Germany Sets Standard for Bitcoin Regulation

Re:Germany Sets Standard for Bitcoin Regulation by lmkg on Monday August 19, 2013 @03:01PM (#6238966)

Ehhh... One of the founding principles was that it doesn't have a central issuing authority. The supply of bitcoin can't be controlled, which makes it immune to politically-convenient devaluation or debasement, unlike government-issued fiat currency. Or in laymen's terms: The fed can't just print more bitcoins.

Starting from the above, an extended game of Telephone resulted in some people thinking that Bitcoin can't be regulated at all. This is a silly belief.

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Re:Germany Sets Standard for Bitcoin Regulation by cracker_jacks on Monday August 19, 2013 @03:26PM (#6239165)

Can you explain how can bitcoin be regulated? Regulation defined as the ability to control transactions.

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Re:Germany Sets Standard for Bitcoin Regulation by brazzy on Monday August 19, 2013 @03:43PM (#6239293)

The same way transactions in any other currency are controlled: by making laws that say what you must and cannot do and what penalties apply if you don't comply.

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Re:Germany Sets Standard for Bitcoin Regulation by cracker_jacks on Monday August 19, 2013 @04:33PM (#6239603)

You can regulate things around bitcoin (ie exchanges), but you have no direct control of whether or not a wallet is able make transactions. You can't freeze a bitcoin address and associating an address to a real-world identity would be easily circumvented.

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Re:Germany Sets Standard for Bitcoin Regulation by brazzy on Monday August 19, 2013 @08:16PM (#6240782)

Indirect control of the form "you broke this law and go to jail" is perfectly sufficient. And it is in fact attempts to disassociate addresses and real world identities that are easily circumvented when you have the resources of a government.

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Re:Germany Sets Standard for Bitcoin Regulation by dragonwriter on Monday August 19, 2013 @04:34PM (#6239613)

> You can regulate things around bitcoin (ie exchanges), but you have no direct control of whether or not a wallet is able make transactions.

In this respect, this is no different than most things government regulates, including money-in-the-form-of-coins-and-scraps-of-paper.

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Re:Germany Sets Standard for Bitcoin Regulation by cracker_jacks on Monday August 19, 2013 @04:50PM (#6239725)

The difference is ease, physical currency is much harder to break apart and move around in large sums without eventually going through something the government regulates. If you kept your transactions entirely in bitcoin, I do not see how anyone could control what you do.

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Re:Germany Sets Standard for Bitcoin Regulation by Myrth on Monday August 19, 2013 @03:42PM (#6239286)

> Regulation defined as the ability to control transactions.

I'm not sure where would you get this definition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation

> Regulation may refer to the following:

> A process of the promulgation, monitoring, and enforcement of rules, established by primary and/or delegated legislation.

> A written instrument containing rules having the force of law.

In this context they talk about monitoring and enforcing companies' use of bitcoins within legal system.

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Re:Germany Sets Standard for Bitcoin Regulation by cinquemb on Monday August 19, 2013 @03:51PM (#6239341)

In this context they talk about monitoring and enforcing companies' use of bitcoins within legal system.

As `mrb said here, it is not very clear since it explicitly is dealing with bitcoin exchanges: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6238754

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Re:Germany Sets Standard for Bitcoin Regulation by vl on Monday August 19, 2013 @04:54PM (#6239755)

>The fed can't just print more bitcoins.

Mmm, they kinda can: they can deploy a large cluster, let's say 90% of capacity, hoard mined coins, then release them at once - booms, effect is not that different from printing.

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