It's almost impossible. There is huge debate in the country about the damage these kinds of protectionism do to the economy of the country. Unfortunately, getting a politician to do something about our competitive disadvantage is far harder than trying to compete despite it, so we need to think in terms of creative competition

LoL. I have some baseball bats in the cupboard if we need to break some kneecaps. But seriously, as long as the right to use bitcoin is protected, or at least if the usage is ignored, by a single country, the bitcoin itself should be safe. Should some governments declare it illegal (in many jurisdictions it will take some fancy spin-doctoring to achieve this), the people who find themselves in these countries will be able to use the system anonymously, if they are careful. The best protection for bitcoin will be to achieve a wide acceptance in the "new economy" of online games and services. Should this happen most governments would find it extremely difficult to oppose the use of bitcoins outright. They may try to force some form of regulation down on the system but this will largely be limited to the places where they will be able to enforce a modicum of control, like the exchanges.

Exactly. The only point of control (for the governments) is at the local exchange.
Governments will outlaw the operation of Bitcoin exchanges, sooner or later, and that seem obvious to me,
I don't know why I am so sure .

So, sharing the best practices of (legally) operating the Bitcoin exchange is most welcome.

How do you out lobby the fed?

Sounds like either "Alongside Night" or "The Diamond Age".

But a legal defense fund isn't a bad idea.

I was thinking about launching a Bitcoin accepting website and to get around all these pesky regulations (most of which I probably never even heard about!), what if I just post a disclaimer on the website saying

"WARNING: Bitcoin is nothing but Monopoly Money."

Would that work?

I mean, is it my fault that some crazy people are prepared to trade Monopoly dollars for real dollars on some crazy website in some corner of the big wide web? 

I am planning to launch a crowd-funding platform called "Goodwill" (in 26 different languages), which looks/works rather like Kickstarter and several others, but which is completely free and aimed at helping fund entrepreneurs and change-makers in the least developed countries and other developing economies.  Of the 48 least developed countries in the world, 33 are in sub-Saharan Africa. 

The method of project funding the platform supports will be by pledging donations or goodwill-giving (hence the name), and instead of creating a liabiity, a profit share agreement or receiving shares in the venture, donors are rewarded with gifts which typically have no monatary value and are only intrinsiclly valuable to the project and donors.  Therefore no real-world purchase is being set up or transacted.

The plan is to have it available in English, French, Portuguese and Spanish plus the 22 'national' languages of Africa soon after launch.  The Goodwill platform and services will all be available entirely open-source and completely free to use.  And like the Ushahidi software, for example, there will also be a free hosted version in each language, with instant setup, which we will run on our servers. 

One of the major forms of investment or funding for these projects is anticpiated to come from the diaspora, and therefore a low cost method of transferring funds internationally is highly topical and important.

This is what's planned to roll out so far...

1.   Crowd VC Goodwill crowd-funding platform
2.   Crowd VC Goodwill crowd-funding platform (hosted solution)
3.   Crowd VC Goodwill Stock Exchange
4.   Crowd VC Goodwill Seed Money Startup Fund
5.   Crowd VC Goodwill Diaspora Fund
6.   Crowd VC Goodwill iPhone/3G App (with Bitcoin/M-Pesa type payment gateways)
7.   Crowd VC Goodwill Network (publishes projects to other crowdfunding platforms)

Our "big idea" is to help create a world in which even the poorest of us has the opportunity to reach their full potential and contribute to the well-being of their family, community, country and the world.  Our focus will be the least developed countries of the world, helping to fund projects which improve education, health, civil society and economic development with the intention of helping their economies reduce their dependency on multilateral and bilateral aid. 

From profits we are able to generate we will also create a 'Seed Money Startup Fund' as a source of ready capital capable of getting good ideas off the ground.  It will be run as an NPO (not for profit organization) and any surpluses will be reinvested in bringing new sustainable development projects to life.

I would be very pleased to have your thoughts and suggestions (or offers of help) to try and understand this project and how it relates to the issues which surround the topic specifically, and the brave new word of Bitcoin in general.

It's based on speculation from two years ago.  We now have concrete information about the extent to which services based in different locations are being required to comply with AML/KYC requirements, both directly - as entities having a reporting obligation in their own right - and indirectly - in the case where other financial service providers are requiring them to collect KYC information.

lets necropost