should be with a Chip and Pin implant on your hand or forehead.
it's deeply in debt
Nice try. We elected a Democratic governor, so the giant debts from the era of the previous republican adminstration are gone. hello surplus! Thanks credit upgrade!
Cherry picking a single fact to make a claim, what a shock. Now check State Income Tax, city tax, property taxes, fees for home inspection and property maintenance, etc.. Yeah, facts suck your argument down quickly.
NewEgg has a warehouse in City of Industry. Wonder how this will effect them.
It probably wouldn't even if passed. Many merchants who "accept" bitcoins in fact never touch them. They pay a bitcoin exchange to do so. The merchants tell the exchange the $ amount. The exchange creates a payment address and a BTC amount to give the buyer. When the coins show up at this address and are verified the exchange credits the merchant's account for the exact amount of $ originally stated by the merchant. The merchant does all pricing and accounting in $ and has no risk from BTC price fluctuations.
It seems the only thing necessary would be for the exchange not to be in California.
I'd like to see them ban barter for everyone who didn't get "permission" first.
The power-grabbing motherfucker who proposed this bill is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
No info on who put him up to it, but this scumbag's got to go.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
"All vehicles must be stock. What bull."
As someone that lives in CA with a modified 750 Mercer (1950s Coventry Climax engine in it) I'm gonna say you're the one full of shit, child.
You just got pulled over because your shitty ass mods were INCORRECTLY INSTALLED. Like your fucking illegal shit-quality PINK HIDs with an excess amount of blue that hurts people's fucking eyes.
4 Cylinder at 900 horsepower? Man you're so full of shit even the noob tuners know better.
BTW We've got car shows with street exhibitions every other weekend. Tons of modified vehicles, all street legal.
Go try your lying bullshit on a FOX News forum, instead, fag.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
You can't loan out bitcoins multiple times. You can, however, make a paper bitcoin certificate and loan that out. The trick is convincing people that this bitcoin certificate is actually worth something.
All vehicles must be stock. What bull.
Yes, that is bull. As in, you are full of shit. Not only does California permit you to run pretty much anything you like if you get it approved, but California will actually let you build one full-custom vehicle in your life and drive it without crash testing, something you can't even do legally in most states. It has to have all the basic safety equipment and pass an inspection but it doesn't have to meet any of the federal crash test standards. It just needs a windscreen and a floor pan, brakes, signals, etc.
If you want to run a non-CARB-approved header, you need to see a smog referee, and that is annoying but it doesn't actually prevent the use of custom-manufactured parts.
So in fact, you are just lying. No surprise you didn't log in, coward.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
... you can't really stop a currency like this... that's sort of the whole point. You can make it less convenient but you might also make the process by which it operates even harder to monitor.
Also, the legality of such a law is dubious.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Too vague or too broad are two things that almost guarantee a law will be struck down. I don't think this will survive the inevitable challenge.
And just where does a transaction take place? If a citizen of California goes online and buys bitcoins in Virginia where does the transaction take place? From what I can see that issue is a legal nightmare to begin with. Maybe California could rule that no business inside California is allowed to accept bitcoins but what about businesses that have branches in several states? I don't see this working out well without creating all kinds of agencies and laws to enforce such nonsense.
I believe PayPal is already registered. Any company in the business of transferring money must register. Existing California laws require this in response to a number of cases where money-transfer businesses received payments but failed to transfer them, either because they went bankrupt or were just plain frauds. The new law merely proposes to include bitcoin transfer businesses within that same regulatory framework. This is NOT blocking bitcoin transfers; this is protecting consumers who want to transfer bitcoins.
The proposed law specifically exempts gaming pseudo-money. Section 26000 of AB 1326 states: "Virtual currency shall not be construed to include digital
units that are used solely within online gaming platforms with no market or application outside of those gaming platforms."
(FUDD = fear, uncertainty, doubt, and disinformation)
Money-transfer businesses are already regulated in California as the result of several such businesses failing. The proposed law merely adds bitcoin-transfer businesses to that category. This is a consumer-protection proposal in an attempt to prevent another Mt. Gox.
Just mandate that any/all electronic devices capable of mining or transferring Bitcoins be licensed & registered, with regular inspections and tamper-evident seals on the case/housing of the devices, and California-approved software installed to monitor and report any Bitcoin mining or transfers.
As a bonus, California can also use the inspections and monitoring software to detect and prevent all manner of criminal acts.
See? Easy! /s
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Why would I want to convert controlled currency for uncontrolled currency?
Is controlled currency that flawed it warrants an unmanned system?
If bitcoin took off, don't you think the same people who tainted controlled currency will taint uncontrolled currency?
...that pushes cryptocurrencies into truly anonymous exchanges. Up to now, most that demanded anonymous exchanges were trying to hide something. A few were Libertarians who just wanted privacy on principle. The rest just wanted to try it or to use it for convenience. But if the state tries to control all usage of it, that will drive most uses to demand anonymity, and solid means of achieving that will appear.