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As these virtual currencies become more practical as currencies, there will be less transactions between them and the banking system. It won't be immediately

by MCRed 11y ago

As these virtual currencies become more practical as currencies, there will be less transactions between them and the banking system. It won't be immediately cashed out after the transaction as they are now.

lifeisstillgood 11y ago
There surely must be a very hard limit to the number of drug hitmen taking payment in WoW dollars? I know that's a little facetious but "value" is almost entirely based in what a human can get out of it - and that is almost entirely in the real world.
- olefoo 11y ago
  If you want a fun summer project that will get you your very own casefile with various law enforcement and financial regulators: Come up with a program that lets users manage multi-currency transactions with a basket of currencies ( game currencies, paypal 2 paypal balances, (bit|alt)coin, reddit gold, odesk credit, store credit balances (gift cards), und so weiter). Extra credit if you can add constraint solving to defeat traffic analysis and reporting limits. Technically legal to develop and give away if you are a US citizen; but probably a really bad idea to run as a web service unless you really like being a test case in federal court or want to become a spy for the FBI.
  - lifeisstillgood 11y ago
    Sorry I am missing something. Multi currency transactions between wow currency and Starcraft currency? So I want to buy a spaceship using my guild gold? But that implies some sort of exchange ? You could make a peer to peer thing for the actual transaction but the bid/ask must be public surely? Throw in Walmart gift cards - aha do I see it now - all these things are convertible from dollars and so can be used to launder money ... If so then I guess I don't care about an open exchange - I am going to own both sides of the exchange as a drug lord anyway. But I presume this is less exciting as a money laundering setup as it is all traceable? Is that it?
    - olefoo 11y ago
      Well, anyone picking this up for anything other than intellectual curiosity is probably not a good actor. I imagine that if you were serious about something like this you'd probably recruit a number of intermediaries to receive payments and acquire goods for you since shipments of high-thread count sheets are less likely to draw adverse scrutiny than significant flows of negotiable currency. If you want the real drug lord version of this read up about the Peso Exchange [0] which is a form of repatriating money from illegal proceeds that will never go away. And rather than thinking of it as a strictly money laundering tool, think of it as enabling the "unsurveilled marketplace", not just drugs but the trade in items that are restricted in some jurisdictions, or for which specific efforts are being made to delegitimize preparatory to banning ( think tractor repair diagnostics without the snitch chip, or radar/lidar detectors, or any of a number of tools that could be banned as circumvention devices ). The thing is that we all know that Anti-Money-Laundering efforts are inherently corrupt [1] and that only the little people ever go to jail for it. 0. http://www.fincen.gov/news_room/rp/advisory/html/advis12.html http://www.fincen.gov/news_room/rp/advisory/html/advis12.htm... 1. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-07-02/hsbc-judge-approves-1-9b-drug-money-laundering-accord http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-07-02/hsbc-judge...
mikeryan 11y ago
As these virtual currencies become more practical as currencies, there will be less transactions between them and the banking system Um... Just because they're virtual doesn't mean there's not a banking system and aren't subject to banking laws. Virtual currencies are well on the radar and being regulated just like non-virtual currencies.
- jasonisalive 11y ago
  Why would you say that? There are attempts to regulate them, but those attempts so far are mostly just succeeding in ensuring that the regulating districts become uncompetitive and virtual currency businesses leave for somewhere with better promise. How are you supposed to regulate these services when anyone can open a Bitcoin bank and serve anyone anywhere in the world with an internet with an internet connection? If they couldn't stop movie piracy, how are they supposed to stop free global financial services? They have even less of a legal case to make for intervention than piracy!
  - Lawtonfogle 11y ago
    >If they couldn't stop movie piracy, how are they supposed to stop free global financial services? They could hit it really hard. They haven't stopped illegal images from being spread, but they have made it really rare except for the darkest corners of the web.
    - jasonisalive 11y ago
      If by illegal images you mean child pornography, there's a few key differences between CP and Bitcoin. Namely: very very few people are into CP, while practically everyone who isn't an enthusiast is violently opposed to it. Therefore, law enforcement has a practical free reign to track down and destroy the lives of CP-sharers, and are actively supported and even acclaimed by the wider public for their actions. The excuses for the prohibition of free financial services on the other hand are all basically covert attempts to protect the sovereignty of state military/police institutions, and do not actually align at all with the interests of regular folk. Plus absolutely everybody needs and enjoys high quality, unrestricted financial services. So I see the chances of government attempts to suppress Bitcoin succeeding as more or less 0. What would be the grounds for it? Where would they gather the support that would allow them to openly violently suppress great swathes of people to try and keep it from happening? It's even less likely to succeed than efforts to suppress copyright-breaking, because with Bitcoin there are no legitimate victims, it is only the state who will lose out.

by MCRed 11y ago

lifeisstillgood 11y ago

There surely must be a very hard limit to the number of drug hitmen taking payment in WoW dollars? I know that's a little facetious but "value" is almost entirely based in what a human can get out of it - and that is almost entirely in the real world.

olefoo 11y ago
If you want a fun summer project that will get you your very own casefile with various law enforcement and financial regulators: Come up with a program that lets users manage multi-currency transactions with a basket of currencies ( game currencies, paypal 2 paypal balances, (bit|alt)coin, reddit gold, odesk credit, store credit balances (gift cards), und so weiter). Extra credit if you can add constraint solving to defeat traffic analysis and reporting limits. Technically legal to develop and give away if you are a US citizen; but probably a really bad idea to run as a web service unless you really like being a test case in federal court or want to become a spy for the FBI.
- lifeisstillgood 11y ago
  Sorry I am missing something. Multi currency transactions between wow currency and Starcraft currency? So I want to buy a spaceship using my guild gold? But that implies some sort of exchange ? You could make a peer to peer thing for the actual transaction but the bid/ask must be public surely? Throw in Walmart gift cards - aha do I see it now - all these things are convertible from dollars and so can be used to launder money ... If so then I guess I don't care about an open exchange - I am going to own both sides of the exchange as a drug lord anyway. But I presume this is less exciting as a money laundering setup as it is all traceable? Is that it?
  - olefoo 11y ago
    Well, anyone picking this up for anything other than intellectual curiosity is probably not a good actor. I imagine that if you were serious about something like this you'd probably recruit a number of intermediaries to receive payments and acquire goods for you since shipments of high-thread count sheets are less likely to draw adverse scrutiny than significant flows of negotiable currency. If you want the real drug lord version of this read up about the Peso Exchange [0] which is a form of repatriating money from illegal proceeds that will never go away. And rather than thinking of it as a strictly money laundering tool, think of it as enabling the "unsurveilled marketplace", not just drugs but the trade in items that are restricted in some jurisdictions, or for which specific efforts are being made to delegitimize preparatory to banning ( think tractor repair diagnostics without the snitch chip, or radar/lidar detectors, or any of a number of tools that could be banned as circumvention devices ). The thing is that we all know that Anti-Money-Laundering efforts are inherently corrupt [1] and that only the little people ever go to jail for it. 0. http://www.fincen.gov/news_room/rp/advisory/html/advis12.html http://www.fincen.gov/news_room/rp/advisory/html/advis12.htm... 1. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-07-02/hsbc-judge-approves-1-9b-drug-money-laundering-accord http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-07-02/hsbc-judge...

mikeryan 11y ago

As these virtual currencies become more practical as currencies, there will be less transactions between them and the banking system Um... Just because they're virtual doesn't mean there's not a banking system and aren't subject to banking laws. Virtual currencies are well on the radar and being regulated just like non-virtual currencies.

jasonisalive 11y ago
Why would you say that? There are attempts to regulate them, but those attempts so far are mostly just succeeding in ensuring that the regulating districts become uncompetitive and virtual currency businesses leave for somewhere with better promise. How are you supposed to regulate these services when anyone can open a Bitcoin bank and serve anyone anywhere in the world with an internet with an internet connection? If they couldn't stop movie piracy, how are they supposed to stop free global financial services? They have even less of a legal case to make for intervention than piracy!
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  >If they couldn't stop movie piracy, how are they supposed to stop free global financial services? They could hit it really hard. They haven't stopped illegal images from being spread, but they have made it really rare except for the darkest corners of the web.
  - jasonisalive 11y ago
    If by illegal images you mean child pornography, there's a few key differences between CP and Bitcoin. Namely: very very few people are into CP, while practically everyone who isn't an enthusiast is violently opposed to it. Therefore, law enforcement has a practical free reign to track down and destroy the lives of CP-sharers, and are actively supported and even acclaimed by the wider public for their actions. The excuses for the prohibition of free financial services on the other hand are all basically covert attempts to protect the sovereignty of state military/police institutions, and do not actually align at all with the interests of regular folk. Plus absolutely everybody needs and enjoys high quality, unrestricted financial services. So I see the chances of government attempts to suppress Bitcoin succeeding as more or less 0. What would be the grounds for it? Where would they gather the support that would allow them to openly violently suppress great swathes of people to try and keep it from happening? It's even less likely to succeed than efforts to suppress copyright-breaking, because with Bitcoin there are no legitimate victims, it is only the state who will lose out.