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CEO of a top Bitcoin exchange warns: crackdown on cryptocurrencies may be coming

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Re: CEO of a top Bitcoin exchange warns: crackdown on cryptocurrencies may be coming

#141

Post by arcticbull »

liquidise wrote: post #4

> 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.

Oh we have don't worry. The proportion of cash used for illicit activities is much much lower than the proportion of crypto used for illicit activities. Especially once you remove speculation volume (which cash doesn't have). Then there's the whole new kind of crime it created - ransomware.

Plenty of work was done to ensure tracability of cash. Take large amounts in or out of the country? Form. Withdraw or deposit large amounts? Form. Act suspicious? Form. Structuring? Prison.

You can't really compare a system designed to circumvent regulations regarding transactibility to a system designed to provide as much oversight as is practical. They're not even in the same ballpark.

Re: CEO of a top Bitcoin exchange warns: crackdown on cryptocurrencies may be coming

#142

Post by puranjay »

throwastrike wrote: post #131
liquidise wrote: post #4

> 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 am sorry but that’s a very weak argument about cash being involved in illicit transactions. As it stands right now cash is still TANGIBLE. If you want to launder cash you still need to be physically present. Crypto not so much. I will leave you with this: the reason why crypto will inevitably fail is because no one and no country will be willing to go to war to defend it. As for USD? There’s the single greatest mil…

Let me introduce you to the wonderful world of Hawala: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala

The idea that cash can't be laundered because it is tangible is laughable.

Re: CEO of a top Bitcoin exchange warns: crackdown on cryptocurrencies may be coming

#143

Post by arminiusreturns »

lambda_obrien wrote: post #58
winslett wrote: post #46

Instead of killing it by banning it, I suspect they could kill it by buying it. If the Fed wanted to "invest" in Bitcoin, it would kill it by soaking up liquidity and creating a liquidity-squeeze. Because the amount in circulation is fixed, it wouldn't have to buy all of the Bitcoin -- just enough to kill any utility. This is a downside of an asset with a fixed quantity. Once the community discovered the liquidity-sq…

The USG could kill it by using a 51 percent attack; the NSA must have rows upon rows of servers that could be repurposed for a week or two to destroy the market. Split the blockchain every couple of hours into several different versions, eventually there would be little chance to reconcile things.

I theorized back in 2009 that this is exactly what would happen, but instead of having NSA use it's server farms, it would be the central banks using third party cutouts to buy up chunks get to a collective 51 percent. Why I didn't predict that the obvious result would be a runaway market I still kick myself for, because at the time I rejected bitcoin for it's lack of privacy and just moved on...

My current guess is that they are going to pressure all the other coins, and come to some collective agreement after some farcicle fact finding mission ala 1907 to agree there should be some sort of central bank controlled digital coin... which of course they will control, but will lack anonymity. BTC will crash then. (but again, maybe I'm not the best person to listen to on this topic!)

Re: CEO of a top Bitcoin exchange warns: crackdown on cryptocurrencies may be coming

#144

Post by vmception »

joe_the_user wrote: post #133
vmception wrote: post #40

Capture US regulatory agencies while you can. This has already had varying levels of success with the Chief Legal Officer of Coinbase being the acting chair of the OCC and telling banks it was okay to custody crypto and settle transactions on cryptocurrency networks instead of just SWIFT, ACH, FedWire There are some at the SEC, and the new SEC chair was pro-crypto when he was previously the chair of CFTC Cabinet leve…

Capture US regulatory agencies while you can. I'd perhaps quibble a bit to say US financial regulatory agencies can't be captured in the fashion of traditional regulators (where the "revolving door" is awful). This is because they were "captured from the beginning", operated specifically for the benefit of large financial firm from the very start. The Federal Reserve isn't even a traditional agency but public, privat…

I'd say they can.

Enforcement divisions have sole heads who can make unilateral decisions that the commissioners never review.

Commissioners and Chairs can make make rulings favorable or ignore making unfavorable rulings, they can do anything they want regardless of what happens during the comment periods.

The CFTC, OCC, CFPB all have single head directors. The SEC has up to 5, and the FRB is the most decentralized but its Board of Governor's head is the primary sole signal to the international market on this entire planet regardless of how much they actually do behind the scenes. The Treasury doesn't have to be adversarial either, no matter how much it wants us to tie our national identity and ego to its currency, not all Treasuries or Central Banks have this concern.

Right now, crypto related topics are either ignored or adversarial. Crypto related topics can be collaborative or simply favorable.

Capture in this context (and all contexts of regulatory capture) just mean that someone joins for a certain purpose, does all of the other tasks correctly and with high competence, but also makes sure their single issue is protected.

Re: CEO of a top Bitcoin exchange warns: crackdown on cryptocurrencies may be coming

#145

Post by slenk »

plank_time wrote: post #85
Animats wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What terrorism? Since 9/11, there have been only two major Islamic terrorism incidents on US soil. The Boston Marathon bombing was by two brothers, and the San Bernardino shooting was a husband and wife team. Both were low-budget operations. Even 9/11 is estimated to have cost the attackers only about $400K. What costs is setting up an full-sized army, like ISIS.

People from the US and other countries are sending money abroad via crypto to fund terrorism outside the US

People from the US and other countries are sending money abroad via cash to fund terrorism out the US

Re: CEO of a top Bitcoin exchange warns: crackdown on cryptocurrencies may be coming

#146

Post by Animats »

jcranmer wrote: post #125
Animats wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What terrorism? Since 9/11, there have been only two major Islamic terrorism incidents on US soil. The Boston Marathon bombing was by two brothers, and the San Bernardino shooting was a husband and wife team. Both were low-budget operations. Even 9/11 is estimated to have cost the attackers only about $400K. What costs is setting up an full-sized army, like ISIS.

Wikipedia lists a couple more Islamic terrorism incidents: * Fort Hood shootings * 2009 SUV attack at UNC * 2015 Chattanooga shooting The DC sniper attacks might also qualify as Islamic terrorism. The perpetrators were Islamic, and their goal was terrorism, but it's not clear that the terrorism was actually perpetrated to further Islamism.

Those are two lone nuts, plus two juveniles on a crime spree. None required significant funding or organization.

There will always be crazies. Although, crazies who can shop at a "Guns Galore" store cause more trouble than unarmed crazies.

Re: CEO of a top Bitcoin exchange warns: crackdown on cryptocurrencies may be coming

#147

Post by noxer »

AlexandrB wrote: post #117
noxer wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are stable coins backed by crypto.

What does that mean? How does "crypto" guarantee that someone has the reserves necessary to back the stable coin in circulation? Whenever cryptocurrency interacts with the "real" world, you're trusting someone to verify that the real world state corresponds to the state recorded in the blockchain. I have yet to see a satisfactory solution for this. You're also trusting someone to verify that all this software is free…

Backed by crypto means for every stablecoin worth 1 USD someone has locked away for example 1.5 USD in crypto.

Whoever locked the crypto away and created the stable coin needs to buy it back to unlock the crypto again. If the price of the stabelcoin would drop below 1 USD everyone who created them and sold them would make a profit buying it back lower. This essentially makes the coin stable.

I'm not going into further details as you can easily google how this technically works.

Also no one said there is no risk you have all kinds of risks including meteorite impact event. Backed stabelcoins simply reduces/decentralizes and shift the risk to code/market dynamics and other stuff rather than a single issuer of a coin. Nothing ever is without a risk.

BTW if finding a flaw in the code makes you rich that kinda a very good incentive for people to find flaws. We dont really have anything better than that in your "real world".

Re: CEO of a top Bitcoin exchange warns: crackdown on cryptocurrencies may be coming

#148

Post by cinntaile »

motohagiography wrote: post #139

Some discussion from knowledgeable people of what plausible "crackdown" rules would look like would be interesting. The article mentions an ID requirement for transactions above $3k. Personally, I think the idea of the physical nation state is converting to a global credit score, where instead of transacting across borders, you are transacting across classes of businesses and people, and tarriff and tax policy will b…

This is an interesting point of view, do you have any sources where I can read more about this?

Re: CEO of a top Bitcoin exchange warns: crackdown on cryptocurrencies may be coming

#149

Post by stefan_ »

noxer wrote: post #126
Forbo wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish someone would try to cash out $1B Tether.

I never said all-in Tether. Also you cant "cash out" a billion dollar of anything. Its completely absurd, no one has a bank account with a billion dollar on it. It also make zero sense to ever do that. Its completely irrelevant if that is or isn't possible with coin XY if there is nothing you could move it into. The only reason someone would cash out a billion is if he wants to invest it into something. What could th…

Eh, when the Archegos fund leveraged at $100B collapsed a few weeks ago, many banks cashed out many billions. It made the news because they gave lots of leverage to a big gambler, not because that event in any macroeconomic sense mattered at all.

Re: CEO of a top Bitcoin exchange warns: crackdown on cryptocurrencies may be coming

#150

Post by maerF0x0 »

asah wrote: post #28
maerF0x0 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

"with more anti-laundering features" ? did you mean anti-counterfeiting? just checking...

I think so. Basically things to make it harder to fake them.

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