Hello, I'm Paige and this is the Eurointelligence podcast covering current affairs in the EU and Eurozone.

I'm joined by Wolfgang and Susanna, directors of Eurointelligence in Oxford.

The big theme this week, guys, was the impossibility of regulating the internet.

Wolfgang, you've been looking at Bitcoin, and we were also spending a bit of time on the battle between Facebook and the government of Australia.

Let's start with Bitcoin.

How do you regulate a technology like Bitcoin?

That is the essential aspect about Bitcoin.

It is that it has a technology behind that is not regulatable.

Blockchain isn't a computer, isn't, you know, isn't a hard disk.

It isn't somebody's business model where, you know,

the regulators can get into and basically demand to see more transport more information.

It is a, it is an internet-based network, highly encrypted, unbroken as far as we understand or

we know. And, you know, it's used not only for Bitcoin. It is now used.

We've heard a new story this week that it is used for right-wing blocks as an attempt to become resistant to regulation.

Because once the information is in the blockchain, you will find it's, you know, there's nothing that can be banned.

Yeah.

Because it's sort of the, you know, the thing of the blockchain is sort of in the internet,

is in the computers, it's everywhere.

It's not a physical place where it resides.

And, you know, we see this also in this conflict with Facebook and the dispute between

the Australian government where the old media

striking back, trying to get the new media to pay a tax basically, to sustain the old media.

...