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British Prime Minister Theresa May and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi are among the world leaders who've expressed alarm at the rise of virtual cash to move money offshore. The U.S. Congress held hearings this month, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin called on the world's 20 biggest economies to work together to make sure cryptocurrencies don't "become the next Swiss bank account." The concern comes after a successful international crackdown on tax havens in traditional banking.
"Every country is scrambling to come up with an answer," said Drake, who serves on the boards of 25 public and private companies. "There needs to be a regulated structure that won't kill the industry."
The earliest adopters of the practice were criminals, and their involvement has risen steadily, according to a three-year study by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a non-partisan Washington think tank. Next came users like Drake, who said he follows U.S. law by reporting his companies' holdings. Drake said better oversight would help legitimize the industry.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by crafoo on Wednesday January 31 2018, @02:20PM (9 children)
The promise of cryptocurrency is decentralized banking. That means everyone gets control back of the monetary system and it is not run by a central banking authority. I think a key to it' success will be the removal of government oversight. There really is no reason for their involvement. I know they have grown accustomed to their role, as well as have the credit card agencies and central banks.
My hope though is the future is people making deals as they see fit, as interactions between two private parties.
This won't be the end to criminal investigations. There are other ways. It may require more work. Don't care. It's worth the price.
This isn't the end to taxes. There are other ways. Government interjecting itself into every transaction is a recent thing and certainly not the norm over civilization.
(Score: 3, Informative) by bobthecimmerian on Wednesday January 31 2018, @02:27PM (4 children)
I would add that one of the goals of cryptocurrency is cutting out the parasites in the middle. If Bitcoin or Bitcoin Cash or Ethereum or Zcash or whatever becomes so popular that you can spend it from your smart phone or laptop, then I can pay my auto mechanic or my grocery bill without giving Visa or Bank of America or both a piece of the transaction.
It may not seem like a big deal, but it adds up over time.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 31 2018, @02:42PM (3 children)
> without giving Visa or Bank of America or both a piece of the transaction
Careful there -- the piece of the transaction you give Visa or BoA goes toward running the servers, and paying the people who run the servers, and generally keep the infrastructure running.
With cryptocurrencies, you're also going to have to give up a piece of the transaction. Right now, at least with Bitcoin, it's actually *worse* than Visa/BoA. The piece of the transaction you're expected to give up is more like an auction than a flat fee, and can run as high as $30 per transaction. And the infrastructure probably wastes *more* than that in electricity, so right now Bitcoin is a net loss on the entire planet.
I really like the part where it's decentralized, but I'm not sure the current implementation is sustainable...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 31 2018, @03:42PM
Acutally, plenty of transactions are going through for pennies these days, even some free ones are going through:
https://bitcoinfees.earn.com/ [earn.com]
The fee problem is gone.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 31 2018, @05:22PM
even without built in anonymization, btc is still more private than using CC companies
(Score: 1) by bobthecimmerian on Thursday February 01 2018, @12:19PM
I agree the original Bitcoin doesn't solve this problem, for the exact reasons you state. But many of the other newer cryptocurrencies made changes from Bitcoin specifically to address these classes of problems - faster transactions, lower fees, and in some cases much more energy-efficient algorithm designs.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Wednesday January 31 2018, @04:19PM (3 children)
Thing is, we've been there before. Back in the days before central banking, anybody could print up bank notes, and it was up to each individual to decide which bank notes to accept. The result was chaotic at best: Counterfeiters had a very easy time making fake bank notes, and merchants were constantly having to decide whether to trust the bank notes from, say, someone visiting from out of town. And as for the banks, the notes were in theory exchangeable for gold at that bank, but since there was little-to-no banking regulation and thus no reason for banks not to issue far more notes than they had gold. Which meant even legitimately issued bank notes could in fact be worthless pieces of paper, and also meant that any bank with a debt problem would have every incentive to print up a bunch of worthless notes to pay their debt in to at least kick the can down the road while they scrambled to come up with gold or something else of actual value.
A rough modern equivalent is personal checks, except back then the personal checks had no standardization whatsoever and none of the modern fast check processing so you know it will clear and you know it's a real bank account. And even in those cases, merchants lose out every year from bad or fake checks.
Central banking isn't perfect, but it was created to solve real problems. And it has mostly solved those problems.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 31 2018, @05:27PM (1 child)
"Central banking isn't perfect, but it was created to solve real problems. And it has mostly solved those problems."
isn't perfect? how brainwashed are you? it was created for usurers to leech and to enslave humanity.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 31 2018, @08:14PM
It is possible for multiple truths to exist at once: Bank Failures [livinghistoryfarm.org]
Central banking did solve real problems, but usury is definitely a problem these days and central banking did make it easy for some institutions to control the market in their favor. Money is a fictional human construct, so it is up to us to figure out the best methods of using it for humanity's benefit.
(Score: 2) by Virindi on Thursday February 01 2018, @01:46AM
Except that you stated right there the real problem with that system: that banks were not held to the standard that every other business is. Writing checks that you know you cannot cover is fraud. Agreeing to provide more goods than you can provide is fraud. All that should have happened, was a law that states that every note must be 100% backed (and that to cover the cost of storage etc, notes may decrease by a predetermined amount over time or whatever, as long as it is explicitly stated).
Instead we got to keep the concept of giving out more notes than you can possibly cover, and the entire economy was built on it! That is insane. The only reason that happened is because bankers had sufficient political power to force this scam to continue to be legal. And over time, rather than stopping the root problem, a series of industry-protectionist rules built up around the practice.
Making more promises than you can fulfill is not capitalism, it is lying to people to steal from them. And now, everyone thinks that is the only way the world can operate.