Jon Matonis, the Founding Director of Bitcoin Foundation has stood up in defence of Bitcoin once again, this time in New Zealand. While on a visit to Auckland as a speaker at the AMP’s Amplify Festival he responded to the comments made by Martin Cocker against Bitcoin.
Martin Cocker is the executive director of the country’s internet safety organization called NetSafe. Martin has said that he would like to see Bitcoin go down as it has been doing more harm than good, at least in New Zealand. Matonis has responded to his comment by giving few examples how Bitcoin is doing more good except for a few instances. He however did not refute the claim that Bitcoin is gradually becoming popular among cybercriminals and fraudsters who have been infecting computers with ransomware, and demanding Bitcoin as ransom in return for access to encrypted data on computers.
The criminals tend to deal with Bitcoin as it is very hard to track the transactions. Even though it has a few negative things associated with it, the bigger picture shows a much better scenario where Bitcoin is bringing about a lot of positive change across the world. While giving the examples of Argentina and China, Jon Matonis explained how it is illegal in Argentina to buy gold and other hard currency and the challenges faced by the Chinese people due to unrealistic and immoral capital controls. Bitcoin has now become the digital equivalent of money and its decentralized, encrypted nature offers a huge advantage for those people in developing nations and police states.
Jon Matonis also spoke about the new BitLicense introduced by NYSDFS. According to him, the BitLicense requirements, which makes it mandatory for Bitcoin exchanges to establish the identity of both parties involved in transaction is unnecessary and it just creates more hurdles for Bitcoin based start-ups. He warned that if government start pushing hard with these regulations, Bitcoin companies may ultimately quit the region to find and operate from countries that have a better conducive environment for Bitcoin businesses.
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