
Bitcoin ruled illegal in Thailand - rb2k_
https://bitcoin.co.th/trading-suspended-due-to-bank-of-thailand-advisement/?bettertitle
======
mrb
Bitcoin was _not_ ruled illegal. The Bank of Thailand has no legal power. A
few senior members of the bank saying something is illegal does not make it
illegal. The Foreign Exchange Administration and Policy Department are merely
departments of the bank, not branches of the legislative government.

In other words the title "Bitcoin ruled illegal in Thailand" should be changed
to "Bank of Thailand wishes Bitcoin to be illegal", or "Trading suspended due
to Bank of Thailand advisement" which is the original title.

~~~
dobbsbob
Indeed.. upon closer inspection all that happened is this guy approached the
Bank of Thailand and (foolishly) deferred to their authority to ask if he
could trade coins using their bank. This always results in bankers telling you
no, and no surprise they said no, but doesn't mean you can't use cash on the
streets, just so long as no banks are used. Thai parliament hasn't passed any
laws declaring virtual currencies illegal.

~~~
nikster
Why would you even go to the BoT?

The only reason I can think of is so that they say no, and you get some free
publicity?

------
tpatke
The key factor to the success of any currency is liquidity. You are only
willing to put money in if you can take money out. If the government of
Thailand says it is illegal to transfer money in or out - that will effect
liquidity in Thailand. How will this be enforced? First, banks and reputable
institutions doing business in Thailand will not be allowed to trade with
companies involved in bitcoin exchange. Of course, this will not completely
stop currency conversions, but it will act to decrease liquidity which will
act to discourage people from putting money into bitcoins – further decreasing
liquidity.

This is definitely bad news for bitcoins.

[Edit] Will a down-voter kindly explain to me how this is good news for
bitcoins? Maybe liquidity is not important for a currency?

~~~
3am
To the point of your edit, you see identical behavior on Gold investor boards
in the typical sites (Motley Food, Seeking Alpha, et al). Everything is good
news for gold. If "A" is good for gold, so is "!A". This money flowing in to
ETF, inventory levels, chart technicals... almost anything. In the event that
something is difficult to justify immediately as good news, it is the product
of a malicious conspiracy (market makers, central banks).

I'm only comparing the group dynamic and the hostile reaction to any
suggestion that triggers cognitive dissonance. I haven't checked the chart on
Mt Gox in ages, last I saw 1 BTC was ~ 125 USD. As a disinterested observer,
this Thailand development doesn't seem very important one way or the other,
but it's hard to interpret as positive.

~~~
w3pm
For what it's worth, I see identical behavior with stock market enthusiasts as
well. Good job numbers? Market goes up. Bad job numbers? Market goes up --
clearly Ben Bernanke must keep printing until employment stabilizes. "A" is
good for the stock market and so is "!A." It really is a crazy time we live
in. Cognitive dissonance everywhere you look.

~~~
dllthomas
There's nothing _necessarily_ crazy about what you describe. The markets
reaction to news that everyone knows is going to be released (that is, we know
job numbers will be published at this time on that day, but not what the
numbers will be) won't necessarily track the good-ness or bad-ness of the
news, because the market will have moved in advance based on the best
estimates of those playing that game, and they might have overshot.

------
cs702
Thailand's "Foreign Exchange Administration and Policy Department" has advised
that, quoting from the OP: _" the following Bitcoin activities are illegal in
Thailand: buying Bitcoins; selling Bitcoins; buying any goods or services in
exchange for Bitcoins; selling any goods or services for Bitcoins; sending
Bitcoins to anyone located outside of Thailand; receiving Bitcoins from anyone
located outside of Thailand."_

We can get a sense of how successful and lasting this edict will be with a
simple mental experiment: replace "Bitcoin" with "US Dollar." The edict thus
becomes: _" the following US Dollar activities are illegal in Thailand: buying
US Dollars; selling US Dollars; buying any goods or services in exchange for
US Dollars; selling any goods or services for US Dollars; sending US Dollars
to anyone located outside of Thailand; receiving US Dollars from anyone
located outside of Thailand."_ How successful could _that edict_ be, and how
long could it last, realistically?

Foreign exchange controls are normally difficult to implement and enforce.
Control of Bitcoin -- a decentralized, optionally anonymous, virtual commodity
-- should be even more difficult.

I suspect a lot of Bitcoin trading volume in Thailand will simply go
underground.

~~~
Nursie
They may indeed go underground. That means that legitimate businesses will
have a hard time dealing with them if they deal with them at all.

Make no mistake, even if governments can't stop people trading bitcoin, they
can stop it becoming mainstream in the way many BTC enthusiasts seem to want.

~~~
EthanHeilman
I'm not sure it is in their long term strategic interest to push bitcoin
underground since that will make bitcoin far harder to tax (declining tax
revenues -> increasing taxes and decreasing State power -> more people hiding
income = the Greek Syndrome).

~~~
pseudonym
It doesn't necessarily matter if it's harder to tax. If the only way to
exchange Bitcoins for currency is via face-to-face transactions, 90% of what
usefulness it has is eliminated. The remaining use, exchange of a virtual
currency for virtual goods and services, is only useful with an easy way to
get ahold of a sum of said virtual currency to begin with.

Which is to say, with a sufficiently low volume of BTC being passed around,
taxing it becomes as important as making sure you tax cash transactions by
roadside fruit vendors or lemonade stands.

------
dreen

        - Buying Bitcoins
        - Selling Bitcoins
        - Buying any goods or services in exchange for Bitcoins
        - Selling any goods or services for Bitcoins
        - Sending Bitcoins to anyone located outside of Thailand
        - Receiving Bitcoins from anyone located outside of Thailand
    

I think what they mean is that its impossible for a company to do any of the
above things legally. Its not possible to enforce this on the individual
level.

~~~
Nursie
>> Its not possible to enforce this on the individual level.

Why not? From what little I understand it's pretty easy to spot bitcoin
related traffic on a network, transactions in particular. Thailand already has
some sort of national filtering/porn censorship set up IIRC.

~~~
clarkmoody
If the person in question is running a Bitcoin wallet, that is. Receiving and
sending via blockchain.info online wallets would require masking website
traffic only, and there are lots of ways to do this.

Receiving via offline wallet would be completely untraceable, unless the
addresses were know a priori by the authorities. Checking the balance on a
web-based blockchain viewer could tip off the watchers, but the same
precautions apply here as for the above case.

~~~
Nursie
Receiving via an offline wallet... You mean effectively a savings account that
is inbound only? Sure, no traffic needs to come to you then.

I'm sure there are ways to secure the traffic. As it stands, however, running
your own node, mining, and sending BTC is pretty detectable.

~~~
clarkmoody
Of course.

The important thing here is that the receive-only scheme provides a way around
two of the six points mentioned by dreen above: selling goods/services for
Bitcoin and receiving Bitcoin from anyone outside the country.

Actually, from that list it looks like running a node and mining would not be
illegal. And if you're mining with a pool, make sure the payout is added as
part of the generation transaction, not sent as another transaction later.

~~~
Nursie
Actually this brings up a very interesting question I hadn't even considered
before:

In terms of bitcoin crossing borders and for the purposes of international
commerce - where is a bitcoin?

If someone in the US pays someone in thailand you would (or I would)
immediately think a cross border transaction has taken place. But Bitcoins
only really exist on the blockchain, right? You don't somehow store them on
your own machine, only the means of accessing them (keys in your wallet). And
the block chain is everywhere. A transaction is a mathematical change of
ownership from one key to another, a wallet merely a collection of keys and
previous transaction records (the latter probably able to be rebuilt from the
blockchain anyway)...

So did any bitcoin cross a border?

~~~
dreen
I think this is grey area and I have personally used bitcoin mostly for
bypassing international transfer fees.

------
murbard2
Maybe they got tired of all those bitcoin users abusing the Thai baht symbol.

------
tomelders
It will be interesting to see how actively they enforce this new ruling. Given
that paedo-tourists are effectively given a free pass in Thailand I find it
odd that Bitcoin would work it's way to the top of the agenda.

~~~
stef25
> Given that paedo-tourists are effectively given a free pass in Thailand

Really necessary to drag that in to the discussion?

~~~
enraged_camel
What's a pseudo-tourist?

edit: why the downvote? It's a simple question!

~~~
mbrameld
A pseudo-tourist is your misreading of the word paedo-tourist.

------
helterskelter7
I have a different explanation. Like many corrupt Asian governments (and I
have lived in Asia for 10y+) they usually abide to this principle: if you
discover some new way to make money, we either have to make money too out of
it and without doing anything, or you have to stop. So in this case my theory
is that they looked at it and like most computer illiterate governments they
thought to stop it until they understand how the game works and start making
money out of it themselves. I mean personally. Expect pretty soon to see some
new Bitcoin service to appear in Thailand, with some weird license from the
government, and founded (probably indirectly) by some corrupted member of the
government or someone from their relatives.

~~~
VMG
I think it is safe to say this is universal

------
znowi
Bitcoin is more than a virtual currency or miners running rigs. It's the first
self-sufficient, decentralized, monetary system that renders 3rd party
entities like banks obsolete.

At the very least it's an intriguing concept in relation to sociology,
economy, and new forms of governance. It's a paradigm shift, and as such, it
will meet a lot of misunderstanding and opposition. Particularly from those
whose power is at stake - banks and governments.

As once, the idea of equality and democracy shook the kingdoms during the
Enlightenment, the idea of Bitcoin, if you look closely, is not far from it.

------
crusso
Yeah, well, prostitution is technically illegal in Thailand too.

------
eksith
Riddle me this.

How does banning bits in any way shape or form, prevent their transmission and
storage?

~~~
AndyKelley
Child porn is bits too. People seem to be okay with making those bits illegal.

~~~
dllthomas
I'm not.

~~~
AndyKelley
Me either. I don't believe in information ownership.

~~~
dllthomas
I don't see how the issues are linked. Do they simply stem from a common
philosophy, or does a disbelief in information ownership somehow entail
inability to punish for possession?

~~~
AndyKelley
The way I see it, information possession and ownership are the same thing, and
neither concept should be recognized by the law.

What does it mean to possess bits? Do they have to be on a physical media on
my property? What if I have a network drive? Do they have to be on a server
that I have access to? Does that mean that we're all in possession of
everything that is made public on the Internet?

There are ways to answer these questions, but I'm not convinced that we have
anything to gain from the government doing so.

------
northwest
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe it applies to any nation that the
government always retains the monopoly of "issuing" a currency.

EDIT: ...which probably means that sooner or later, bitcoin will probably be
outlawed everywhere.

~~~
stonemetal
They haven't outlawed chuck e cheese coins, or any other arcade that uses its
own currency instead of dollars. Why would bit coin be any different?

~~~
northwest
As far as I remember, the country sets a limit for this. Once a "pseudo"
currency reaches that amount (in circulation), it is required to be
"authorized" (or not) by the country.

Now that was before bicoin existed. So, probably the laws will soon be re-
written to take that into account.

~~~
tvtime15
Is there a Mt.Gox for Chuck E Cheese token? Perhaps Mt.Swiss[cheese]?

------
dobbsbob
No problem. Start an Okpay exchanger in Thailand and ppl can use it to buy
coins.

Thailand is already so corrupt laws are basically meaningless there. If you
get caught somehow trading coins then just bribe the cop $100 and walk away.

~~~
VMG
It's a problem for businesses though

~~~
dobbsbob
Bitcoin is the least of your problems if doing business in Thailand. Also they
didn't ban zerocoin, or litecoin :P.

What about Thaicoin a currency backed by bitcoin?

------
erikpukinskis
Bitcoin is a tool. It is useful for some things, and it is not useful for
others.

Any country who prohibits, like any country who prohibits any tool, it is
putting their residents at a disadvantage. By definition. In those situations
where the nail is a Bitcoin, Thai people will have no hammer, but a wrench
with which to bang the nail in.

The beauty of Bitcoin is it only needs to thrive in one of the 200+ countries
in the world for it to achieve Proof of Concept status. And once it does that,
other countries will follow, and eventually any countries who prohibit it will
need to allow it to stay competitive.

------
DigitalSea
And so it begins. Thailand is a drop in the ocean, once the US and other
countries get on-board then the success of Bitcoin is only going to be further
propelled. I presume most Bitcoin transactions will go underground and given
their anonymous and decentralised nature, good luck enforcing laws like this
or even being able to draw conclusive proof of Bitcoin usage to a particular
entity (unless you find other proof like receipts, emails or having the
Bitcoin client on your computer).

------
Articulate
How will this work in practice?

~~~
rplacd
The phrase "this is Thailand" comes to mind - individual use will slip through
the gaps, institutional users'll work this into their standard relationships
with the various organs of government; and general apathy will reign in the
end - the various arms of government are still probably embroiled in the
omnipresent issues of either (a) a general political amnesty or (b)
politically-motivated point-scoring.

No campaign exists, and there exists no space to whip one up considering how
thoroughly split the various arms of government are between political
allegiances (unless Yingluck's dealt with the judiciary already.)

------
socrates1998
I am not 100% sure, but this could have a lot to do with the Asian currency
crisis of the 1990's.

Thailand might be more sensitive to currency issues than other countries.

They were told to float their currency on the international market and it
backfired horribly in the 1990's.

I can see why they would want to be worried about currency manipulations
again.

------
Sealy
This will not last. Why? Because by making Bitcoin illegal, Thailand will
detach itself from a market worth $1bn+.

And I agree with the other comments on here which say that this will drive
trade (in Thailand at least) underground.

Disclaimer: I'm bullish on bitcoin.

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guard-of-terra
I wonder why isn't there even one _cool_ country government in the whole
world. We only see _lame_ ones.

Switz might be an exception, or Iceland perhaps, but both too constrained by
neighbours and political bonds.

------
possibilistic
Maybe _another government_ called in a favor for Thailand to be the first to
ban the currency? (Wild speculation.) If so, I wouldn't imagine that other
nations will be long behind.

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EGreg
aha, so mining bitcoins in Thailand was not mentioned!

------
Thiz
How about litecoin?

