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Does the SEC regulate baseball cards? If bitcoin were an equity, then the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission might be looking at it. But even if they did
by sgornick 15y ago
Does the SEC regulate baseball cards?
If bitcoin were an equity, then the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission might be looking at it.
But even if they did ... if you are in Brazil, Russia, India, China, or wherever, ... how would what the SEC does be relevant? (yes, I'm being purposely obtuse, but remember that bitcoin is data, and as such it knows no borders.)
- arohner 15y agoThere are lots of kinds of data that are illegal to possess. Classified documents, insider information, copyrighted music, etc. And remember certain US agencies have huge power outside the US. The DEA and the IRS come to mind. I don't know which US agency will flip out when bitcoin becomes popular, but I'm quite certain one of them will, once it becomes widespread to exchange for illegal items, and used for money laundering.
- sadfsa 15y agoIt's already widespread enough to use for some forms of money laundering. If you want to secretly move money from the US to Europe, just buy BTC in the US, deposit them on Mt. Gox (whose domain is registered in Japan, so I assume the servers are also in Japan), and from there sell the BTC and deposit the resulting money in your Swiss bank account. It's also widespread enough to use instead of a Swiss bank account to hide money. Just move the money into a Bitcoin wallet, encrypt the wallet, and store copies of it on as many computers, in as many countries as possible.
- sabat 15y agoHmmmm. This is a cash-equivalent -- or perhaps the SEC could see it that way.