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With all of the effort spend worldwide on money laundering, terrorist financing, and transfer of funds regulations. I find it very hard to believe that someone won't come after cryptocurrencies at some point. None of these regulations make any sense if you can just wire the money through crypto instead.
Plus, if you use monero + vpn you are basically untraceable.
How? How do you 'crack down' on a currency that doesn't require any existing state or bank controlled apparatus to operate? Other than the exchange point, which private exchanges for cash can circumvent, how do you crack down on what is essentially math conducted via computers that everyone has access to? Neither the article, nor the linked one from December say.
You block on/off ramps and lose a lot of important information on these transactions, the people involved and tax revenue, seems like a losing proposition, but definitely doable. You can't stop people from running a software on their computer short of shutting down the whole internet, even then, there are satellites with the blockchain data now, so it'd be really hard.
> U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and other officials have warned about the use of cryptocurrencies for illicit transactions. Wait until you hear about cash. More seriously (and hopefully less reductionist) i feel nations who embrace cryptocurrencies early will see mixed results as the landscape matures. I am more confident that nations which turn their back on it, or shut it out completely, will see a loss of o…
I'm always bothered by this arguement because most of the same people in government who want to see a crackdown on Bitcoin also seem to want cash to be eliminated.
I've been asked to do consulting on one of these digital cash replacement projects. The requirements included all the stuff you'd expect, like strict ID requirements for every account, and the ability to freeze funds at will. But they also wanted things like the contents of receipts getting uploaded to government servers, to allow real-time tracking of not only who was paying who, but what the funds were supposed to be for. My contact wouldn't tell me what government it was supposed to be for. But they did admit it was a dictatorship. Obviously, this would have been a very effective tool for cracking down on dissent.
Frankly, I kinda suspect what was really going on was the company that reached out to me was pulling a scam on that dictatorship and had no real plan to actually deliver a working product. But it's still a good example of the panopticon that authoritarians want to replace cash with.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You (government currency regulators) make it illegal to convert fiat to crypto, and then monitor crypto ledgers for that last bit of folks who still attempt to use crypto. When exchanges break the law, you ship the folks who own the exchange to jail [1]. Crypto folks think they're the former cartoon panel, when it's really the latter how nation state enforcement works [2]. Governments crack down on money laundering w…
If only there were an international, barely regulated network that allows people in one country to interact with people in another.
With all of the effort spend worldwide on money laundering, terrorist financing, and transfer of funds regulations. I find it very hard to believe that someone won't come after cryptocurrencies at some point. None of these regulations make any sense if you can just wire the money through crypto instead.
Do you really think that terror organizations like Isis use Bitcoin to buy weapons? No, they use goold old USD.
[1] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/global-disruption-three-terro...
> U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and other officials have warned about the use of cryptocurrencies for illicit transactions. Wait until you hear about cash. More seriously (and hopefully less reductionist) i feel nations who embrace cryptocurrencies early will see mixed results as the landscape matures. I am more confident that nations which turn their back on it, or shut it out completely, will see a loss of o…
> Wait until you hear about cash. anecdote time: I once travelled to Vietnam for a vacation, people in vietnam prefer $100 bills because they're easier to use for hiding wealth, transporting cross border, and other slightly less than legal reasons. Additionally it's the preferred currency of criminals in the country too (so I heard). They will even pay higher exchange rates for ones in better condition or with more a…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You block on/off ramps and lose a lot of important information on these transactions, the people involved and tax revenue, seems like a losing proposition, but definitely doable. You can't stop people from running a software on their computer short of shutting down the whole internet, even then, there are satellites with the blockchain data now, so it'd be really hard.
Satellites are the easiest thing to ban. Sure, the govt has the tech to jam/shoot them down, but they're also almost certainly associated with a real person with a real bank account and a real door they can knock on/down depending on their cooperation.
If people can communicate any message, they will be able to communicate the blockchain data. Satellites, p2p networks, ham radio, but again, I don't think we'll ever see a global internet shutdown just to shutdown BTC.
> U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and other officials have warned about the use of cryptocurrencies for illicit transactions. Wait until you hear about cash. More seriously (and hopefully less reductionist) i feel nations who embrace cryptocurrencies early will see mixed results as the landscape matures. I am more confident that nations which turn their back on it, or shut it out completely, will see a loss of o…