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."
Rule of Law (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Can any government really stop BitCoin? (Score:3, Informative)
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.
"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.
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.
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.
Re:"Bank of Thailand" != "Thailand government". (Score:5, Informative)
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.