This isn't really suprising. Even the large banks would do this if they could get away with it. Look at the Goldman Sachs high frequency trading stuff - even if it wasn't illegal they were sailing as close to the wind as they possibly could.
Trust is going to become a massive issue in the future - just as "privacy" and "digital rights" are at the moment if we have any desire to move away from the large institutions and governmental regulation that we currently use to "solve" these problems. Quotes because it's not a great solution - see Enron for example.
It's great that things like Bitcoin are being tried - but we should also be clear that this is the wild west. Dealing with banking and trading in a totally unregulated environment. I would hope that the lessons that the finance industries learned the hard way and that led to audits and regulation and other instruments can be leveraged. Otherwise we are doomed to reinvent the whole industry all over again....
Trust is going to become a massive issue in the future - just as "privacy" and "digital rights" are at the moment if we have any desire to move away from the large institutions and governmental regulation that we currently use to "solve" these problems. Quotes because it's not a great solution - see Enron for example.
It's great that things like Bitcoin are being tried - but we should also be clear that this is the wild west. Dealing with banking and trading in a totally unregulated environment. I would hope that the lessons that the finance industries learned the hard way and that led to audits and regulation and other instruments can be leveraged. Otherwise we are doomed to reinvent the whole industry all over again....