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Comment by gitgud | Hacker News Reader

I am not sure how this could possibly work. To govern and regulate a public block-chain is fundamentally against what they stand for. A public block-chain-based cryptocurrency is meant to be resistant to government forces. They shouldn't be allowed to enforce rules on who or what you trade.

A better approach would be to regulate the exchanges, which is probably not too far off. However, even in this case decentralised exchanges like BISQ could most likely completely avoid any regulation.

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The approach is really to regulate anyone who puts themselves in a vulnerable position with the law. Any company that wants to be “legitimate” (raise money, hire employees, file taxes, distribute shares, etc.) puts itself in a subjugative position toward the government. Legitimacy requires legal exposure; you cannot reap its benefits while playing outside its rules.

If a company or market segment is organized in a way that makes regulation enforceable, then the government will find a way to regulate it. The only way for a company to avoid such regulation is to operate outside the bounds of the corporocracy, foregoing the benefits of legitimacy in hopes that the strengths of decentralization will ultimately prevail.

Blockchain is simply a technology; it does not "stand for" anything. You could, perhaps argue, that it is technology that is not useful in the presence of regulatory authority; but that seems like a very broad statement to make. You would have to show that any level of regulatory would allow for a solution to all the problems that blockchains solve that is no worse than using a blockchain. In fact, they would probably have to solve those problems substantially better to overcome the network effects of using the more established technology.

> To govern and regulate a public block-chain is fundamentally against what they stand for.

A block-chain has no stance for or against anything. Saying that a block-chain could be for or against governance is similar to saying that b*trees are pro-life.

Decentralisation and censorship resistance are fundamental properties of Bitcoin.

A blockchain is just a data structure. Bitcoin is more than just a data structure.

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