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German parliament passes bill allowing banks to sell and store cryptocurrencies
- lucideer 7y agoI read this and assumed crypto meant cryptography. I guess at this stage we should come up with a new short term for cryptography, since crypto has been subsumed. Could this maybe be editorialised to cryptocurrency for clarity?
- DyslexicAtheist 7y ago> we should come up with a new short term for cryptography "they" should come up with a new short term for cryptocurrency
- q3k 7y agoUnfortunately the free market cares about crypto->cryptocurrency more than about crypto->cryptography. We are all, unfortunately, under control of an entity that values financial growth at all costs over any sort of scientific merit.
- BLKNSLVR 7y agoCan we use that to garner public support for cryptography under the banner of digital currency / cryptocoins? Something like this: The five eyes are trying to ban crypto! The government wants to be able to access your life savings when it inevitably all goes digital!
- freehunter 7y agoEh I wouldn’t be so quick to blame finance for this one. How quickly did we lose the “hackers vs crackers” debate in security? Even this forum, plenty of people think the “hacker” in the name refers to cybercriminals because the name was so throughly co-opted.
- wongarsu 7y agoeGold would have been a great name (limited supply, prone to gold rushes, comparable to cash, ...). Sadly that name is taken
- A_Parr 7y agoInternet fun-bucks
- seizeheures 7y ago"magic internet money"
- arcticbull 7y agoMagic beans that live in your computer, or, uh, digital Chuck E. Cheese tokens. On a side note did you know the E. stands for Entertainment? Entertainment is literally that mouse’s middle name.
- collyw 7y agoIsn't all fiat money magic in that way?
- notahacker 7y agoNope. Fiat money is created as debt repayable only in that currency, and backed by a government which levies taxes only in that currency, so future demand to obtain the currency doesn't depend entirely on the assumption its purchasing power will go up. Even then, it needs a lot of intervention to keep it stable on a day to day basis.
- reportgunner 7y agoBut aren't cryptocurrencies technically a subset of cryptography ?
- q3k 7y agoWould you call your phone 'material science'?
- reportgunner 7y agoNot really, but I would definitely call it electronics
- imtringued 7y agoYes but it is a very broad subset to the point that it isn't useful. It's like saying that a law makes Germany a "money heaven" after introducing mobile payments.
- the-dude 7y agoCryptocommunist anyone?
- KirinDave 7y agoWhat are you trying to say here?
- ranit 7y ago>> we should come up with a new short term for cryptography Or neither of them should be shortened because these are compound words and the meaning of the first "hidden, secret" is too broad to represent any of its compound derivatives.
- lucideer 7y agoEditreply: For context, the original pre-editorialized title was the article's: "New law makes Germany “crypto heaven”" Thanks to whomever changed it.
- pgt 7y agoencrypto
- logicchains 7y agoSeems they're making all crypto exchanges not registered in Germany illegal for their citizens. I wonder what the punishment will be for a German who buys crypto from an unregistered exchange?
- DyslexicAtheist 7y agocash rules everything around me C.R.E.A.M get the money, so I'm more concerned about the push to abolish cash
- zeug 7y agoNothing. In normal the Company selling these have to prevents Germans to buy cryptocoins.
- wongarsu 7y agoI'm not so sure about that. I haven't looked up the legal text, but to me it only sounds like operating some services like crypto exchanges requires a licence. As a citizen I can interact with a Canadian bank that has no German licence, as long as I don't launder money. The Canadian bank just can't do business activities in Germany (advertisement, opening an office, etc). Overall this seems like a bigpositive since it gives crypto currencies a more solid place in the German legal framework, taking it out of the niche
- imtringued 7y agoThe punishment is that foreign exchanges will refuse to do business with Germans.
- pizzaparty2 7y agoIf they build up the infrastructure with that famous German engineering I'd just as soon stay away.
- hef19898 7y agoAh, come on. By 2022 all state administrative tasks will be 100% digital for German residents. That will be defined by law. There is nothing to worry!
- squiggleblaz 7y agoI can see the sarcasm in your post, but as someone who's just moved to Germany from a more ... bureaucratically modern ... country, it is enough to make one cry. The only digital part of my tasks so far has been that I had to send a document by email after travelling 800 km to perform a needlessly face-to-face task which required a followup.
- hef19898 7y agoWelcome to Germany (in all seriousness, if nobody rold you yet, welcome!)! I still remember when the local admin office was so proud to to go digital by offering online reservations for appointments. After at least two years of discussions. Portal looked already old in the early 2000s. When I first heard a politician announce that at a start-up conference, I had to double check that really talked about the implementation and not the law to be in force. And the guy was the (deputy-) head of parliament's digitalization council. Not sure just how the German government, and society, think a digital world is going to look like.
- TomMarius 7y agoWhat I don't understand is your banking. As a Czech person, I strongly felt like German banking is 20 years in the past. Why the heck would you have ATMs with opening hours, and not accepting all cards? Why does it cost so much (or anything?) to withdraw? Why are your businesses not accepting cards, or only accepting some cards with weird details like "CCs only German, other cards only EU"?
- sprash 7y agoThe initial purpose of Bitcoin according to its creator was to abolish central banks. The fact that the state uses force to collect taxes in fiat currency means that you have no chance to escape fiat, this new regulation makes sure of that. It means nothing more than Bitcoin has utterly failed in its mission.
- green1 7y agoDid the creator himself seriously think Bitcoin would be the end of banks?
- fixf 7y agoNo, it's much more likely that BTC was a state funded vehicle for surveillance. Take that with a grain of salt, I could be totally wrong.
- yohannparis 7y agoBe careful, because banks and central banks are not the same things.
- green1 7y agoI'm just wondering if people who claimed to believe Bitcoin would end the banking system came up with that amongst themselves or were basing it on something "Satoshi" had said. I had the impression Satoshi was relatively matter of fact about Bitcoin, but I haven't read much of his/her/their own words.
- tekproxy 7y agoRead the white paper.
- reportgunner 7y agoI think that abolish is a bit strong to say here. For sure he wanted to give us an alternative to not need a bank rather than destroying them.
- xenonite 7y agoI wonder what this means regarding the transparency of transactions and the anonymity of user ids. Is anyone aware of the new law's implications?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- m-i-l 7y agoThis article is attempting to put an extremely positive spin ("new law makes Germany 'crypto[currency] heaven'", "leads to institutional investors", "major breakthrough", "massive for adoption") on a government crackdown. To be expected given that decrypt.co is funded by ConsenSys, which was in turn founded by someone who had (in Feb 2018) an estimated "net worth in cryptocurrency to be between one and five billion [US] dollars"[0], so they have a vested interest in promoting cryptocurrencies. But why does this sort of advertising keep on cropping up on HN? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Lubin_(entrepreneur) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Lubin_(entrepreneur)
- arcticbull 7y agoIndeed I don’t see how this exempts the custodians from any of the AML and KYC rules that represents the only real value proposition of crypto: crime. > But why does this sort of advertising keep on cropping up on HN? Enough people within the HN community also suddenly found themselves with a large amount of wealth in these digital beanie babies of late, and so have similar vested interests.
- seibelj 7y agoBloomberg is founded by a billionaire with a vested interest in... whatever he has an interest in? Washington Post by Bezos as well. Should we ban all of this so-called “independent” media from HN?
- johnpowell 7y agoWell, Bloomberg probably has some actual cash. The crypto guy has a bunch of tokens he needs to turn into usable money. So he has a interest in keeping the price up while he slowly exits without crashing the price.
- elliekelly 7y agoBloomberg also has a lot of pricing and other financial market data that he needs to turn into usable money. Most (but not all) of Bloomberg’s editorial content furthers that interest in one way or another.
- upstandingdude 7y agoI don't know, smells fishy
- aazaa 7y agoIt appears to be a two-pronged law that permits banks to act as custodians, while at the same time requiring other custodians currently operating in Germany to obtain a special license and comply with other regulations.