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MasterCard has become the latest company to fall foul of the bitcoin community, as reports that the credit card payments processing giant used a submission to the Senate enquiry to put forward the point that Australian regulators should move against digital currency adoption. With seeing Western Union trip over in the last few days – a trip that has riled the digital community as a whole, and it looks as though MasterCard is set for a similar fate over the coming few days. Here are a few select snippets from the submission, which you can read here if you want to find out more.
Any regulation adopted in Australia should address the anonymity that digital currency provides to each party in a transaction…
Contrary to transactions made with a MasterCard product, the anonymity of digital currency transactions enables any party to facilitate the purchase of illegal goods or services; to launder money or finance terrorism; and to pursue other activity that introduces consumer and social harm without detection by regulatory or police authority.
While there are valid concerns about the anonymity bitcoin affords its users, it seems as though it is only the payment processing organizations – i.e. those that are threatened by bitcoin’s mainstream adoption – that are rallying against it. This – to me at least – suggests that the anonymity side of things is simply a way of these companies targeting bitcoin and the digital currency concept as a whole, rather than them actually viewing it as a serious issue. What do you think?
Jabber0ne 
Yashu Gola 
Milly Bitcoin 
Josey 
Samuel rae 
Monk฿TC 
What’s new? Why would anyone think that a credit card company would support something that will eventually replace them – unless they get with the program.
the more they fight Bitcoin, the more famous it becomes..
Why would Bitcoin replace credit cards? Credit cards are about loaning money and you can’t borrow against the blockchain.
This parallels the casino’s hypocritical efforts to lobby against online gambling.
Josey – yes, exactly – good point
MasterCard, you suck, you are stupid, you built a business on credit and debt. You are most of all evil. Stop hating. You will always hate. You are evil. Not Bitcoin. Go back to hell, where you came from MasterCard.
I use Bitcoin and I also have a MasterCard. It is a business that people voluntarily use so it seems perfectly fine to me.
Do you pay a yearly fee to use your MasterCard? Lots of people do. Are you charged interest and fees on your purchases? Lots of people are charged exorbitant fees with compounding interest. That’s not a business built around helping the customer, it’s a business built around taking advantage of the customer. There are many other and better ways to conduct your business than by supporting companies like this Milly.
Loaning money is a business that people want and nobody is forced to use a credit card. Until Bitcoin becomes more advances it does not offer the same set of services as MasterCard. As far as the loaning money part Bitcoin does not provide that. Once Bitcoin companies do offer some of the similar services they are going to have to charge fees too. Most likely less fees and that will drive down MasterCard’s fees. Of course the Bitcoin option is using Theymos’ friend at CoinLenders ….. oh wait … turns out the Bitcoin lenders were evil too!
Milly – thanks for your input! No one is arguing here that the two cannot coexist. MasterCard has – as you point out – many useful features. To my eyes though, the only reason I can see for MasterCard to raise issues with bitcoin is that the company sees it as a threat going forward.
Some mastercard policy wonk in Australia put in a public comment, no big deal and I would hardly call it “rallying against Bitcoin.”