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Comment by vesinisa | Hacker News Reader

But wait ... I thought Bitcoin was immune to regulators?

This is about Banks holding them as asset backing for deposits, etc. as an alternative to the traditional Bonds, Loans and Reserves.

It's not about the crypto-currency operation itself. It's whether they are worth anything in banking/accounting terms.

For now. Keep in mind, the question the status quo is wanting to answer is: "We can't simple stand still and forfeit our (fiancial) power, so how can we make this work for us?" They haven't squashed because it might be a and better opportunity for them.

It will be a nudge by nudge process. This is a start. Nothing is off the table for them.

> how can we make this work for us?

Which side of this debate do you think the City of London and Wall Street are on? Crypto has been a panacopia for finance.

What's a panacopia?

My point is, legislation and regulation is a function of control. The lack of such things currently either means:

- They already think they have the upper hand.

- Or, it's too new and they haven't sorted out which scale and how much thumb pressure to apply.

But the lack of regs atm is certainly not inductive of anyone's benevolence.

Bitcoin is immune same way as hawala is immune. Regulators can push it underground, but it will still function and provide value, albeit on different scale.

Hawala relies on trusted intermediaries to cash out. How would that happen with bitcoin? I doubt many legitimate uses would suffer back-alley transactions.

Same way, trusted cash exchange intermediaries. localbitcoins seems to be exactly this.

And for bitcoin it is much easier than for traditional systems, as trust only need to cover exchange operation.

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