Increasingly businesses are coming under some form of regulatory framework around the globe. For instance, on Wednesday the Peoples Bank of China held a meeting with bitcoin exchanges operating the country with the aim of putting new regulations in place to guide them.
Meanwhile, the major selling point of bitcoin has been the privacy that it offers its users. With bitcoin enterprises and activities coming under the focus of regulators, where does the balance for bitcoin enterprises between protecting customers and trying to impress regulators?
What everyone seems to fail to understand is that the way you think of "balance" in these matters has changed forever
Put simply: regular users are interested in Bitcoin because it protects their interests, that is, their money. And it protects their money without government regulators, it does the job all by itself. It even protects ordinary users from regulators, as crucially, they have no effective way of regulating either the network or individual users.
And businesses are realising the same thing. Where the regulators lose their leverage to regulate, businesses will gain increased protection. Strange, isn't that supposed to be the regulator's role, protecting the interests of businesses and regular folk? Like most "protection" regimes, it's a more than a little ambiguous exactly who is being protected and from what.