Till it starts to get exchanged for hard currency bitcoin is merely a token of barter - you barter X bitcoins for say legal services. Or a dime (or is it 10 bitcoin) bag of weed. Or whatever.
Once it starts getting exchanged for hard currency - the point where this exchange takes place WILL get regulated. That's inevitable. Any widespread use of bitcoin for illegal activities will also, inevitably, attract interest - but more from the ATF, FBI or similar agencies worldwide, compared to financial and tax regulators. --srs (iPad) On 02-Apr-2013, at 18:17, Alaric Snell-Pym <[email protected]> wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > On 04/01/2013 05:30 PM, Yosem Companys wrote: >> Hi all, >> >> I'm one of the coordinators of the Program on Liberation Technologies >> at Stanford University, where we study and design technologies that >> can be used to promote the public good, including democracy, human >> rights, freedom, and development, among others. > > Good! Perhaps you will have something to say about a matter I've been > turning over in my head lately! > > I'm interested in Bitcoin. Why? Because I think there's a lot of > inefficiency and injustice in the way traditional financial systems > (banks, currencies, and markets) are built: they're heavily centralised > and monopolised and entangled with politics and other vested interests. > > But I'm far from certain that Bitcoin will be a panacea here. Precisely > because it is decentralised and purely under the control of > dispassionate algorithms, it is open to different kinds of abuse. The > initial distribution is hardly "fair" (no matter how you define fair), > although I don't think a better distribution mechanism could have been > defined; but will it even out with time? Or will we find new > centralisation, in the form of important market functions (eg, the kinds > of roles that banks fill) being monopolised by the few who have the > capital to run them? > > There's a centralisation risk in the mining power being monopolised; > somebody who controls more than half of the computational power in the > mining network, for instance, could just write their own rules (creating > bitcoins out of nothing or stealing bitcoins from other people, for a > start). > > There's also a danger of governments stepping in and regulating Bitcoin > in ways that make it a slave to the incumbent financial system. > > But there's also the chance for truly independent economic institutions > to form, fighting each other for trust and market share by actually > competing, with reputation being the most important capital, meaning > that anyone with a good idea can implement it and earn from it; and > reduced transaction fees and censorship making it easier to do business > from developing economies (look at how PayPal blacklists entire > countries); and stuff like that. > > So what can nerds like me do to try and make sure the world gets the > benefits of a decentralised currency, and that good outweighing the > costs of it being used for tax evasion, trading in unethical things, or > ending up ensnared by central control in one way or another? > >> >> Yosem > > ABS > > - -- > Alaric Snell-Pym > http://www.snell-pym.org.uk/alaric/ > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux) > Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ > > iEYEARECAAYFAlFa03EACgkQRgz/WHNxCGon4wCfU14B1J2oN7HSFCMsfT4tpfh4 > 66YAoIyIzuO7QufwKnlgtDuKPpyxG8vw > =U0ZW > -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- >
