Germany Sets Standard for Bitcoin Regulation
bitcoinmagazine.com
bitcoinmagazine.com
The key to regulating companies is clearly to require them to write 30 pages of creative writing detached from the reality of how the business will operate a few months later.
How about a few page summary of the business with profiles of the team members, or pitch deck, without all the useless detail.
Also: to filter out ponzi schemes and the like.
We would never know that until people are allowed to decide for themselves how they want to protect themselves. Right now we have two problems: 1) we are forced to allocate huge amounts of money for various "protection" of dubious quality, so we don't have much money left for extra protection that we ourselves may choose; 2) various business models that might explore alternative ways to protect people are either prohibited or kept away from existing monopoly markets protected by the state.
In short: while there are state guns, we cannot know if they do us any good. And I very much suspect that any person who constantly coerces you "for your own good" without a good proof is always an evil sadist. (Parents may force children to take a medicine because they can then demonstrate that it was actually helping. Like you may drag me by force from under a running bus and then tell me why you did it. But constant abuse without a proof and religious brainwashing is pure sadism.)
Today, people will still put their money on companies that return a result from that query.
That is, most of the MLM companies
The problem is that they force C, D, E, F and many others to pay for it. If I don't think the government methods really help anyone, or at least me, I'm still forced to give a part of my income. Also: didn't you notice that almost any voluntary service or product costs the same for both rich and poor, while compulsory government services are somehow priced in a portion of your wealth? Don't you feel that you are being abused?
Get a grip. We all benefit from the collective services, and we give in proportion to our ability to do so. If all were asked to pay the same price then the poorest would have nothing left for food.
Policemen do not pay taxes from their salary (even if formally they do). They are net tax receivers. And they also get to hold a gun to your head when you do not give them money, or refuse to pay it from your employee's payroll, or something else (as I said, the paperwork is huge and complex to hide where exactly the gun is being pointed).
When you are being robbed and then given some bribe to make an illusion of a good done to you, it's not a "service", it's a bullshit of a catholic caliber.
As I mentioned many times again on HN, pro-government or pro-law rhetoric is no different from religious bullshit that one group of people uses on another group of people at the expense of someone else.
Compare:
"Without religion and church there's no morality" => "without government we'll have anarchic chaos"
"You must trust pope because he's set here by God" => "You must trust mr. president because there is society that elected him"
"If god does not exist, who created everything?" => "Without government how would we build roads and fly to the moon?"
"The Bible says what's good and what's bad" => "The constitution defines our rights."
"If you are against religion, you are against morality" => "If you are against government, you are against society".
The government is us. It's not an external parasite. The majority of us want it and see use in it. Sucks to be you I guess.
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I think they just want to filter so that there are fewer companies to regulate, disregarding the fact that this kind of regulation affects small businesses disproportionately.
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.
In this respect, this is no different than most things government regulates, including money-in-the-form-of-coins-and-scraps-of-paper.
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.
As `mrb said here, it is not very clear since it explicitly is dealing with bitcoin exchanges: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6238754
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.
1. Mix coins with others to make it impossible to trace where he spends them.
2. Pay someone for labour.
3. Buy any digital product or service online from anyone in the world.
4. Buy something delivered to his door via postal service.
5. Pay for small purchases like with cash.
6. Buy some assets in another country.
Each of these activities are really hard to monitor or affect.
Some activities are easier to regulate. If you are going to buy some AAPL shares or a house, you'd have to tell government something about yourself or the source of your income.
As an individual trading and accepting bitcoins for goods with other individuals, you would be out of the scope of regulation, and because of the nature of bitcoins, you could make it scale to business like levels.
This do happen in real life quite often when people are not paid in cash.
In this case the blockchain is visible for all to see, including the governments, and they only have to resolve the true identity of someone once to be right for all time.
But for individuals, one can create as many wallets as they wish, use as many laundering clients over tor, to remain out of reach. Which is exactly why governments have to set up honey pots to confiscate bitcoins on sites like the silk road (which end up not being effective deterrents and end up being outed as such by the community that relies/favors on reputable past trades). I suspect business/organizations can employ similar technologies to reduce their taxation and how much they declare.
Yes, that is what the state does.
As an individual trading and accepting bitcoins for goods with other individuals, you would be out of the scope of regulation, and because of the nature of bitcoins, you could make it scale to business like levels.
Yeah but your chances of running such a business and, say, not collecting the sales taxes for your area just went down a few notches. Bitcoin transactions are public, more public than, say, paper currency transactions.
And to answer the gp's original question, this does contradict the original intention of bitcoins. Failed or succesful, bitcoins are losing the specialness that was their original pull. Well, suck on it. The original intention was a la, la land phantasy, a fundamentally impossible Libertarian Party wet-dream.
Bitcoinist never figured out whether their cry was "they can't stop us", "they won't (try to) stop us" or "they shouldn't stop us". The result - the state clearly can stop bitcoin but so prefers to just control it.
I had imagined the whole thing would just collapse but I suppose it may just wind-up a fully regulated cash transfer system. But money still depends on the state.
Think of waiters receiving cash tips.
-Initial capital of 730.000 Euros
-Management must be professionally qualified
-A detailed business plan must be submitted
-Capital adequacy standards must be met
-AML mechanisms must be implemented
-Reports must be submitted to BaFin regularly
Well...are there any bitcoin exchanges that meet those requirements in Germany?
https://blog.bitcoin.de/en/bitcoin-de-und-fidor-bank-ag-vere...
As from the start of the cooperation, which will be
activated upon the registration with the German Federal
Financial Supervisory Authority, Bitcoin Deutschland GmbH
will become Fidor Bank AG’s so-called “tied agent” to
conduct the bitcoin trading for Fidor Bank AG on
bitcoin.de.
Both account keeping and converting one currency into another are well understood problems for regulators.
How do you figure? Germany, like any other developed country, can simply go to the delta: merchants who want to stay in business. Want your business license? Better comply with currency laws.
Bitcoin is too useful to be squashed by mere government regulation. If a few more countries employ these draconian measures, some cash-starved government will welcome Bitcoin in the future.
If regulators ("the body of Leviathan and the head of a social worker", to lift from Joseph Stromberg) were smart, they'd advocate easy exchange rules and impose a small tax on each transaction on the exchange.
Over the course of generations, I tend to have more faith in markets than in governments. That's why I think regulators will fail in their efforts in the long run.
So the state has a lot of tools.
That really annoys regulatory mindsets.
Bafin does not seem to care if you use btc to trade with your friends, but once € are involved they make the rules. Don't know if that angers you, but I think they have a case.
Not so easy with Bitcoin
my 2c.
Does this apply to all bitcoin companies like it said, or just exchanges?
This regulation would apply just as normal financial service regulation - to companies that make bitcoin/money transfers on behalf of others, as a payment service provider (like paypal is regulated); that hold bitcoins on behalf of others (like any deposit-accepting bank is regulated) or those that buy/sell bitcoins from public (like currency exchanges are regulated).
As a bar owner who accepts BTC for beer, you are fine. However, the German Gov't has already declared they are set out to discuss how to tax companies that accept BTC.