Thailand Government Declares Bitcoin Illegal 185
hypnosec writes that the government of Thailand "has declared Bitcoin illegal following which all trading activities related to the electronic currently have been suspended indefinitely. Through a message posted on its website, the Bitcoin Co. Ltd. has said officials of the Foreign Exchange Administration and Policy Department cited absence of applicable laws, capital controls "and the fact that Bitcoin straddles multiple financial facets" as reasons because of which the virtual currency is illegal. This ruling implies that activities such as buying & selling of Bitcoins, buying or selling any service in exchange of Bitcoins, sending Bitcoins to anyone located outside of Thailand, and receiving Bitcoins from anyone outside of Thailand are illegal. This has forced the company to indefinitely suspend operations."
Can any government really stop BitCoin? (Score:5, Insightful)
Kids are always curious about things their parents forbid. Adults are always curious about things their government forbid.
The Streisand effect on BitCoin is going to be huge.
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Kids are always curious about things their parents forbid. Adults are always curious about things their government forbid.
The Streisand effect on BitCoin is going to be huge.
Easily.
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Kids are always curious about things their parents forbid. Adults are always curious about things their government forbid.
The Streisand effect on BitCoin is going to be huge.
Easily.
Bitcoin's weakness has always been the desire of its holders to, at some point, convert Bitcoin to fiat currency such as USD and so long as this remains true, governments will always have some measure of control.
Insofar as the Streisand effect is concerned, this will draw more people's attention to Bitcoin yes, but it does not mean the actual usage of Bitcoin will increase. In the same way, people may consume newspaper reports on serial killers en masse, but this will not lead to an increase of serial killi
Re:Can any government really stop BitCoin? (Score:5, Insightful)
Kids are always curious about things their parents forbid. Adults are always curious about things their government forbid.
The Streisand effect on BitCoin is going to be huge.
A government can make it illegal by proving it's only used by criminals, pedophiles, terrorists, and gang members. A government can prove this by entrapment, and other corrupt practices, to make anyone they want look like that.
So a few big stings of pedophiles and child pornographers using Bitcoin and that is all it would take to kill Bitcoin. The reason being is when you have the words pedophile and Bitcoin in the same new story over and over again whether it's true or not it forms a subconscious association in the viewers mind. It's classical conditioning.
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Don't pedophiles use hard currency, credit cards, cars, clothing too? I'll bet they use household cleaners all the time. Shouldn't government ban those things as well to prevent pedophilia?
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Don't pedophiles use hard currency, credit cards, cars, clothing too? I'll bet they use household cleaners all the time. Shouldn't government ban those things as well to prevent pedophilia?
Like Tide [schneier.com].
You can't make this stuff up.
Re:Can any government really stop BitCoin? (Score:5, Funny)
Like Tide [schneier.com].
You can't make this stuff up.
How cool is that? A currency with actual intrinsic value. Easy to launder, too.
*ducks*
Funny! (Score:2)
A hilarious post, yet wholly appropriate. Props to you.
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hmm? none of those things are required for government to make things illegal. they don't need to show things like that, they can just make it illegal. asia is full of things that are illegal for random reasons like the west as well. you're talking about propaganda to make people want it to be illegal, thus making it illegal through public opinion.
and ffs you can't import boxers or even boxes with the thai flag to thailand, singapore has banned jehovas witnesses magazines...
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You say that like it's a bad thing.
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Yeah, who wouldn't love the Singaporean Inquisition? Perhaps the GP is a heretic?
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They just have to convince enough people that it ought to be illegal. Which was the OP's entire point.
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And by "enough", you mean, of course, the required percentage of their respective legislative bodies. Beyond that, no one else really matters.
Re:Can any government really stop BitCoin? (Score:4, Informative)
That's a nice theory. In practice what happens is one special interest or another does their own research that tries to demonstrate that something is harmful. Then they go lobby politicians who go "ooh err a study shows $X is harmful, maybe should ban it". Then the other side lobbies to try and undermine that study or convince the politicians not to go ahead. You can call this process the government proving something if you like, but that's not really correct.
To demonstrate this point, please find me a serious, government-sponsored cost/benefit analysis of anti-money laundering laws. I've yet to find one. Wikipedia's take [wikipedia.org]. There are various attempts by academics and accountancy firms, but they are all hobbled by the fact that nobody can even measure how much money laundering takes place (heck even defining what it actually is, can prove troublesome).
Here's a statistic for you to chew on. The concept of money laundering was first invented by the USA in 1970, so about 40 years ago. It has been constantly ratched up since then. Yet in the last 20 years the street price of cocaine has more than halved [unodc.org] (page 81, adjusted for inflation and changes in purity). In other words, despite the massive effort put into the war on drugs and all the effort put into AML, it hasn't been enough to even balance increased efficiency of the drug cartels. We can perhaps consider that the price would be even lower if it were not for AML. But that hardly seems to matter against a backdrop of such utter failure.
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I've already met people who claimed bitcoin only exists to facilitate money laundering, that there are no other uses at all.
Same as cash, yo.
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Yep [mises.org].
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Actually, bitcoin does not give you the anonymity that you think.. http://anonymity-in-bitcoin.blogspot.se/2011/07/bitcoin-is-not-anonymous.html [blogspot.se]
And since someone is going to want the bitcoins in a usable currency, since you cannot really buy much with it currently, it can be traced to a broker that made a payout to a person.
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Bitcoin is anonymous in the sense that no address is tied to a person unless the person is dumb enough to create that association. That the addresses and their transactions are traceable is by design. A simple coin tumbler will break that association if you are
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There already exists bitcoin escrow services.... Perfect way to protect against both bad sellers and buyers... Another benefit would be that it would cut out PayPal that are just screwing and locking down peoples accounts for no good reason and then keeping the money themselves.
About that the corrupt and criminally rich (how ever could someone be a criminal for having too much money btw?) would screw society over even more i would like to make you aware that bitcoin's are non-inflatable.. Ie no government c
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http://www.coinnews.net/tools/cpi-inflation-calculator/ [coinnews.net]
According to that page between 2000 and 2013 the USD had an inflation of 35.6% .. That's not just a few percent inflation.
Also i wrote "Not sure if bitcoin is good enough, but it's ideas looks promising."..
But if you look at bitcoin.. The thing that happened there was that the bitcoin-price spiked, going from ~100USD to >200USD, but it took only about 2 weeks before it was back to about 100USD. Sure it's been going between 80 and 120USD during the la
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This just in: Anonymous Coward unable to use division to get the average inflation-rate.
I was using the 35.6% number to make a point since most people nowadays don't look into the future that much.. Many think that 2.73% is nothing but they do not count the total over the years.. people saying that 3% interest on deposited money is good.. well, that's just 0.27%/year in real interest if looking at the last 13 years.
"Not sure if bitcoin is good enough, but it's ideas looks promising."
This just in: Bitcoin fanatics
and this just in too: Anonymous Coward seem to be unable to read...
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So (there are btw. two ACs responding to you here) if the interest exceeds inflation you are not losing money, so dollar savings value over your period can be said to be extremely stable. I don't see how this can be viewed as a huge problem, quite the opposite. Most economists agree btw. that a low steady inflation is good for economic growth, and that deflation can have a negative impact on economic development.
Agree, but it's not often you will get a 3% interest rate so inflation will still keep on eating it up the money.. Usual pure interest-rates are much lower, usually a bit lower than the current repo-rate. Btw, http://www.tradingeconomics.com/country-list/inflation-rate [tradingeconomics.com] gives quite a good view of the current inflation-rates for most countries.
From wikipedia:
Inflation's effects on an economy are various and can be simultaneously positive and negative. Negative effects of inflation include an increase in the opportunity cost of holding money, uncertainty over future inflation which may discourage investment and savings, and if inflation is rapid enough, shortages of goods as consumers begin hoarding out of concern that prices will increase in the future. Positive effects include ensuring that central banks can adjust real interest rates (to mitigate recessions),[5] and encouraging investment in non-monetary capital projects.
And here are a few of the positive and negative sides. But IMO the positive sides are not enough for the negative effects.
Instead of adjusting interest-rates you can ad
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yes but it is trivial to setup anonymization schemes to send the bitcoins through as many accounts as you want to hide who really owns it.
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They are called pre-paid credit cards, the number scheme by which to pay bribes, cheat on taxes et al and don't by the credit card companies purposefully direct in the face of tax and law agencies.
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Thailand is run by a military junta with a thin coat of democracy paint on the outside, for appearances' sake. They can ban whatever the fuck they want, at least within their own country. Just don't go there.
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you can get death penalty in those areas for drugs.
are those areas full of drugs? absolutely.
they got some other funny laws too.
They (probably) don't need to (Score:5, Insightful)
The Streisand effect on BitCoin is going to be huge.
No it isn't. Ordinarily I would agree with you but frankly very few people care about Bitcoin or have any reason to care about Bitcoin. NOBODY who is doing meaningful amounts of currency exchanges is going to want to bother with it. Since I don't buy or sell illegal drugs I honestly cannot conceive of any circumstance under which I would use it, even if I ignore the inherent exchange rate risk and liquidity problems.
Re:They (probably) don't need to (Score:5, Insightful)
You probably don't care much about Yuan-Dollar exchange rates much either, but you sure as hell have reason to care about it!
We used to see the (approximate and debatable) 3% that Visa and Mastercard skims from nearly all sales transactions, as merely the cost of doing business, and a worthwhile expense in exchange for the service they offer. And yet, now The People have the tech to avoid that charge, so what used to be a 3% expense is considered 3% economic damage, a parasite. Most of us probably don't really have visceral bad feelings about Visa quite on the scale implied by the word "parasite" and yet, whenever you're buying a larger ticket item (a house, a car) you negotiate like hell over figures much smaller than 3%. And when I think about how much money I spent on my car, compared to how much money I have spend on fueling and maintaining my car with a plastic card, the plastic card's costs dwarf anything I ever negotiated with my car dealer. Visa and Mastercard's expenses are right there in your face, for anyone who looks into it. There's reason to move to something cheaper.
Or threaten to move to something cheaper. You don't necessarily have to do it, as long as you can prove you're willing to do it. Who knows, maybe Bitcoin is what'll get Visa merchant charges down to 0.3%. Isn't it interesting that your grandparents had the same percentage skimmed off their lives, whereas you today live in a higher tech world where the expenses of providing transactions services, are tiny by comparison.
In the end, Bitcoin is just another market force. There are plenty of indirect ones out there (exchange rates, decisions made by central banks, etc) that you don't think about much, or ever take actions on, and yet they have a profound effect on your economic well-being. It's fine to say you don't care, but for fuck's sake, don't say people don't have reason to care!
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Bitcoin is the digital equivalent of burying a chest of gold coins in your backyard. Perhaps you are perfect and nobody will ever find it and you'll never lose or forget where you hid it
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Bitcoin is digital cash, not the equivalent of a credit card nor checking account. It's cash that you don't need a checking account to spend at a distance, and some people think that changes the world (I'm a bit unclear why). The primary use today seems to be for the "anonymousness", though I think that debatable - just as the US government requires all serial numbers to be recorded by banks for any large cash transaction, making it not so anonymous by analysis, the NSA no doubt records the "serial number
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My bank just dinged money out of my escrow to pay a tax bill I received. It came to my house, I didn't bother with it, and it was paid in 3 days by my bank. I never set this up. Mortgage does that.
I would be willing to pay a percentage to have some company automatically cover my taxes, ground rent, municipal utilities (government supplied shit), and so on. My private industry utilities and even my mortgage broker automatically debit my account, but the government expects me to actually pay them. I wan
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For myself, I feel just the exact opposite. I want to know when money is coming into or leaving my accounts, how much we spent for electricity or water this month, and the insurance bill reminds me that it's time to shop around again
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Cool! I can definitely imagine a market for insured transactions, bonded sellers, or things like that. Maybe you're one of those people who would use it that way, for every single transaction. And there's nothing wrong with that. You would pay for it, though, just like you currently always pay for it whenever you use Visa and MasterC
Transaction costs (Score:2)
You probably don't care much about Yuan-Dollar exchange rates much either, but you sure as hell have reason to care about it!
The yuan is a significant factor in the world economy. Bitcoin is not. Bitcoin is a barely used, illiquid, volatile currency that most people don't understand and even fewer people actually use. Should bitcoin become significant someday, then I will reconsider my position. I don't realistically see that happening though.
We used to see the (approximate and debatable) 3% that Visa and Mastercard skims from nearly all sales transactions, as merely the cost of doing business, and a worthwhile expense in exchange for the service they offer. And yet, now The People have the tech to avoid that charge
Bitcoin is not that tech, nor does it offer any reasonable prospect of becoming that tech anytime soon. Visa and the rest have an existing global network, transaction processing infrast
Offline payments (Score:2)
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$360 a year for a smartphone data plan
If you spend something around U$20K yearly in your credit cards you pay U$600 for this privilege, my friend.
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When you can't advertise with the non CC price there is no real use in offering discounts, easier to just pocket the money of the people who don't pay with a CC ... the CC industry in the US is a clear trust. The class action suit which allowed surcharges was a chink in the armour, but they quickly bought legislators and got that fixed.
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Well, currently there is about ~1.4Billion USD in value in the bitcoin network.. Well, maybe quite a bit less but even having more than $100M should say something about the usage..
Bitcoin's are as much for illegal things as normal cash is, the only difference is that it's not government-controlled..
Some things that it would be perfect for:
- Micro-transactions for buying services on the internet.
- Simple way to transfer money all over the world.
- Generic way to buy things instead of VISA/Mastercard etc. No o
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Would you like a side order of spam with your FUD?
Ok smart guy. Explain to me what use *I* have for bitcoin and what your evidence that bitcoin is not used [wikipedia.org] for purchasing drugs?
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The way you said it, BitCoins were only used to buy drugs.
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I'm guessing your red herring dealer (who goes by "The Snorting Straw Man") only takes cash?
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The Streisand effect applies when you're trying to avert attention from something but inadvertently attract attention to it in doing so. I don't think it applies here. Nobody is trying to avert attention from anything. In fact, I'd expect their government to be pleased as punch with so much free publicity for a simple policy change.
If your point is that telling people about illegal currency only makes them want to use it more, I think you're overestimating the general appeal of bitcoin. Main reason for bit
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Yeah, but what can you do with BitCoin? Without using any currency exchange, that is.
At some point, it's got to be converted to currency and that's where the government gets you. The US government isn't worried about BitCoin because they know that fact - that the exchanges are the weak point in any currency system. (And no, BitCoin isn
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Kids are always curious about things their parents forbid. Adults are always curious about things their government forbid.
So that's why everyone wants to bone 12 year olds these days.
That and all the HGH and BGH in milk and the huge push to drink cow milk has given 11 year old girls double-Ds.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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Rule of Law (Score:5, Informative)
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replying to remove incorrect mod!
Re:Rule of Law FTFY (Score:2)
"concept of Rule of Law essentially means:" I am the law.
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the king has said many time that he does not want anyone in prison for "insulting" him,
So sending people to prison for insulting the king is ignoring the king's specific, repeated request. Which seems pretty insulting.
(Does he have the power to issue pardons? If he does, and doesn't pardon "insulters", then his words are hollow. If he doesn't have any powers to overrule bad government... then what is he for?)
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I have followed some of the stories about people going to jail for insulting the king.
The short version is that he sometimes pardons people jailed for insulting him, but after they've been arrested and in jail for a while.
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But if he was not insulted by the possibly insulting comment then he could say that he was insulted by the police by them arresting the original insulter?
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Uh, no. You underestimate the Thai king's power. He's a special case. Legally, he's a figurehead. However...
If, for whatever reason, the current King stood up and said "I want all politician's heads on my porch by Thursday, in a big square pile", they would be there Wednesday night.
I"m not kidding, Thai people would mostly kill for this guy.
That's fine, no karma points for you! (Score:1)
I'd imagine karma points on /. to be the equivalent to any form of currency. It takes years of quality posting to bring up that karma and that's a lot of work. It's worth something, it's a token, and it's digital. Got a problem with that Thailand?
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/. karma points are worth something?
How do I trade them in for valuable stuff?
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So how do I make the trade the other way?
I want my time back.
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People would sell slashdot accounts on ebay, back when Karma was uncapped.
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Despite my occassional (lame) attempts to troll, mine has stayed glued on "Excellent" for several years now - does that give me a AAA karma credit rating?
Its inevitable (Score:4, Insightful)
This has forced the company to indefinitely suspe (Score:5, Interesting)
huh? which company....bitcoin doesnt only run out of thailand, does it?
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Suspend operations in Thailand. At least that's what I gather from other news outlets.
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You might say that bitcoin operations are "thai'd up" at the moment.
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Thai as I might, I can't ignore that pun.
Re: This has forced the company to indefinitely su (Score:5, Informative)
I think the BS news that they're puffing up is that the Bank of Thailand is no longer accepting electronic fund transfers from the bitcoin exchanges. As for "stopping trading or use" all I have to say is lol, no.
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Oh no, however will BitCoin cope with the inability to convert into Thai WhateverTheFucks.
Yes, Thai WhateverTheFucks, because although I know many currencies in the world off the top of my head, Thailand's is that unimportant I really can't even remember what their currency is called, if it was ever relevant enough for me to have ever known in the first place.
Call me when it can no longer be switched to US dollars, Euros, Pound Sterling or whatever and maybe then I'll care because whilst it can still be con
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The Thai government was concerned about the risk of confusion: The "bahtcoin".
Yeah. You just did the Batman TV theme [wikipedia.org] in your head. Admit it.
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Awwww shit.. I was looking forward to making all the underage girl prostitutes cry by paying them in bitcoins on my next visit.... I was so looking forward to that... :-(
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You seem to be unaware that the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997 was touched of by the collapse of the Thai Bhat. That is not unimportant.
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I would consider that very relevant to this news, actually!
As in, if I lived in SE Asia, right about now I'd do my damnedest to convert all my liquid assets to gold, ammo (if legal there), Euros, and yes, BTC.
History has a funny but pretty consistent trend, that when a country starts to get really paranoid about locking down control over its currency supply, that cur
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That was 16 years ago. Did you miss the rise of China, and the growth of India in the meantime? Even Indonesia's economy makes Thailand look irrelevant now.
Re: This has forced the company to indefinitely su (Score:5, Interesting)
That would be the Bitcoin Co Ltd exchange (https://bitcoin.co.th/) .. that's having issues with the Bank of Thailand (Thailand's central/reserve bank) ..bahtcoin is still open for the moment
This appears to be ramping up - last month bitspend had it's accounts frozen from Chase citing potential money laundering, and new allegations of ponzi schemes are making all the federal regulators nervous - as they should be
"Bank of Thailand" != "Thailand government". (Score:3, Informative)
next we'll hear that "american goverment outlaws high interest savings" when Bank of America won't give someone a decent rate.
Re:"Bank of Thailand" != "Thailand government". (Score:5, Informative)
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The central bank of the united states is The Federal Reserve.
From Wikipedia:
In its role as the central bank of the United States, the Fed serves as a banker's bank and as the government's bank.
and
Each regional Bank's board consists of nine members. Members are broken down into three classes: A, B, and C. There are three board members in each class. Class A members are chosen by the regional Bank's shareholders, and are intended to represent member banks' interests. Member banks are divided into three categories large, medium, and small. Each category elects one of the three class A board members. Class B board members are also nominated by the region's member banks, but class B board members are supposed to represent the interests of the public. Lastly, class C board members are nominated by the Board of Governors, and are also intended to represent the interests of the public
So we have a central bank, that is for the most part, run by the banks themselves.
So more like a central credit union (Score:2)
Of course, unlike Thailand and some other countries, in the "bank for banks" is separate from the Treasury Department, which is purely governmental. The Bank Of Thailand is both the banking facilitator like the Fed, and also the issuer and regulator of currency, like our Treasury Department. I think I like having them split like we do.
It is. Bank of Thailand = treasury dept. + the Fed (Score:2)
It is a government institution.
Here in the US, we've separated the two to some extent. The Treasury Department makes and enforces the rules, the government role.
The Federal Reserve is more like a "central credit union" than a central bank - it's primary role is to serve as "bank for banks", where banks can deposit money or get 24 hour loans. In Thailand, as in many countr
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next we'll hear that "american goverment outlaws high interest savings" when Bank of America won't give someone a decent rate.
A joke, I know, but AFAIK, high interest savings accounts are illegal in the US. Still capped at 5.25% unless I missed that change. That's why Eurodollars get popular when interest rates are high (European banks don't have such regulation on dollar-based accounts).
Litecoin (Score:1)
So Litecoin is ok I guess..
Outside Thailand (Score:1)
That's Thailand's problem. Here in the United States, we will continue to trade it, laws be damned.
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TFA (Score:5, Informative)
At the conclusion of the meeting senior members of the Foreign Exchange Administration and Policy Department advised that due to lack of existing applicable laws, capital controls and the fact that Bitcoin straddles multiple financial facets the following Bitcoin activities are illegal in Thailand:
Based on such a broad and encompassing advisement, Bitcoin Co. Ltd. therefore has no choice but to suspend operations until such as time that the laws in Thailand are updated to account for the existance of Bitcoin. The Bank of Thailand has said they will further consider the issue, but did not give any specific timeline.
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The laws *were* updated to account for Bitcoin.
BItcoin just isn't happy with they way the laws perceive them.
Really Thailand? (Score:2)
I should thing their monetary authorities more concerned with money laundering around their globally infamous prostitution and heroin trades, rather than the drop in the bucket of illicit activity carried out via Bitcoin. Perhaps it's just that they haven't figured out how to take bribes via Bitcoin yet.
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This is how some legal systems work in Asia (Score:2)
Not banned? (Score:2)
Three things:
The press release says that the government said existing laws don't take into account allowing an exchange to trade a virtual currency (yet).
The article sensationalizes this by saying "banned", implying that it was legal before.
Lastly, the author of the article seems to think without an exchange, Bitcoin can't be traded, which of course is false. So, by "banning" the existence of a commercial exchange, the author concludes that Bitcoin entirely has been banned in the country.
I could be missing
So, hmmm (Score:2)
So for a Thai, storing 33 characters of information on your computer is illegal? That's real tough to enforce. How long before a Thai tattoos a bitcoin on their arm to prove a point?
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You may call it a law, I call it a challenge.
I take it you are verbally challenged. Or is that verbally legal?
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Governments are not going to allow an alternate form of currency to gain traction that they have no control over.
Ah! That would explain why US currency isn't accepted anywhere else on the planet.
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Ah! That would explain why US currency isn't accepted anywhere else on the planet.
Indeed, what he should have written:
"Governments are not going to allow an alternate form of currency to gain traction that they have no control over, unless coerced via threat of violence by a power with overwhelming military force".
That which applies to an individual and their taxes vis-a-vis government, applies in geopolitics as well :)
Bitcoin is not backed by anyone, so there is nobody to "force" its usage. We will just have to see if the sheer weight of people using it will accomplish the same thing wi
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Not really - it's the people, not the US government that make the choice. US Dollars were illegal as currency in the USSR for quite some time, but still used as the primary currency for most markets.
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you just have to make sure that tracking you down and finding then putting you away is more costly than leaving you be. for most purposes using an anonymised bit coin account over tor at a wificafe with a changed mac address is more then enough.