Friday, August 15, 2014

"BitLicense Would Force Us to Block New York Customers"

In a new blog post, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire says that his Bitcoin-related firm would move to block New York customers from using its service should the BitLicense proposal become law. His statement was echoed in a companion piece by company CTO Sean Neville.

The Circle CEO wrote in the blog post that the regulations are “technically impossible” to comply with, creating a radically more challenging environment for digital currency companies to operate in.

He concluded:
Without some material changes, Circle will have no choice but to block New York customers from accessing our services.
As I have warned here at EPJ, government will attempt to strangle Bitcoin via regulation. The proposed New York regulations are just the start. Wait until the Federal regulations come out. At a minimum, it will destroy the ability to use Bitcoin autonomously for most transactions.

Bitcoin is not some new libertarian currency that will break commerce away from the watchful eye of government. If anything, for the most part, it will be easier for government to track Bitcoin users as opposed to, say, those who simply use cold hard cash.

-RW

(ht CoinDesk)

1 comment:

  1. The Block Chain logs every transaction ever successfully verified, a permanent record. The data analyses of addresses with large holdings, etc. will be easy to do. As for transactions, maybe more anonymous, but not for sure, and again if you have given out your public wallet address, and regularly use it, all that has to be done is monitor the block chain. So you never know when you will get that 'effective' knock on the door from TPTB regarding crypto transactions, even if from months-years ago. Also, do not put it past TPTB to simply make up bogus transactions/wallets linked to users they wish to frame-take out. Bitcoin (crypto systems) was sold as near perfect anonymity, it is far from it, and that for many (me for sure) is a major flaw.

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