Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by socillion 4717 days ago
From the government's perspective, Bitcoin could be the least of very many evils. Don't forget that the protocol logs every single transaction publicly, and companies have the usual mandatory reporting for transactions over $10,000. In the future, if Bitcoin becomes a well established currency, Bitcoin companies would have no option to refuse requests for information - Liberty Reserve is a good example of what noncompliance will result in. They could only pray the deal is not altered further.

Sidenote: Liberty Reserve was shut down a month after the FinCen released clarification of regulations that neatly closed the loophole they exploited, and at the same time greatly legitimized Bitcoin operators that comply with the strict MSB regulations.

1 comments

> From the government's perspective, Bitcoin could be the least of very many evils. Don't forget that the protocol logs every single transaction publicly

That's a good point. Would it be possible to have something like Bitcoin but with better anonymity?

There is a protocol called Zerocoin which may be integrated with Bitcoin. AFAIK it is currently being tested. However it's not sure if Bitcoin developers will integrate it with current protocol. In theory it makes possible to do totally anonymous transactions.