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Comment by pash | Hacker News Reader

Interestingly, these charges are published on the same day that the first decentralized Bitcoin exchange opens its public beta [0]. And, yes, the whole point of a decentralized Bitcoin exchange is to circumvent the laws that the FBI accuses Coin.mx of breaking:

Coinffeine takes advantage of the P2P model to avoid accepting deposits in bitcoins or fiat money, making it unnecessary to identify users or fulfill costly money laundering laws in each country. ... “Not having to identify users or enforce KYC laws has allowed us to design a much more scalable exchange model. [...]”, said Alberto Gómez Toribio, CEO of the company.

For good and for ill, one of Bitcoin's core value propositions will always be its promise to vitiate governments' attempts to control their citizens' money. It's hard to tell who's winning so far, and harder to tell who's likely to win in the end.

0. http://blog.coinffeine.com/2015/07/21/coinffeine-launches-wo...

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For those that don't know the acronym 'KYC' is 'ķnow your customer' and a core principle of Anti-Money Laundering (AML) laws. The idea is that if you know your customer, for example age, occupation etc, than you can--and are obligated by law to--flag suspicious financial activity to authorities.

For example, large and infrequent international wire transfers to say Bermuda may look suspicious if your 'KYC' information tells you the account is owned by a teenager in Utah with no ties to Bermuda. This wouldn't look suspicious for someone in their 50s who has a business and family based in Bermuda.

The government is likely to win in the end. It's not yet regulated because of it's small circulation and young age. If it were the first thing in history the government could not figure out a way to regulate I would be surprised. http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?...

And failing that, government could declare "war on cryptocurrencies".

The surest way for the government to lose.

The things most bitcoin proponents dream about are... crazy.

* No, you’re still going to pay taxes on your bitcoins.

* No, if you fraud someone, you’ll still have to give them their money back.

* No, bitcoin is totally meaningless if you can’t pay for food in it.

I have gold at my house. None of the local markets will except gold at the register for food. Is my gold meaningless?

I guess you would have no problem exchanging food for gold, but not at the rate you would like (or the market rate).

In my town, gold buyers buy gold at market rate, with cash. They sell gold at premium. It is quite easy and effortless to change your gold to cash, and then buy food from the market.

With bitcoin it is a little different, bitcoin ATM's have usually quite ridiculous premiums. I think the most used one in our town has 5% both ways.

> In my town, gold buyers buy gold at market rate, with cash. They sell gold at premium.

Who are they selling it to? Or by "market rate" do you just mean "the same rate that other gold buyers in the same town will pay"?

Since gold buyers are large/frequent market participants who deal with rare/sporadic market participants, I would have been strongly inclined to bet that gold buyers would buy below market and sell "at market". The guy walking into a gold buyer's shop to sell his gold probably isn't just testing to see what kind of price he can get. The gold buyer will happily wait to sell his gold until the price is right, though. That's his job.

Check out sites like localbitcoins. You can sell Bitcoins in cash pretty much anywhere in the world, even at a small premium. (How the Bitcoin ATMs survive in that environment I don't know.)

* Presumambly there are political solutions to tax problems.

* Do "bitcoin proponents" dream about defrauding people at a disproportional rate? This has been the opposite of my experience.

* It's already pretty easy to buy food with bitcoin.

Do "bitcoin proponents" dream about defrauding people at a disproportional rate? This has been the opposite of my experience.

The levels of fraud in Bitcoin are vastly higher than in other money systems like credit cards. Even if you count just one incident, Mt. Gox, the % of bitcoins that have been stolen is immense.

So, yes there are definitely lots of Bitcoin proponents dreaming about (and actually carrying out) fraud!

Why do you think the people stealing bitcoins are proponents? Bank robbers are rarely dollar proponents in the US, or yen proponents in Japan. Muggers generally aren't cash proponents or jewelry proponents. Conmen might be proponents of certain financial schemes, or they might just be charismatic.

A lot of the Bitcoin proponents are anarcho-capitalist – "I don’t want to have governments building streets from my tax money, I’d rather have every road be a toll road".

Check #bitcoin-assets on freenode, I hung out there for a few weeks, and it’s... crazy.

"How will the government force me to pay taxes? I don’t own bitcoins, I merely happen to have the piece of knowledge that is required to spend them"

* No, bitcoin is totally meaningless if you can’t pay for food in it.

In my town there were couple of regular markets accepting btc. However I heard they stopped accepting it, because of transaction speeds. I guess there is still one left.

> * No, bitcoin is totally meaningless if you can’t pay for food in it.

Thuisbezorgd, the largest site for ordering take-out food in the Netherlands accepts bitcoin.

Yes, but it’s not widely accepted.

And it probably never will be – transactions speeds are horrible (even international wire transfers through SEPA are faster than Bitcoin transactions) and the energy usage of the mining systems is growing exponentially.

I can buy food with bitcoins just fine. And pretty much everything else too.

Because of all the successful drug regulation going on? :-P

>The government is likely to win in the end.

Do you realise that there is more than one government in the world?

To be fair, when it comes to financial regulations and banking, there are very few governments that would hold their ground and stand firm against U.S pressure.

And those nations capable of standing their ground against the U.S (China, Russia, etc) wouldn't stand against them because it's in their best interests too. In fact, it appears Russia and China are becoming more strict on Bitcoins than even the U.S is. China and Russia don't like not having total control.

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