Post
Topic
Board Economics
Re: Cryptocurrency
by
YourHumbleCorrespondent
on 22/03/2018, 15:57:20 UTC
Why would we need regulation ?

I'm all in favor of answering cryptocurrency's critics who say this is just a way of laundering money for drug dealers and terrorists, and ICOs are just a way of running a FOMO con on gullible investors. So yes, I would like to not be associated with criminals. And that means enduring some degree of regulation.

Regulation isn't necessarily a bad thing. OVER-regulation, and regulation for the sake of making work for regulators--those are bad things. But the most stable and highest-capitalized exchanges in the world are in the most vigorously regulated legal venues, and that's not a coincidence. Market capitalism works best in an environment of transparency, liquidity, and conformity to rules of the road.

That being said, there are a lot of regulations that ought not apply to cryptocurrency and ICOs. Regulators need to better understand the difference between utility and security tokens, for example, and utility tokens have no business before the SEC. Central banks need to understand that, although the should and must maintain a monetary policy that keeps both unemployment and inflation at healthy rates, they will no longer OWN all the money, and they'll need to rely more on moral suasion and on buying and selling cryptocurrency as well as Treasury instruments to implement it.