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Comment by PeterisP | Hacker News Reader

We've had some recent bitcoin companies simply shutting down/running away while taking the customers' stored funds. Sure, they lost reputation - was that any help to the depositors?

And from history of 'classic' banking we know very well that the 'lost reputation' doesn't work - we've tried that all over the world in the earlier times, it resulted in people creating new 'fresh clean reputation' companies one after another and sucessfully repeating such things over and over.

Raising the barrier of entry is the whole point - if you're unable to meet your agreements, you should be kept far, far away from that business permanently.

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I say let the unregulation continue. So many libertarians see this as an opportunity for no-regulation to be tested in scale, as a proof of concept.

I personally think that no-regulation will lead to implosion, as the bad reputation of a few firms quickly turns into a bad reputation for the currency, defacto scuttling the project as consumers learn not which bitcoin companies are untrustworthy, but that the whole system is untrustworthy by design.

Tell me how regulation stopped Enron. Tell me how regulation stopped the 2008 financial crisis with the housing bubble. These all happened in traditional markets.

You're right that some Bitcoin companies have screwed their users. Consumers need to educate themselves on who they're doing business with. A lot of these Bitcoin companies operated anonymously without impunity. Coinbase is an entirely different case. They are a US based company with VC backing. You know who you are conducting business with.

If you as a consumer want to purchase something from a company that isn't transparent, you don't know where their located, and don't know who's behind the operation, it doesn't matter whether you send bitcoins or your credit card number. It's still stupid. Common sense must prevail somewhere.

> Tell me how regulation stopped Enron.

One of the major problems at Enron was deregulation specifically. You need to a do a little more research to bolster your regulation = bad for bitcoin argument.

Ehhhhh....really?

Your examples are unbelievably silly, as both Enron and the financial crisis of 2008 occurred in the context of deregulation of those "traditional markets".

Wanna watch Bitcoin absolutely implode and die? You libertarians keep up your adolescent, blind fervor for nonregulation.

And laws against theft don't prevent all theft so theft should be legal.

I will never, in my life, understand why so many Libertarians take the argument that if some criminal might engage in a crime, then everyone should be allowed to do that same thing. It's the stupidest argument possible, yet you all parrot it unquestioningly. It blows my mind.

Wow. I encourage you to study logical fallacies. In particular: https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/strawman

I never held the position that you stated.

Wow. I encourage you to study written English communication.

Your writing clearly implied that regulation is useless because sometimes criminals evade regulation. If you were capable of understanding how communication works, you'd admit this.

Further, I encourage you to learn how not to be a jerk. because you are one, and it undermines any value that you might have, by ensuring that no sane person (who disagrees with you on you on any point) will ever want to have a discussion with you. That said, I can see where an ignorant jerk like yourself might consider it a feature that only people who agree with you completely are capable of having a conversation with you.

I'm sorry. Please accept my apology as that wasn't my intent. As a student of both writing and communication, I subscribe to the belief of that a person should write not to be understood, but to not be misunderstood. Clearly I've failed at that.

My point was that I don't think that regulation is the answer. I honed in on the idea that regulation has failed in the past (I have more research to do here) and thus, maybe alternatives should be considered. I wasn't trying to imply that because laws don't prevent criminals, that we should not have laws. Obviously, that's ludicrous. It's ludicrous because regulation != laws, or the principle of having laws. I think we can safely say that regulation may be an implementation of a law, or a specific law. Much like pizza is food, but not all food is pizza. Follow me so far? So, philosophically, if we have a bad set of laws, I wasn't suggesting that we throw out all laws, I was suggesting that we look for alternatives to the bad set of laws. To bring it home a bit more to other areas in modern society, it'd be like if I said that I think the war on drugs is failure, "tell me how the war on drugs has helped stopped drug abusers and criminals" and then you were to respond with your same response of "And laws against theft don't prevent all theft so theft should be legal." when that clearly wasn't my position.

Does this clear up my position a bit? Anyways, sorry I came off as a jerk.

So over time people figure out how to verify these things. Coinbase was easy: they are backed by Union Square Ventures. I generally trust anything that is funded by them.

Don't act like the only way this can be "fixed" is by inserting government control over the situation.

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