Yes the regulations are very constricting especially when you look at them through crypto glasses.
I wonder what the world would be like without all the regulation on fiat (would there be tons of well funded terrorists and will everyone be money laundering? perhaps the benefits of control dont justify the negative effects it is having on society, and we will never know until the restrictions are lifted. I assume that someone who wants to fund terrorists would not necessarily make an EFT from their bank account so why all the reporting controls on EFTs).
There is also a massive lack of understanding by regulators which makes people like us worry about going to jail for trying to provide an innocent service.
great questions..i think a simple answer becomes clear when we ask:
"do current regulations and pervasive spying stop terrorist funding right now?"
of course not, but we still keep going down that losing path. the big problem with patches to tackle social problems is that politics isn't geared to digging deeper and getting to root causes. like, why is the USSA the #1 target for non-US terrorist attacks? answering that question to anything close to the truth would do much more than additional surveillance and regulations to keeping us safer.
Yes, this is the right line of thought.
I gather that you are attempting to start a service that would need to navigate the regulatory environment. Which country are you thinking of operating in?
yes, i've been putting together plans for a simple USD<-->bitUSD gateway in South Carolina, USSA. the base functionality would just be offering a low-cost, easy way for people to convert the two currencies and plop them into the appropriate bond market instrument to earn yield on their bitUSD. if that worked out, i'd try to grow it into a merchant services business. i was thinking of keeping it strictly within SC to avoid Interstate Commerce Clause bs justification for federal regulation. still need to get legal council before moving forward, and now i'm holding off a bit to see how 2.0 works out and if the business is still viable with the bond market producing sufficient yield.
the logic for this venture is that what we really need next is demand for our core products, bitUSD and other useful MPAs (but mainly bitUSD). the fact that buyers can currently earn way higher than market interest yield is a great selling point and should justify non-crypto savers to consider it a viable venue for parking capital. i'm a little concerned with the segmenting of interest into the bond market in 2.0, but it should work out well.