Submission + - Bitcoin Bank Defeats the Purpose of Bitcoin (vice.com)
Daniel_Stuckey writes: "Here's yet another sign that bitcoin is a legit currency: A new bank for bitcoin is up and running at Bitcoin-Central.net. With euro signs in its eyes, French bitcoin exchange Paymium says it plans to regulate and institutionalize the crypto-currency with Bitcoin Central, bringing along insurance standards guaranteed by the French version of FDIC. My eyebrow just hit the ceiling.
Regulating bitcoin? Banking it? Issuing bank cards? Gaining 'attractivity' from second and third-round investors? It's a classic sell-out story cruising along under some shield of financial nerdery. That bitcoin is money, and money is bitcoin, seems to have led these determined guys into the savagery of orthodox financial standards. In itself, the very idea of a centralized, compliant, investment-seizing bitcoin bank defies the earliest notions of the untraceable currency. Just have a look at some of Bitcoin Central's boasted advantages, as posted in an announcement:
Each user will soon be able to order its own debit card that will use their EUR and BTC balance to honor purchases and cash withdrawals
We'll have direct access to the banking networks which will let us 100% automate all incoming and outgoing transfers
Corporations will have an actual financial institution talking with them if they wish to start accepting Bitcoin and be safe from a regulatory point of view
Paymium will have a much better legal standing and a much higher attractivity for second and third-round investors
Let's go back in history to the original unveliing of bitcoin as we know it today. Here's the first sentence from the abstract that bitcoin's pseudonymous creator(s) Satoshi Nakamoto published: "A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution."
Like an eager child opening his Christmas presents without first reading the card from his aging grandparents, the guys at Bitcoin Central don't seem to give a shit about the founding principles of the P2P system in place."
Regulating bitcoin? Banking it? Issuing bank cards? Gaining 'attractivity' from second and third-round investors? It's a classic sell-out story cruising along under some shield of financial nerdery. That bitcoin is money, and money is bitcoin, seems to have led these determined guys into the savagery of orthodox financial standards. In itself, the very idea of a centralized, compliant, investment-seizing bitcoin bank defies the earliest notions of the untraceable currency. Just have a look at some of Bitcoin Central's boasted advantages, as posted in an announcement:
Each user will soon be able to order its own debit card that will use their EUR and BTC balance to honor purchases and cash withdrawals
We'll have direct access to the banking networks which will let us 100% automate all incoming and outgoing transfers
Corporations will have an actual financial institution talking with them if they wish to start accepting Bitcoin and be safe from a regulatory point of view
Paymium will have a much better legal standing and a much higher attractivity for second and third-round investors
Let's go back in history to the original unveliing of bitcoin as we know it today. Here's the first sentence from the abstract that bitcoin's pseudonymous creator(s) Satoshi Nakamoto published: "A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution."
Like an eager child opening his Christmas presents without first reading the card from his aging grandparents, the guys at Bitcoin Central don't seem to give a shit about the founding principles of the P2P system in place."
