Today, as human society progresses onward, Coinmap broke 5,000 global business listings, South African payment processor Payfast enabled their 30,000 merchants to accept Bitcoin, and the NY Dept. of Financial Services made financial privacy a crime, supported (at least superficially) by some leaders in the Bitcoin industry.

Let's review…

The proposed digital currency regulation from Benjamin Lawsky, the Superintendent of 20 million/6 billion people's financial decisions, has been on the horizon for months. New York is known for dictating how people live, and so as more people are incorporating Bitcoin into their lives, New York bureaucrats would inevitably attempt to place it under surveillance and control (with the best intentions, naturally).

According to the new mandates, you will soon be unable to lawfully purchase a Bitcoin from any company that A) has any customers in New York and B) doesn't keep an aggregated surveillance list of all customers, including name, address, photo ID, and "other identifying information," regardless of the amounts transacted. And if the company you'd like to buy from does satisfy New York's rules, you will then be required to add yourself to this surveillance list, having to then trust not only the company, and not only the government, but also every other 3rd party that may obtain such information, not to abuse it.

Consider now that an Italian, wishing to buy $100 of Bitcoin from BitStamp in Slovenia, will now be forced to provide all his personal details, which will go on file with the United States government (and any 3rd parties able to obtain that file) because BitStamp has some customers in New York. The American government, not satisfied with continually carving away the freedoms of its own people, now heads abroad in search of freedoms elsewhere to slay.