Post
Topic
Board Bitcoin Discussion
Re: Mike Hearn, Foundation's Law & Policy Chair, is pushing blacklists right now
by
gmaxwell
on 14/11/2013, 20:38:01 UTC
The only way to prevent this from happening is to get involved in politics and convince the decision makers to not do it
No, the only way we can prevent this from happening is adjusting the ecosystem— the software and the common behaviors of users— to make it non-viable. The challenge is that people who want it to happen will argue against those adjustments.

Uncertainty around Bitcoin's regulatory environment already drives many Bitcoin businesses to extreme reputability theater ... things like exchanges in outer Mongolia enforcing a sad parody of mtgox's sad parody of the US AML compliance. This stuff doesn't actually accomplish anything but they hope it will be a totem to ward away disruptive regulators by virtue of it seeming like they were trying really hard. In may ways fear of regulation is much worse than regulation itself. When there is regulation it has boundaries, but fear has no boundaries. These bad ideas don't need government support or authority support, and they reoccur often enough that negotiating with everyone who promotes them will not scale.

We don't have all the answers but there are immediate short term measures that can be taken to drastically complicate life for anyone trying something like this.