I can't comment on Waves since I don't know that much about them (I don't like their technology's security vulnerabilities). I wasn't aware that they are emphasizing the anti-regulation stance.
BitShares, on the other hand, makes gala of the fact that they are 100% regulatory ready, something which I think is very smart since nobody's going to ever hide from or cheat governments. It's my opinion that those who are not regulatory friendly will be shut down, and that would obviously hurt holders very much.
Thanks for mentioning Kucoin. I've got it on the list now.
Yeah, I agree that being 100% complaint is a good strategy since those who don't play nice will get burned, but if an exchange were truly decentralized, shouldn't they be safe? I guess when I mentioned about Waves being decentralized I wasn't automatically thinking anti-regulation (although, I was talking about getting around government involvement which is technically the same,) but is being de-centralized in it's own automatically anti-regulatory..or I should say anti-government? It's kind of a weird debate, because the notion of being non-localized makes it hard to control from the government, but it doesn't inherently make it against it. I don't know... any thoughts? Are decentralized exchanges at risk of being shut down due to not being able to be governed, or is it even possible to target them? After all, with the whole Bitconnect thing, aren't they mainly going after the promoters of it so hard because they can't find all of the creator of it? Perhaps I'm mis-informed.
Perhaps I misunderstood what you were saying. Yes, I agree that decentralized means independent of governmental involvement in so far as the creation of money goes, much like gold and silver are independent of government "sponsorship", to use another word that helps define what we're talking about. "Money" or "currency" has traditionally been backed by governments, mainly in order to create the faith and trust necessary so that everyone agrees that it has value and to use it. Gold and silver, on the other hand, have never needed any kind of governmental backing in order to be commonly accepted as units of value. Crypto is very much within that second group, in my opinion, independent of any kind of official support to make it viable as a storage of value and means of exchange.
What I thought you were referring to was the "anonymous", governments can’t see what you’re doing, aspect of crypto. ZCASH is probably the most famous in that they claim that their transactions are completely anonymous. DASH and Monero are two others that seek to do the same. There are tons of others starting with PIVX and working your way down the line. It’s everyone’s main selling point: privacy! And that’s where governments and regulators step in to say enough is enough – you can have your privacy, but up to a point, and that point where you have to pay taxes. That’s what I thought you were referring to. As I said, I think the absolute privacy idea is a dead end road, and not a strong long term marketing point at all. Coinbase, at the end of the day, in spite of being privately owned and therefore not decentralized, is only "controlled" by the government to the extent that they have to comply with existing laws – like we all have to do, even decentralized organizations. Any cryptocurrency that is basing their long term strategy on anything but being fully compliant is in for a very bad surprise sooner or later . . . as I see it.