I used to be pretty Randian/anti-regs but I now see that places like this need to operate under some level of regulation to ensure they aren't massive conduits for money laundering, and are subject to basic rule of law (e.g. following court orders).
The real question is the extent to which people see operating outside the law as a good thing. Sure, it may be cheaper in the short run, but in the long term, having recourse to courts, police, and other standard norms of civilized society might be worth more than people realize.
Rand speaks of an ethos of personal accountability versus one that hides their crimes behind a facade of claimed social norms. It's not an issue of private business vs public regulation other than the sort of people each group tends to attract.
Rule of law is pretty important to having a fluid economy. I've looking into starting businesses in parts of the world with fewer regulations - hard-to-attain power becomes the defacto currency in those economies. In crypto, the corollaries are Tether-like frauds and electricity-theft driven mining pools.
I say, fine - run it anonymously from Hong Kong for all I care, just be transparent about assets and liabilities so everyone can see that you're solvent.
If someone did this, wouldn't they quickly take the lion's share of volume away from the sketchy exchanges?
Bitfinex has been undergoing third party audit from Friedman for months now. No one cares though and still throw accusations around like confetti.
Anyone who knows this fact and doesnt trust Friedman as a multinational auditor/accountant should say as such, rather than repeating blatant falsehoods.
It quite easy to see what others have to gain from the negative coverage.
Exchanges ddos each other all the time, its a shady industry, 15mins downtime for poloniex can double the weekly income of small exchanges.
I'd hope hn readers see between the lines a bit more rather then jump on bandwagons.
Is there proof of this? All I've seen (and I may be ignorant of the rest, so this is a legitimate request :) ) is that "note" from Friedman LLP that explicitly stated it was not an audit.
3rd result from googling "friedman bitfinex":
http://www.friedmanllp.com/insights/auditor-engagement
Now you said Friedman "explicitly stated it was not an audit", I searched and all i can find is blog posts and reddit threads. Any chance you could procure this explicit statement? Thanks.
The url I provided says the compete opposite and itself links to the original source I offered.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/article2...
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-0209010315sep01-story...
They seem symbiotic to me (exclusively mutual?).
http://fortune.com/2017/03/19/irs-bitcoin-lawsuit/
Though the claim was lowered to 20k:
http://fortune.com/2017/07/10/bitcoin-irs-coinbase/
But with BTC prices increasing even this might prove troubling and net more than 14k customers which coinbase reported earlier: https://blog.coinbase.com/coinbase-irs-update-ed9c966c7747
There are thousands that are boycotting Coinbase because their KYC systems take too long, or their deposits/widthdraw take 2 weeks sometimes. Just today I was reading a thread on Reddit where someone was claiming to be currently sueing Coinbase because their account was closed due to them depositing from a bank account that didn't match the name on the coinbase account...
Or people don't use them because the fees are marginally higher.
I just don't get it. If I'm going to put my money somewhere, I want the place to be following every US law, and charge enough fees that I'm not worried they will go bankrupt or resort to shady tactics to make money.