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Re:Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer by latj on Friday November 22, 2013 @02:03PM (#6782949)
Besides cost there is also risk- a transfer of this size in the light of day would raise a lot of questions- Where did this money come from? Was tax paid? And depending on the reason for the transaction regulators may interfere or freeze the funds.
Re:Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer by glesica on Friday November 22, 2013 @02:54PM (#6783320)
Yes, because making sure someone isn't buying a nuke on the black market and is paying the taxes they owe is just terrible. Don't get me wrong, the regulatory framework for money transfers seems to suck, but I don't want to go from "shitty regulation" to "zero regulation", I want to go from "shitty regulation" to "smart regulation".
Re:Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer by Sambdala on Friday November 22, 2013 @03:43PM (#6783591)
>I want to go from "shitty regulation" to "smart regulation".

I'm tempted to conclude this is something that happens so rarely you may as well count the times it happens as a rounding error.

It's a bit like saying government will just work if we only vote for the right candidate.

Re:Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer by chipotle_coyote on Saturday November 23, 2013 @01:57AM (#6785520)
I'm tempted to conclude this is something that happens so rarely you may as well count the times it happens as a rounding error.

Everyone's tempted to conclude things like that, but there's a subtle fallacy happening when we do. Generally speaking, we notice government programs of all stripes when they get in our way. When they don't get in our way, we don't. It's very easy for someone paying attention to the news to be able to rattle off incidents where the FDA and FEMA and the SEC screwed up, because the screw-ups are in the news. But when they do their job correctly we never hear about it. Basically, the dataset we carry around in our heads about How Well Government Works is substantially biased toward instances of failure.

The only way to really measure how useful a regulation is or isn't is to determine what it is the regulation is supposed to address and examine a substantial set of "before and after" data points; trotting out vivid but essentially anecdotal examples of WHEN REGULATORS GO BAD makes for great editorializing, but it doesn't actually tell us very much.

Re:Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer by thenmar on Friday November 22, 2013 @09:16PM (#6784926)
whoa whoa whoa, that would never happen in bitcoin libertarian paradise
Re:Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer by shitgoose on Saturday November 23, 2013 @09:52AM (#6786065)
"Where did this money come from?"

I guess, not from you. Is that the reason to question it?

"Was tax paid?"

What makes you think that this money supposed to be taxed?

Re:Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer by samdz on Sunday November 24, 2013 @04:54AM (#6789234)
If it is a transfer between two accounts owned by two different people - I guess that this huge amount would be taxable with some amount.
Re:Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer by shitgoose on Tuesday November 26, 2013 @01:33PM (#6803169)
What is taxable is not determined by the amount nor by ownership of accounts.