

Senate Banking Committee Hearing on Bitcoin [video] - rxl
http://www.banking.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Hearings.LiveStream&hearing_id=955322cc-d648-4a00-a41f-c23be8ff4cad

======
drcode
Bottom line, except for Gallipi (BitPay CEO) no one in this hearing on either
side understood bitcoin.

They could have replaced the word "Bitcoin" with the word "eGold" and had the
same amount of substance.

Yesterday was different.

~~~
cinquemb
I thought some of the remarks by Smocer on the liquidity in the global market
was pretty telling (and the comparative lack of it in the US) in that the US
will not be on the edge of innovation in this space (as of now) and from the
actions of the USG compared to say other governments have (or lack of)
elsewhere already have shown the direction. I keep thinking of the
circumstances of mt.gox account on dwolla being seized.

And then you have the issue of the banks giving businesses who are willing to
jump through the hoops the run around… At this point it would be awesome if
the Google's and Apple's use their off shore banking licenses (and cash) and
take accounts for bitcoin service companies from the US or globally, possibly
circumventing their repatriation issues too… win/win, no?

~~~
drcode
I agree on the liquidity discussion. However, all of the big five want to
control the payment space (Amazon coin, google wallet, Facebook bucks etc) and
will avoid bitcoin as long as possible.

------
lumberjack
So to summarize, the three important issues raised:

1\. How do you collect taxes and avoid tax evasion.

2\. Illicit activity control in the vein of what is done to curb online
gambling (Visa/Mastercard act as enforcers by forbidding service to such
businesses).

3\. What kind of regulation would do the job (whatever that might be) while at
the same time remain competitive with other nations. IRRC the needs for
regulation focused mostly on consumer protection.

~~~
thinkcomp
To answer (3), see Section III (pages 31-33):

[http://www.aarongreenspan.com/writing/20131118.hsgacstatemen...](http://www.aarongreenspan.com/writing/20131118.hsgacstatement.pdf)

