Quote from: bigb159 on February 12, 2014, 01:22:14 PM

Quote from: Aswan on February 12, 2014, 12:16:10 PM

Quote from: bene on February 12, 2014, 12:07:28 PM

Quote from: BruceFenton on February 12, 2014, 12:00:32 PM

If the regulation of Bitcoin concerns you, please sign this letter to regulator Ben Lawsky

http://bitcoinfinancialassociation.org/regulation/

I thought the whole point was to get Bitcoin finally regulated

There are different opinions. I, for one, do not want bitcoin to get regulated, at least not the way most people want.

As someone put well. Gov can control the exits, but what people do inside the cryptocurrency ecosystems will be impossible to regulate.

Well, it looks like they are considering trying to. The URL below was mentioned in an earlier post, and in it the article it states that Mr Lawsky's agency is still wrestling on whether to restrict or ban the use of "tumblers". I think that tumblers are needed because as soon as someone ties you to a bitcoin address they then can possibly figure out how much money you have.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/11/us-usa-bitcoin-idUSBREA1A20X20140211

Just imagine a scenario 5-10 years in the future: You have most of your money in BTC, including being paid in BTC by your employer. Tumblers are not allowed by regulation. You then pay for your dinner with BTC. Someone at the restaurant sees your address. Well, if they know one of your addresses, it only takes a perusing on blockchain.info to potentially see a few more levels of addresses and how much money you have. That is creepy and very useful information for criminals, for example.

And if you think that looking at the blockchain won't give you this kind of information, I can guarantee you that within a number of years there will be web sites that will do wealth analysis on a given bitcoin address. With accuracy probabilities and everything. Just wait. Anything tumbled and the probabilities of that wealth calculation goes way, way down towards 0%.

That is just one example of what a tumbler can prevent.

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