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One guess is they might write a law that requires U.S.-based online businesses to collect certain information about the transactions they accept that would make

• vessenes 16y ago
  This is called a 'know your customer' plan, and it's already in place and the law for all banks and money transfer businesses. Accepting BitCoins won't be illegal if you have a know your customer plan. Of course, it won't be pseudonymous at that point, either.
• gaius 16y ago
  Exactly. The choke point is the same as it for poker: you need the retail banking system to convert your bitcoins or your poker chips to and from something ordinary people can actually spend. Underneath every technical system is other ordinary people who need to pay their bills and mortgages and taxes - you can't not have this capability. And the banking system is highly regulated and will do whatever the govt requires it to do via the regulator.
• weavejester 16y ago
  That wouldn't necessarily make accepting bitcoins illegal, it would just make accepting bitcoins from anonymous sources illegal. I think they'd also have a hard time justifying why I can buy a product anonymously in cash (or with a pre-paid VISA), but I can't buy a product anonymously using bitcoins. Particularly since bitcoins have less anonymity than cash, because a history of all transactions is maintained.
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