Bitcoins banned in Thailand

hawker9000 · August 19, 2013

OK, let's see. The topic title is: "Bitcoins banned in Thailand". Silly or no, true or no, it IS the news item under discussion, and the thread's gone on now for six pages and nearly a month. I think you're confusing newsworthiness with arguments over practicality. There's a place, and a place here at TV I think, for both. It's not always about "argument". Sometimes it's just about news and comment. The original news dealt with bitcoin vs BoT, and the discussion can reasonably include as relevant what other governments are doing I think. Current news includes the fact that US state & federal governments (and perhaps governments in other places) DO consider bitcoins some kind of threat, however "silly" that may be. That one member chooses to deride what some people say or think as "silly" shouldn't throttle the discussion. If you deem it silly, why not just drop out? I personally think government reaction to the technology (& topic) is relevant and occasionally interesting.

beb · August 19, 2013

OK, let's see. The topic title is: "Bitcoins banned in Thailand". Silly or no, true or no, it IS the news item under discussion, and the thread's gone on now for six pages and nearly a month. I think you're confusing newsworthiness with arguments over practicality. There's a place, and a place here at TV I think, for both. It's not always about "argument". Sometimes it's just about news and comment. The original news dealt with bitcoin vs BoT, and the discussion can reasonably include as relevant what other governments are doing I think. Current news includes the fact that US state & federal governments (and perhaps governments in other places) DO consider bitcoins some kind of threat, however "silly" that may be. That one member chooses to deride what some people say or think as "silly" shouldn't throttle the discussion. If you deem it silly, why not just drop out? I personally think government reaction to the technology (& topic) is relevant and occasionally interesting.

Apparently my use of the word "silly" has become the issue of the thread at this moment. Let me clarify.

In the discussion of BTC or any crypto-currency, there is the argument that BTC or other crypto-currencies are dangerous or tainted somehow because they are used in criminal enterprises. This was a point made that I responded to as being silly. Allow me to explain again.

BTC isn't the cause of any illegal activity. All known illegal activities have been occurring in the absence of BTC and they will continue with BTC. BTC is not the cause of criminal activity. If you want to condemn a currency for it's role in criminal activity then you have to start with all currencies that are involved in such things. The US dollar is the obvious one to start with. If you don't associate the dollar with criminality then it is silly to do so with BTC.

It is also silly to condemn new technologies because they may be used for illicit activities. Imagine the effect that would have on email or even the internet in general. I mean, how many terror organizations use the internet to recruit and coordinate?

So it is silly to find something you don't like that a new technology has been used for and then condemn the technology.

You can substitute "silly" with "Naive" or "disingenuous" or whatever other word you think is more appropriate if you like but the point is that argument is not a valid one when having this discussion.

The particular model of your computer has probably been used in the commission of more crimes than we could count if we made the effort to track them all down but I'm not going to condemn it. That would be silly (or naive or disingenuous).

UbonOz · August 19, 2013

What about cars, boats, mobile phones, hotels? Ban them as well, criminals use them.

ajarnpot · August 20, 2013

my suspicion is the us government will do so soon, followed by other countries that think China has always been soft on its population control and that ussr was a teddy bear

MaaTini · August 20, 2013

Bitcoin is an unregulated Market, there is no Garantie, that one Day it just will disappear

MaaTini · August 20, 2013

another way of jounalism

http://qz.com/110164/thailands-infamous-bitcoin-crackdown-is-not-quite-what-it-seems/

Khun Jean · August 20, 2013

At one point you need to change your bitcoins into something that can be used. Like food, a car, maybe a house and anything in between. If you only keep them in your wallet and see the value go up and down that means nothing. The moment you want to exchange it for something else is what counts.

It is that process that can be easily manipulated by government. For instance when you want to buy a house you need to register it, a demand for proof of payment can be made. A bakery shop needs to file its taxes and that needs to be paid in your countries currency. It would be very simple for government agencies to trace the source of your money and if that source is bitcoin you will find out that you end up in prison very quickly. Bitcoin undermines the government, as such it will be fought until either bitcoin ceases to exist or the government.

See what happened to people who started paying and buying in silver and gold. The signs are already there what a government is prepared to do to stay in control.

Bitcoin is great for the ones who started, especially the founder who has a few million.

While it still can be changed for something it keeps its perceived value, same as a dollar or euro has a perceived value. The perception comes from the ability to exchange it for other goods at any moment you want.

If bitcoins can not be exchanged to anything at any time the perception will be that it is not a good currency and the value will collapse. That is true for any currency.

Thaland banned its use, other will follow swiftly once bitcoins get some traction.

4evermaat · August 20, 2013

my suspicion is the us government will do so soon, followed by other countries that think China has always been soft on its population control and that ussr was a teddy bear

Actually, Russia still is a mostly cash-based society, with credit for major purchases (houses, cars) only taking form over the last 15 years or so. Digital, non-recourse currencies are still widely popular. Bitcoin is likely to be welcomed more than banned. I don't even think that foreign exchange is regulated beyond the bank level.

hawker9000 · August 20, 2013

...

Thaland banned its use, other will follow swiftly once bitcoins get some traction.

In what sense has Thailand "banned" the use of bitcoin? Has ANY country for that matter actually "banned" it (yet)? Are you going simply by what the (widely repeated) title suggests? A trading company has suspended operations there, but is there something that says an individual can be arrested if (somehow) "caught" using bitcoin from or in Thailand? Did the Thai parliament pass a law, or did the Thai central bank merely make a policy statement? (There's a difference.) BTW, How "swiftly" is swiftly? Roughly equivalent to "eventually", perhaps? And how much traction is "some" traction? How many dozen pages of Google results, thousands of merchants who accept it, or mentions by magazines like Forbes would you say?

Not saying bitcoin doesn't perhaps have a rocky (some would say "silly"...) road ahead of it though. At least some of the government attention it's getting doesn't sound encouraging. Ex. here ... and apparently some bitcoin miners have been confused (by the police) with pot growers (due to the electrical consumption involved). here LOL

UbonOz · August 20, 2013

I don't really see a problem if you choose to invest, no different to putting your savings into shares.

The key is when you cash in your investment you declare and pay applicable taxes.

If you choose to not declare the income and you are caught by the taxman then you pay the consequences.

The US is paranoid. US dollar is the mostly widely used currency for crime, why not ban it. It is just excuses they make because they cannot control Bitcoin as it is not centralised.

UbonOz · August 20, 2013

Read Post# 44 in the link below, the last paragraph is particularly interesting.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=242160.40

Whatever your thoughts are there has to be changes for the future of our children and the world.

beb · August 20, 2013

At one point you need to change your bitcoins into something that can be used. Like food, a car, maybe a house and anything in between. If you only keep them in your wallet and see the value go up and down that means nothing. The moment you want to exchange it for something else is what counts.

It is that process that can be easily manipulated by government. For instance when you want to buy a house you need to register it, a demand for proof of payment can be made. A bakery shop needs to file its taxes and that needs to be paid in your countries currency. It would be very simple for government agencies to trace the source of your money and if that source is bitcoin you will find out that you end up in prison very quickly. Bitcoin undermines the government, as such it will be fought until either bitcoin ceases to exist or the government.

See what happened to people who started paying and buying in silver and gold. The signs are already there what a government is prepared to do to stay in control.

Bitcoin is great for the ones who started, especially the founder who has a few million.

While it still can be changed for something it keeps its perceived value, same as a dollar or euro has a perceived value. The perception comes from the ability to exchange it for other goods at any moment you want.

If bitcoins can not be exchanged to anything at any time the perception will be that it is not a good currency and the value will collapse. That is true for any currency.

Thaland banned its use, other will follow swiftly once bitcoins get some traction.

Actually the goal is for BTC to be used without converting to fiat currency. There are vendors now that accept BTC and the list grows every day. People that are more up on technology are using it as a way to save on transaction fees and for marketing. As that list grows then BTC becomes more practical staying in it's own sphere. But of course there is a need for users to be able to move in and out of the currency just as they do with all the other currencies.

The Thailand banning of bitcoin has been pretty much debunked by now so no need to revisit that.

UbonOz · August 20, 2013

At one point you need to change your bitcoins into something that can be used. Like food, a car, maybe a house and anything in between. If you only keep them in your wallet and see the value go up and down that means nothing. The moment you want to exchange it for something else is what counts.

It is that process that can be easily manipulated by government. For instance when you want to buy a house you need to register it, a demand for proof of payment can be made. A bakery shop needs to file its taxes and that needs to be paid in your countries currency. It would be very simple for government agencies to trace the source of your money and if that source is bitcoin you will find out that you end up in prison very quickly. Bitcoin undermines the government, as such it will be fought until either bitcoin ceases to exist or the government.

See what happened to people who started paying and buying in silver and gold. The signs are already there what a government is prepared to do to stay in control.

Bitcoin is great for the ones who started, especially the founder who has a few million.

While it still can be changed for something it keeps its perceived value, same as a dollar or euro has a perceived value. The perception comes from the ability to exchange it for other goods at any moment you want.

If bitcoins can not be exchanged to anything at any time the perception will be that it is not a good currency and the value will collapse. That is true for any currency.

Thaland banned its use, other will follow swiftly once bitcoins get some traction.

Today, merchants are using BitPay. Payment is accepted in BTC and deposited in the merchant's bank account the following day in local currency, if they choose not to retain BTC. The exchange rate is guaranteed if the transaction is confirmed within a timeframe.

Today, you can buy an aeroplane, house, car, air fares, electronics, groceries etc etc, all with BTC, no conversion required.

I actually looked up the cost of a flight using BTC and it was very close to what you would pay in local currency.

So, as time progresses there will be no need to convert to a local currency.

Germany has NOT banned BTC, others will "swiftly" follow.

technologybytes · August 21, 2013

After reading as much as I can, from as many sources as I can find, there is NOTHING to suggest that bitcoins are illegal in Thailand.

Honestly, the comments made by the Bank of Thailand guys must be taken with a pinch of salt, it was comments made after they had to sit through a presentation explaining what Bitcoin is and how it works. Simply, it does not fit into any pre-existing regulation, so they don't know how to react.

NOTHING that those guys say constitute law, they just bankers!

I accept Bitcoin in my business (in Thailand) , and I routinely convert Bitcoin to Baht. I will continue to do so.

99 Green Bottles · August 21, 2013

Can you still mine them?

hawker9000 · August 21, 2013

Can you still mine them?

Yes, but as more & more coins are mined, there's a "difficulty" factor to contend with which increases over time (an actual number). ....meaning that the CPU or GPU you're using to crunch the numbers has to work longer, faster, better; meaning that you have to invest more in the process (hardware & electricity). From what I gather, although you can find them advertised online, some for just a couple of hundred USD, there are waits, long waits, for the specialized hardware that you can get to do this. Individuals interested in mining bitcoins get together in pools (again, not hard to find online; some well known ones) to pool their resources. So, technically speaking, yes you can still mine them. Practically speaking, I'm not so sure. The question isn't can you still mine them so much as whether or not you can make any profit doing it.

Here's a calculator that will give you some idea of what you can expect to make, breakeven period, etc., that factors in just about everything: cost of the hardware, cost of electricity & consumption rate, hardware capability, current bitcoin 'difficulty', etc. : http://www.bitcoinx.com/profit/

Here's one seller of hardware: https://products.butterflylabs.com/ (if you want to see some hash rates to plug into the calculator)

Here's an Ars Technica article describing a real-life trial involving these specific machines: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/06/how-a-total-n00b-mined-700-in-bitcoins/

'Sounds like free money, but you have to remember two things about it. One, the difficulty factor is not static; it increases over time. Two, whatever hardware you're looking at online that offers the hashes/sec that you're plugging into a calculator like this to figure your profit, has to actually be in your hands to be delivering any profit. And so now we're talking about investing some money in a cutting edge product, probably with a delivery date several months out, for which there are probably a LOT of people in line ahead of you, and possibly with a startup company that could go out of business before it actually delivers anything. (You can download some software, join a miner pool, and put your existing desktop PC to work, but I think you'll find that there's not much money to be made this way, if any - you could actually lose money due to the electricity you'll be using.)

JetsetBkk · August 21, 2013

"Your Majesty, to a wise man this is a beautiful raiment

but to a fool it is absolutely invisible."

Naturally, the King not wanting to appear a fool, said:

"Isn't it grand! Isn't it fine! Look at the cut, the style, the line!

The suit of clothes is altogether, but altogether it's altogether

The most remarkable suit of clothes that I have ever seen.

- THE KING'S NEW CLOTHES

From the film "Hans Christian Andersen" (1952)

Just replace "clothes" with "Bitcoins" - you'll get the idea.

hawker9000 · August 21, 2013

"Your Majesty, to a wise man this is a beautiful raiment

but to a fool it is absolutely invisible."

Naturally, the King not wanting to appear a fool, said:

"Isn't it grand! Isn't it fine! Look at the cut, the style, the line!

The suit of clothes is altogether, but altogether it's altogether

The most remarkable suit of clothes that I have ever seen.

- THE KING'S NEW CLOTHES

From the film "Hans Christian Andersen" (1952)

Just replace "clothes" with "Bitcoins" - you'll get the idea.

Pass - bad idea.

In the fairy tale (<clue), there was just the king wearing the "new clothes". There are over 10 million of these coins now, worth over a billion USD, and considerably more than one person using them. And nobody's really widely proselytizing them - whatever penetration they've achieved, they've achieved on their own merit. Sorry, but we all heard the fable when we were kids, the lesson is not new to us, and it's a lame analogy. PS - just this month a US District Court judge ruled they were a regulatable currency, and Germany recognized them as "private money" and legal tender.

Again, no one can predict the future, but it's foolish to dismiss them entirely.

4evermaat · August 22, 2013

........

I accept Bitcoin in my business (in Thailand) , and I routinely convert Bitcoin to Baht. I will continue to do so.

Can you please relay the exchanger you use?

beb · August 22, 2013

"Your Majesty, to a wise man this is a beautiful raiment

but to a fool it is absolutely invisible."

Naturally, the King not wanting to appear a fool, said:

"Isn't it grand! Isn't it fine! Look at the cut, the style, the line!

The suit of clothes is altogether, but altogether it's altogether

The most remarkable suit of clothes that I have ever seen.

- THE KING'S NEW CLOTHES

From the film "Hans Christian Andersen" (1952)

Just replace "clothes" with "Bitcoins" - you'll get the idea.

The only problem with your story here is that as we all know, it is an illustration of the masses refusing to accept the truth in front of them (because they've been told differently by the authorities) and it took a single innocent to see through everything. Your story basically supports those that are telling the masses that there is a better way than we've all been led to believe.

technologybytes · August 22, 2013

........

I accept Bitcoin in my business (in Thailand) , and I routinely convert Bitcoin to Baht. I will continue to do so.

Can you please relay the exchanger you use?

bahtcoin, btc2baht or mtgox all are dot com websites that I've used in the past. mtgox are probably the safest but they require verification for new users which takes a week.

UbonOz · August 22, 2013

........

I accept Bitcoin in my business (in Thailand) , and I routinely convert Bitcoin to Baht. I will continue to do so.

Can you please relay the exchanger you use?

bahtcoin, btc2baht or mtgox all are dot com websites that I've used in the past. mtgox are probably the safest but they require verification for new users which takes a week.

MtGox is getting a lot of bad press lately.

Apparently, people are waiting a long time to get their funds out.

I bought from https://localbitcoins.com/

I have looked at https://www.bitstamp.net/

You can look at daily prices here - http://bitcoinity.org/markets

Check forums here - https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Main_Page

technologybytes · August 22, 2013

........

I accept Bitcoin in my business (in Thailand) , and I routinely convert Bitcoin to Baht. I will continue to do so.

Can you please relay the exchanger you use?

bahtcoin, btc2baht or mtgox all are dot com websites that I've used in the past. mtgox are probably the safest but they require verification for new users which takes a week.

MtGox is getting a lot of bad press lately.
Apparently, people are waiting a long time to get their funds out.

I bought from https://localbitcoins.com/

I have looked at https://www.bitstamp.net/

You can look at daily prices here - http://bitcoinity.org/markets

Check forums here - https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Main_Page

Yes, my last transaction with mtgox was very slow.

I think we have to be very careful not to make recommendations as such, as it's early days for any of these exchange methods.

I'm taking some bitcoin payments now via bitpay.com now, they pay out to my Bangkok Bank (via New York Branch ACH) same day, I seem to get the money in my Thai account 1-2 days later and for a fee of 1% which seems OK. Now I see that Coinbase do the same, but they cannot verify my Bangkok Bank because their verification required both credit and debit and Bangkok Bank only allow credits via ACH.

I should add that BitPay and Coinbase are payment processors and not exchanges..

4evermaat · August 22, 2013

^^ Thanks. I was considering an exchanger in russia or ukraine that has a local deposit option. I think they accept either bank debit or 7-11 payments.

http://www.wm-center.es/ or http://www.wm-center.ru/ . Their .com address was made offline after the libertyreserve takedown.

edit: they don't accept USA resident customers after that takedown. So larger amounts that may require know-your-customer documentation may be a problem if you do not have the appropriate local identification.

UbonOz · August 22, 2013

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