Coinbase Is Tracking How Users Spend Their Bitcoins

Coinbase has recently been demonstrating why consumer regulation is such a problem. The company seems to be tracking what their customers are buying with Bitcoin and closing any accounts involved in transactions that the company objects to.
It is probably no secret that Bitcoiners are not fans of regulation. What is generally misunderstood though is that the aversion is not to regulating in general. We understand that in the real world, the big financial powers are never regulated in a practical sense. Consumers, on the other hand, are heavily regulated.
Regulations are almost never designed to protect the consumer. Instead they are put in place as a way to control the flow of consumer spending and to protect the interests of the financial sector. The New York BitLicense is a good example of this problem, as it was designed to favor credit card companies and put a burden on Bitcoin development and acceptance.

This post was published at Coin Telegraph on 2014-12-28.