There’s a paper handed around between Bitcoin-friends which has the potential to scare the bejesus out of the cryptocurrency world. In June 2013, Newsdesk Media published a colorful magazine called G8 The UK Summit: Lough Erne. The esteemed list of authors include French president François Hollande, the president of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso, Barack Obama, and here we go, James Lyons, CEO of the International Cyber Security Protection Alliance (ICSPA). His rallying cry, allegedly to protect digital economies from cybercrime: ban alternative payment mechanisms, such as Bitcoin. Because they can enable criminal and terrorist groups to launder money and fund their operations.
As some people might remember, organized crime did not start with the Internet. Nor is money laundering a proprietary feature of crypto-currencies. Just ask your (un-)friendly neighborhood mobster. His family might be in the funds laundering business since some centuries and a half. And, especially regarding Bitcoin and its public ledger, large scale money laundering is not a built-in feature. To the contrary: larger transactions leave quite a footprint in the system.
The good thing about Lyon’s two page rant: despite the officially looking publication, policywise there’s nothing set as of so far:
If the leaders of the European Union and United States could be convinced to take a lead on this initiatives, … it would also strike a blow against those who would try to destroy the fabric of our world’s well-being, begs Lyons.
Of course, some of those world leaders might be inclined to remember the last time somebody almost succeeded in destroying not just the fabric of our world’s well-being. After all, bespoke leaders are still busy cleaning up the fallout from an almost final financial Armageddon (success not guaranteed). Alternative payment mechanisms, such as Bitcoin were definitely not at the root of this evil: They were not even around in 2007, but later on conceived as a potential remedy to skullduggeries inherent in the existing system, where the proliferation of weapons of financial mass destructions has reached the level of let’s say Brooklyn, Berlin-Kreuzberg, and Clacton-on-Sea having become rogue nuclear powers of their own.
So why is Lyons fighting so hard to ban these payment mechanisms? The ICSPA explicitly exists to fight against cyber frauds in electronic commerce, which mostly involves credit card technologies conceived for a non-digital non-networked world. Crypto currencies could be applied as a vaccine against those threats. OK, look no further than into the fairly short member list of his lobbying organization: a bunch of security services companies, a UK-based retailer, the global PR powerhouse Edelman, and, oh, woopsie: Visa Europe, the bank-owned credit card giant. Oh yes, alternative payment mechanisms could definitely become a threat to Visa’s well being: if they do not want to co-opt the remedy for the self-inflicted ills they’re suffering from (and which are the reason they finance a body like the ICSPA, whose executives not just do lunches with MPs, but are a liaison to law enforcement bodies like Europol as well).
The really bad thing is: Lyons knows his core audience pretty well. He and his ICSPA share table and bed with the powers that be on a fairly regular base. At the ISSE 2013 security conference in Brussels, Lyons explained how the world needs to reset the clock on trust after whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed the US Prism internet surveillance programme. Time to review cyber trust, says ICSPA, headlined Computer Weekly.
Lyons proposed course of actions: Governments need to do a better job to help citizens to understand the reasons for conducting internet surveillance.
How would he achieve that? Combining international efforts to clamp down on child abuse pornography could help to rebuild relationships and trust between business, law enforcement and governments. Ah, got that.
And, not to forget, the Ceterum Censeo, asking for the tit for tat: an international collaboration in outlawing ignitable currencies such as Bitcoin.
How will (or should) the Bitcoin community react to such efforts?
There are three main courses of action: ignorance may sometimes be bliss and is very much ingrained into the human nature (duh!), but can have some really bad side effects. So, what else? Following the lead of traditional lobbies like ICSPA and start talking to the government as well, negotiating with regulation bodies, and getting law makers up to speed. The US-based Bitcoin Foundation seems pretty active in this area. In Novemer 2013, General Counsel Parick Murg testified at a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing entitled, “Beyond Silk Road: Potential Risks, Threats, and Promises of Virtual Currencies.”
And yes, it’s really important: if you want to make real business, legal certainty is not a nice thing to have, but a precondition.
But not everybody is embracing this appeasement approach. Are nice talks enough, when the chain dogs of the incumbent competition have skipped the mere bite reflex and are openly out for a kill? Not to forget: Bitcoin is still a bit player in this lobbying arena. And let’s not forget: the dark forces of financial evil did not just survive their own suicidal attack on the global financial system. They got nicely remunerated for it as well, with all blessings of the system they almost destroyed. They achieved this with hardcore PR, well oiled lobbying, and being a fundamental building block of the current system.
No way, say the makers of the Dark Wallet: Many prominent Bitcoin developers are actively in collusion with members of law enforcement and seeking approval from government legislators. We believe this is not in Bitcoin user’s self-interest, and instead serves wealthy business interests that make up the self-titled Bitcoin Foundation.
Parts of the community feel the same and voted with their wallets for the Dark Wallet: via Indiegogo and direct Bitcoin contributions they collected fairly quickly more than a hundred thousand Dollars.
War! Schism! Whatever! We’re talking protocol here. The only relevant schism would be a nasty fork. At its current state, both parties may distrust each other. But on the other hand, it’s two approaches which are nicely complimentary. Talking to the government is not an inherently bad thing. Just remember: really successful pirates like Francis Drake had their letters of marque, thereby minimizing theirs risks and maximizing their profits. At the same time you should never stop working on strengthening your own superpowers. The power of Bitcoin lies in being a crypto currency, and not in becoming a complacency coin.
And, besides that: I’m pretty sure that Bitcoin as a protocol or an open platform will not necessarily wipe out all existing financial players. To the contrary: clever CIOs in modern banks will embrace crypto currencies. Why? Have a look at how the current system works. It’s pretty cumbersome at its core. So the next financial innovation may hopefully not be a new and improved weapon of financial mass destruction, but an improvement of the inner workings of an ancient machine.
gert.is 