Slashdot Mirror
Time To Regulate Bitcoin, Says UK Treasury Committee Report (theguardian.com)
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are "wild west" assets that expose investors to a litany of risks and are in urgent need of regulation, MPs on the Treasury select committee have said. From a report: The committee said in a report that consumers were left unprotected from an unregulated industry that aided money laundering, while the government and regulators "bumble along" and fail to take action. The Conservative MP Nicky Morgan, the chair of the committee, said the current situation was unsustainable. "Bitcoin and other crypto-assets exist in the wild west industry of crypto-assets. This unregulated industry leaves investors facing numerous risks," Morgan said. "Given the high price volatility, the hacking vulnerability of exchanges and the potential role in money laundering, the Treasury committee strongly believes that regulation should be introduced."
The public wants bitcoin because it isn't regulated by any government.
They just don't like the risk that lack of regulation entails.
About time.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
What *exactly* are they proposing? They listed some issues with bitcoin that come with pretty much any other kind of investment, but investors aren't protected from, such as loosing all of your principal, forgetting passwords, and getting hacked.
These all happen to current traditional investors with current regulation. What exactly are they proposing to prevent this from happening with Bitcoin?
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Vauge - I think I just invented a new pretentious color name.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
So don't invest in it!
If people decided to invest in tulips, would you regulate tulips? Or would you just say "Hey, don't do that, numbnuts. And if you do it despite everyone's advice, don't complain about the results!"?
Hurricanes are just getting way too destructive lately. It's time we started regulating how much destruction a hurricane is allowed to make.
You're right -- we can do so by taking steps to curtail things contributing to global warming.
Like cryptocurrency mining.
... the potential role in money laundering ...
Do they mean "money laundering" as in spending your money in ways they don't approve of, or "money laundering" as in receiving money for selling stuff they don't approve of?
How would the UK government, on it's own, regulate the BitCoin market? It's not UK based, it's distributed globally, and it has users all over the world. Even if they COULD, WTH would give the UK the legal authority to even try? They might as well decide to regulate the Dollar, the Yuan, or International gold prices. Am I just fundamentally misunderstanding something?
Normally an Ideology based on absolutism fails.
Government Regulation is Bad! However without it there is a lot of abuse in the system without any peaceful ways to reconcile it.
Government Regulation is Good! However too much regulation can stifle innovation and risk taking, because Regulation takes much to long to adapt.
The thing is there needs to be a balance, and to make it worse, the balance point is never in the same spot. Sometimes the needle needs to be towards the left and other times it needs to be at the right. Fixing it in the middle is just as bad as being fixed in either direction, because in the Middle no one is happy.
We see in history good times under a particular political direction, then we see bad times under that same direction. They switch to the other side then things are good again, then they fail.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Haha no, the real electricity use according to ieee article criticizing it is comparable to mid sized city, not the stupid exaggerated claims such as article posted here claimed with power of Denmark's consumption... That's impossible.
I'd agree Bitcoin is fool's investment, but energy use is gnat's fart in typhoon.
When you say "1 bitcoin" is that Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Bitgoin Gold (BTG), Bitcoin Private (BTCP) ?
Or maybe in 20XX those cryptocurrencies and their forks will have collapsed and there is some other system that is dominate? Defunct currency is probably worth about $0 if there is no exchange to accept them and no reliable network to perform transactions.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Capitalistic society is a ponzi scheme.
Which is why those selling investments are also under the law, they have to be adults too. Markets are regulated, get used to it. Bitcoin isn't money, it's a game token for investment
The UK is powerless to regulate Bitcoin. They can prevent their citizens from participating in the future of money (whatever crypto that ends up being) but they cannot stop a global phenomenon.
I hope they do too - there are some smart UK'ers and who wants them competing with us? /s
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Hahaha, it's a solution looking for a problem. Superior distributed databases exist that properly scale, integrity verification is long solved problem too. Startups suckering investors with claims of block chain utility in business are going to fail next
why was this modded troll? it's pretty much spot on. Maybe the whoosh factor was a bit too high?
No, no, no, no, no....
Now fuck off or I shall No you again.
I don't think it's impossible when there are whole (coal!) power plants being brought out of retirement to run mining operations. Alex de Vries' latest estimate that Bitcoin alone is using almost 0.5% of humanity's energy is actually a very conservative estimate which assumes that everyone is using the most efficient hardware possible. Cryptocurrency is an unmitigated environmental disaster.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The banks hold the master ledger of all the accounts they have. You regulate a bank saying what transactions are allowed, safeguards they must make, insurance etc.
There is no such entity in crypto currencies. The ledger is what everyone agrees the ledger is.
The UK can regulate the exchanges where the exchanges interact with existing banks, that's really about it.
Finally, other than Monero, all crypto currencies suck for money laundering. Every transaction is public for everyone to see. If the UK government was actually worried about money laundering maybe they should create a public ledger for every British pound transaction.
Put your net worth into bitcoin TODAY.
Moron.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Exactly what threat to society is it, such that it must be protected against at all costs?
I know it is used against drug money, which I don't really care that much about...but what real threat to our society is it?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I also wouldn't be surprised if tulips are treated like other agricultural commodities. Yet that seems to be missing the point, a joke about cryptocurrency being an investment bubble, since tulip mania is one of the most famous investment bubbles
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Nobody in crypto wants regulation except for people who already have money since it might bring institutional money. The point of the system was to work around regulations and countries that try to block it. People who even mention regulation do not understand it or just want to make it all illegal.
Crypto in general is a highly centralised waste of electricity. It's rather pointless. Regulating it is like regulating drugs, the wrong direction to go.
Regulate bitcoin exchanges in your own country, sure. But feel small. There is no way to regulate bitcoin worldwide from the small corner you reside in. I and others will always be able buy items for bitcoin, without regard to the unenforceable restrictions of either the countries on either end of the transaction. I will be able to meet someone in a cafe, receive cash, and transfer bitcoin. The governments involved will just have to trust their citizens. In America at least, in theory, the people ARE the government. It is no different than buying gold bullion. I can go to a cafe and buy a Canadian Maple Leaf. Later I can buy a houseboat with my horde of gold coins. So, sure, regulate commercial sales of Mapleleaf coins. Regulate commercial exchanges for bitcoin. But whether considered an asset or money, the private transfer is beyond the government to control.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
People tend to assume that GOVERNMENT regulation is somehow superior to individuals making decisions on their own. But government is just made of more individuals, subject to the same ability to be corrupted and same temptations to cheat, lie or rip off their fellow man for personal gain.
Obviously, the IDEA is that people in government were vetted and selected by the rest of the public as their preferred choices to "speak for them" by taking a stance on issues. But the result is always a compromise, where an often significant minority disagrees strongly with the leaderships' decisions and where supporters are often disappointed by how "watered down" promises get by the time they're turned into actions.
IMO, one of the primary reasons Bitcoin was even created was to provide a decentralized form of currency that ISN'T subject to any government's regulations. That comes with some risk, obviously ... but also benefits in some situations. And yes, it DOES aid some people in doing criminal things. But ultimately? Crimes are still crimes, regardless of currencies used in transactions done as part of them. If you hire someone to kill a person and pay them in Bitcoin instead of a regulated government currency? The murder was still a murder and there should be ways to prove someone hired the other person without having to trace the flow of the funds.
There's no need for "balance" here at all! That already exists by way of people having MANY options to do some sort of barter or exchange of a form of payment in return for goods or a service. Bitcoin should be here to offer that anonymous, non centrally-governed option.
It's generally about money that are not being paid taxes of.
If we didn't try to stop it, every rich company owner on the planet would be doing it, and thus the only people paying taxes would be the poor. Taxes to maintain the roads that the same rich companies use to move their products from factories to stores.
Bitcoin is in urgent need of taxing.
The action to regulate bitcoin will make it more difficult for both North Korea and Russia to launder dirty money, other than at "golf courses" run by their cronies.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
You mean eradicate. Cant have that anonymous stuff going on now can we?
"You know, I don't really think we need to regulate this, do we?"
-Said no government body, ever.
-Styopa
It's cool, I'm used to it.
Damn right, let's replace it with Dogecoin!
And just to show you how fair I am, let's start Dogecoin's value at only 10% of Bitcoin's value!
#DeleteFacebook
I have about one and a half million Flappycoins for sale.
Anyone interested? I'd be happy to let them go for 0.00000001 BTC each.
#DeleteFacebook
Or regular mining. I don't think digging precious metals out of the ground is carbon neutral. At least crypto mining is not damaging the environment directly.
Perhaps someone should quitely pay someone to kill you and then ask you family that question or how about bribes to politician or how about the person who was paid to kill you was a law enforcer with a laundered bank account.
Unbacked crypto currencies are doomed, to be replaced by energy backed crypto currencies traded on legal exchanges.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
No that's silly. The amount of energy used to mine bitcoins won't exceed the market value of the coins, otherwise people will be going broke by mining it, thus forcing themselves out of the mining market. Do you really think the value of the coins mined account for 0.5% of world GDP?
It's not really currency. It doesn't really seem to have the properties of one. Stability, for example.
Ezekiel 23:20
You've made some kind of fallacious connection between energy costs and GDP there, but you're otherwise on the right track to verifying this number. A better estimate would be to check if the value of the coins mined exceeds 0.5% of world grid power expenditure.
I couldn't find a number for total worldwide energy consumption, or the total number of bitcoins mined in any year, and the average worldwide cost would obviously be higher than the electricity mining companies are buying, but if we take the projected 7.67GWh we can estimate an energy cost. The study that produced these estimates uses an energy cost of 5c/KWh, the global average is 6c/KWh, and the average US household electricity cost is 12c/KWh. If we use that range, we can estimate that between $38.35M and $92.04M will be spent in total on energy for mining bitcoins in 2018 if the energy usage estimate holds throughout the year. In the grand scheme of things this isn't a significant amount of money, it's less than the cost of one high-end fighter jet, and a cost that could credibly be absorbed by all the world's large mining operations combined.
Now that the value of cryptocurrencies has crashed though, it may not be so profitable and this madness might finally cease.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
"If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." --Reagan
Casteism