Quote from: xavier on February 28, 2014, 05:44:50 PM

HI,

I appreciate you're looking for practical solutions.

Let me make a few points though:

(1) All UK banks are extensions of the government, even if they are not directly owned by the government. AT some point then, even if not immediately, they will have to accept the government's line on bitcoin.

(2) For this reason, I think your best approach is to start at the government level not the bank level

(3) I would follow up by suggesting you meet the bitcoin group of supporters, based in London. There is a meetup group called Bitcoin London, I would suggest maybe talking to them in order to organize a collective effort.

(4) Finally - I would say that it will require huge action to get a UK bank to operate with a bitcoin exchange . Why ? Because it needs change at the government level, and that is not forthcoming right now.

Im not saying its impossible, but it is going to be quite a task.

Honestly, if I ws you ? Just buy bitcoin and hold. The time will come when the government is forced to take bitcoin seriously. Until then, it will continue to be hard to operate a bitcoin-related venture in the UK.

PS. in the interm, I appreciate that means it's perhaps more difficult than it needs to be to acquire bitcoins. However, at least you can (still) buy them.

Hi Xavier,

Thanks for taking the time out to give me your thoughts. This is exactly what I need.

You are totally right and I do primarily want to target the government level as opposed to the banking level. Subsequently I will expend more energy at this level then the banking level. It would however be interesting to see what response the banks give - you never know they may be insightful or even offer a hand (no chance Wink

).

Your suggestion in number 3 is a great place to start and I will act upon this over the weekend. I appreciate the enormity of the task but I feel that we as a community should be doing more to challenge the power structure over these issues. The UK has been exceptionally slow in adapting bitcoin - I can't recall any politician even discussing it (though i may be wrong).

Hah - Yeah, maybe. Its just that I have always liked doing business and have never been much of an investor - though this is slowly changing.

Again, many thanks

James