14 DAY TRIAL // Joe Manchin, a US Senator from West Virginia, wants US regulators to ban Bitcoins.
The reasons he states are, of course, not new at all. In fact, Manchin says that the currency helps facilitate criminal activity and could, in the end, harm the US economy if allowed to circulate without any type of regulation.
He expressed his point of view in a lengthy letter he sent to the US Treasury, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Federal Reserve.
“The very features that make Bitcoin attractive to some also attract criminals who are able to disguise their actions from law enforcement. Due to Bitcoin’s anonymity, the virtual market has been extremely susceptible to hackers and scam artists stealing millions from Bitcoins users,” says Manchin.
The Senator makes sure to back his case by pointing out to the rising underground online markets where Bitcoins are used as payment for various illegal purchases. One good example for this is Silk Road, which was shut down some months ago, only to have another one rise in its place.
Manchin wants the federal government to prohibit the use of Bitcoin as a means of payment, completely ignoring all the legal uses for the cryptocurrency as well as the fact that regular currencies are also used for illegal purposes.
The senator made sure to point out that other countries have banned Bitcoins as well, including China, Thailand and Russia. Under the circumstances, he does appear to be quite upset that the United States, “the world leader and epicenter of the banking industry,” wasn’t the one to take the lead on the matter.
He also expressed his concern that Americans would be left holding valueless Bitcoins as more and more countries ban the currency.
The push from Manchin comes at the perfect timing as the world is showing some reserve towards Bitcoin following the collapse of Mt. Gox, one of the world’s biggest exchange markets. While other similar companies have expressed their trust in Bitcoin despite the difficulties Mt. Gox is going through, the trading value of Bitcoins has lowered considerably in the past several weeks.
After a couple of weeks during which time Mt. Gox accused a bug for shutting down Bitcoin withdrawals, the company decided to put a stop to transactions as a whole. A few days ago, the inevitable happened, and the site went down, making everyone discuss the demise of Mt. Gox.
Yesterday, a message appeared on the site, explaining that Mt. Gox’s team was still working to protect the site and its users.