Kluwer arbitration bitcoin
The Trade in Services Agreement now being hammered out in Geneva might be expanded to explicitly bar subsidies for digital currency mining, or data processing generally. As a category buster, bitcoin and other digital currencies can be a poor fit with the traditional rules governing international trade. Anti-dumping law and the SCM apply only to trade in goods.
The new bitcoins created with each block are arguably goods, even if they take digital form. The rest of the mining process is best thought of as providing transaction-inclusion services for digital currency users. When new bitcoins are no longer being created, mining will be a pure financial and data processing service. Bitcoin transactions also don't generally have a "location. Countervailing measures such as tariffs would be very hard to administer.
On the other hand, given the global trade and large proportion of Bitcoin transactions among users outside of China, bitcoins as goods and mining as transaction-inclusion services are clearly being provided to consumers outside China. These are exports, even though the precise place of purchase or location of service may be ambiguous. Bitcoin's basis in math makes the case for wrongful subsidies much easier.
The power consumption bitcoin mining requires and the hash power available to various mining groups is readily calculable, so it's quite easy to measure the substantial benefits Chinese bitcoin miners enjoy from being given cheap power. If China were to build transmission lines that delivered energy more evenly across its economy, the argument that it was subsidizing its bitcoin mining industry would evaporate.
The Chinese government may have international trade obligations that require it to withdraw the substantial benefit it now confers on its domestic bitcoin mining industry.
Technological measures — such as, restraining blocksize limit, or fine tuning to reduce the amount of bandwidth it takes to propagate new blocks — are not the only tools in the Bitcoin community's toolbox. Posted by Simon Lester on November 28, at International Economic Law and Policy Blog. About This blog is published by WorldTradeLaw. Blogroll Balkinization Ben Muse: Here he is explaining how there may be Chinese government subsidies to bitcoin production, and how trade rules might apply: Main News Page Main news page.
Recent Posts Call for Papers: The commissioner alleges that R2B Coin has fraudulently offered unregistered securities to Texas residents by, among other things, representing that the cryptocurrency "will never go down in value" while failing to disclose the calculations or analysis behind its price projections. The commissioner also alleges that R2B Coin has misled potential investors about the possibility that the company will list its stock on a major stock exchange and that investors will be able to trade their tokens for stock In the Matter of R2B Coin , January 24, The order marks the third enforcement action taken by Texas securities regulators to stop a cryptocurrency offering, with each one having been taken against an offshore firm.
By means of the website, a series of conference calls, and other solicitations through "affiliates," R2B Coin has allegedly represented to investors that "you can get in for hundreds of bucks and make thousands of dollars" and "the faster you buy the more you will make.
The order also alleges that R2B Coin has misleadingly represented that the distributor of the tokens, Williams Corp. The order notes that that the representations concerning registration are deceptive because R2B Coin is not disclosing either the name of the agency issuing a license to Williams Corp.
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