9 ms·

No way. Regulation won't solve these sort of things. It will just make the barrier to entry that much higher. Now people have a voice more so than ever before.

by jonpaul 13y ago

No way. Regulation won't solve these sort of things. It will just make the barrier to entry that much higher. Now people have a voice more so than ever before. If companies don't act appropriately, people can post stories and complaints online. The companies reputation will then suffer. This is exactly what's happening here.

bushido 13y ago
Lost reputation is limited to the life of the corporation, going literal here, but once a corporation cease to exist, rarely does the reputational consequences affect the lives and businesses running them, which is usually thanks to regulation and laws. In this paradigm, where anonymity is rampant, reputation is just a word. As an anonymous entity/non-entity has no consequences to their actions.
bonemachine 13y ago
If companies don't act appropriately, people can post stories and complaints online. The companies reputation will then suffer. Ah, Libertopia! It's almost upon us, Comrades!
- mseebach 13y ago
  Yes, and are you 100%, no strings attached, free to not participate if you are not comfortable with the rules. The stupid libertarians get their stupid pie-in-the-sky currency and you get to sit back with a bowl of popcorn (purchased with a government-secured currency of your choice) and enjoy the show.
  - jnbiche 13y ago
    Great, now if you could please convince the government to adopt your attitude. Ridicule and childish insults I don't mind, just men with guns coming to lock me up if I don't run my business in the way you think it should be run.
    - bonemachine 13y ago
      You know, this whole "men with guns" thing is a pretty tired, and basically vapid analogy. The whole point that libertarians fail to realize -- and one of the most basic and obvious lessons of thousands of years of recorded human history is that one way or another, we're all stuck on this same, leaking boat together. And we're just going to have to find a way to cooperate on some basic level. Else things start to get really inefficient and wasteful -- or potentially really, really ugly and violent -- really, really fast. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
      - mseebach 13y ago
        "Mens with guns" isn't an analogy, it's literally what happens if you don't play by what a small majority says are the rules. It's what happens if you smoke weed and it what happened if you were gay until very few years ago. It's what happens if you're really annoying on Twitter in the UK. But the golden irony is that you follow up with an analogy about the greatness of coercive government. Leaking boat? Cooperation? Sounds great, clearly that's why we need to throw Aaron Swartz in jail for 35 years. I'm not convinced that no government is the right size, but the current scope of government across the western world has an immense moral authority problem. We may well be on a leaking boat, but it seems clear to me that the life raft isn't going to save us.
PeterisP 13y ago
We've had some recent bitcoin companies simply shutting down/running away while taking the customers' stored funds. Sure, they lost reputation - was that any help to the depositors? And from history of 'classic' banking we know very well that the 'lost reputation' doesn't work - we've tried that all over the world in the earlier times, it resulted in people creating new 'fresh clean reputation' companies one after another and sucessfully repeating such things over and over. Raising the barrier of entry is the whole point - if you're unable to meet your agreements, you should be kept far, far away from that business permanently.
- criley2 13y ago
  I say let the unregulation continue. So many libertarians see this as an opportunity for no-regulation to be tested in scale, as a proof of concept. I personally think that no-regulation will lead to implosion, as the bad reputation of a few firms quickly turns into a bad reputation for the currency, defacto scuttling the project as consumers learn not which bitcoin companies are untrustworthy, but that the whole system is untrustworthy by design.
- jonpaul 13y ago
  Tell me how regulation stopped Enron. Tell me how regulation stopped the 2008 financial crisis with the housing bubble. These all happened in traditional markets. You're right that some Bitcoin companies have screwed their users. Consumers need to educate themselves on who they're doing business with. A lot of these Bitcoin companies operated anonymously without impunity. Coinbase is an entirely different case. They are a US based company with VC backing. You know who you are conducting business with. If you as a consumer want to purchase something from a company that isn't transparent, you don't know where their located, and don't know who's behind the operation, it doesn't matter whether you send bitcoins or your credit card number. It's still stupid. Common sense must prevail somewhere.
  - logjam 13y ago
    Ehhhhh....really? Your examples are unbelievably silly, as both Enron and the financial crisis of 2008 occurred in the context of deregulation of those "traditional markets". Wanna watch Bitcoin absolutely implode and die? You libertarians keep up your adolescent, blind fervor for nonregulation.
dionidium 13y ago
If companies don't act appropriately, people can post stories and complaints online. The companies reputation will then suffer. This is what's exactly happening here. That's great for all the people who watch and learn that Company A will steal your money, but not so great for the people who provided that evidence for everyone else.
shintoist 13y ago
For every person who gets attention to their case on the internet, there's a thousand suffering with no attention. You think this is the only guy who didn't get his coins?
chasing 13y ago
Ah, the libertarian fantasy of the completely informed and rational public, always willing and able to promote the good guys and eradicate the bad guys...
- VMG 13y ago
  as opposed to the reality of completely informed rational and benevolent government elected by the same people?
jnbiche 13y ago
>If companies don't act appropriately, people can post stories and complaints online. The companies reputation will then suffer. This is exactly what's happening here. Except for the missing piece of the puzzle: worthy competitors. Very few people who would otherwise run great businesses to compete with Coinbase don't want to operate in this sector because of the ridiculously onerous criminal laws that now surround money transmitters and exchanges. As just one example of these laws, to operate in this sector, you have to agree to be a government informant against your own customers, even if you think they're not doing anything wrong.

by jonpaul 13y ago

bushido 13y ago

Lost reputation is limited to the life of the corporation, going literal here, but once a corporation cease to exist, rarely does the reputational consequences affect the lives and businesses running them, which is usually thanks to regulation and laws. In this paradigm, where anonymity is rampant, reputation is just a word. As an anonymous entity/non-entity has no consequences to their actions.

bonemachine 13y ago

If companies don't act appropriately, people can post stories and complaints online. The companies reputation will then suffer. Ah, Libertopia! It's almost upon us, Comrades!

mseebach 13y ago
Yes, and are you 100%, no strings attached, free to not participate if you are not comfortable with the rules. The stupid libertarians get their stupid pie-in-the-sky currency and you get to sit back with a bowl of popcorn (purchased with a government-secured currency of your choice) and enjoy the show.
- jnbiche 13y ago
  Great, now if you could please convince the government to adopt your attitude. Ridicule and childish insults I don't mind, just men with guns coming to lock me up if I don't run my business in the way you think it should be run.
  - bonemachine 13y ago
    You know, this whole "men with guns" thing is a pretty tired, and basically vapid analogy. The whole point that libertarians fail to realize -- and one of the most basic and obvious lessons of thousands of years of recorded human history is that one way or another, we're all stuck on this same, leaking boat together. And we're just going to have to find a way to cooperate on some basic level. Else things start to get really inefficient and wasteful -- or potentially really, really ugly and violent -- really, really fast. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
    - mseebach 13y ago
      "Mens with guns" isn't an analogy, it's literally what happens if you don't play by what a small majority says are the rules. It's what happens if you smoke weed and it what happened if you were gay until very few years ago. It's what happens if you're really annoying on Twitter in the UK. But the golden irony is that you follow up with an analogy about the greatness of coercive government. Leaking boat? Cooperation? Sounds great, clearly that's why we need to throw Aaron Swartz in jail for 35 years. I'm not convinced that no government is the right size, but the current scope of government across the western world has an immense moral authority problem. We may well be on a leaking boat, but it seems clear to me that the life raft isn't going to save us.

PeterisP 13y ago

We've had some recent bitcoin companies simply shutting down/running away while taking the customers' stored funds. Sure, they lost reputation - was that any help to the depositors? And from history of 'classic' banking we know very well that the 'lost reputation' doesn't work - we've tried that all over the world in the earlier times, it resulted in people creating new 'fresh clean reputation' companies one after another and sucessfully repeating such things over and over. Raising the barrier of entry is the whole point - if you're unable to meet your agreements, you should be kept far, far away from that business permanently.

criley2 13y ago
I say let the unregulation continue. So many libertarians see this as an opportunity for no-regulation to be tested in scale, as a proof of concept. I personally think that no-regulation will lead to implosion, as the bad reputation of a few firms quickly turns into a bad reputation for the currency, defacto scuttling the project as consumers learn not which bitcoin companies are untrustworthy, but that the whole system is untrustworthy by design.
jonpaul 13y ago
Tell me how regulation stopped Enron. Tell me how regulation stopped the 2008 financial crisis with the housing bubble. These all happened in traditional markets. You're right that some Bitcoin companies have screwed their users. Consumers need to educate themselves on who they're doing business with. A lot of these Bitcoin companies operated anonymously without impunity. Coinbase is an entirely different case. They are a US based company with VC backing. You know who you are conducting business with. If you as a consumer want to purchase something from a company that isn't transparent, you don't know where their located, and don't know who's behind the operation, it doesn't matter whether you send bitcoins or your credit card number. It's still stupid. Common sense must prevail somewhere.
- logjam 13y ago
  Ehhhhh....really? Your examples are unbelievably silly, as both Enron and the financial crisis of 2008 occurred in the context of deregulation of those "traditional markets". Wanna watch Bitcoin absolutely implode and die? You libertarians keep up your adolescent, blind fervor for nonregulation.

dionidium 13y ago

If companies don't act appropriately, people can post stories and complaints online. The companies reputation will then suffer. This is what's exactly happening here. That's great for all the people who watch and learn that Company A will steal your money, but not so great for the people who provided that evidence for everyone else.

shintoist 13y ago

For every person who gets attention to their case on the internet, there's a thousand suffering with no attention. You think this is the only guy who didn't get his coins?

chasing 13y ago

Ah, the libertarian fantasy of the completely informed and rational public, always willing and able to promote the good guys and eradicate the bad guys...

VMG 13y ago
as opposed to the reality of completely informed rational and benevolent government elected by the same people?

jnbiche 13y ago

>If companies don't act appropriately, people can post stories and complaints online. The companies reputation will then suffer. This is exactly what's happening here. Except for the missing piece of the puzzle: worthy competitors. Very few people who would otherwise run great businesses to compete with Coinbase don't want to operate in this sector because of the ridiculously onerous criminal laws that now surround money transmitters and exchanges. As just one example of these laws, to operate in this sector, you have to agree to be a government informant against your own customers, even if you think they're not doing anything wrong.