Quote from: millsdmb on August 15, 2013, 04:25:15 PM

Quote from: oblongmeteor on August 15, 2013, 03:58:43 PM

You're not regulating the 'unregulatable'. BitInstant was a FIAT<->BITCOIN conversion business. It was not wholly anchored in Bitcoin and therefore assertions that no laws can be brought to bear on it are likely baseless.

Bitcoin maybe make-believe money but US dollars are not. When people are out-of-pocket on the scale that BitInstant was running; things like class action suits are an almost inevitable ugly consequence.

What I was saying was that the only way I think you can "regulate" is to sue someone in small claims court. How is the government going to control the flow of bitcoins? It does not seem possible.

also, if your quotes were used to imply that I was not using an actual word, my source is: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/unregulatable

The only way you could regulate the flow of bitcoins would be to stop all the exchanges from using USD (yeah, right). Now, this wouldn't shut down bitcoin, just stall any bitcoins being purchased off of exchanges. Bitcoin to fiat purchases would still happen on a personal level at least.

The regulation aspect is to control how the fiat to bitcoin operations do business. Remember that they're dealing with US money, and that is regulated. These businesses need to comply with USD money laws, and are accountable when dealing with people's USD or bitcoins held for USD. However, the government shouldn't/can't place regulation on something like bitcoin that can't be destroyed as long as people are using it, short of outlawing Bitcoin and driving bitcoin sales underground.