EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable • Hacker News Board

Re: EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable

#81

Post by forty » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 9:26 PM UTC

jsbdk wrote: post #54

forty wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why someone downvoted that. In France it's limited to 1000€ currently. https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F10999

Any comment that criticises the EU gets downvoted immediately here. Link to a news piece commenting the new Spanish law: https://www.rtve.es/noticias/20210630/congrso-aprueba-ley-pr...

I'm not really sure your comment was criticizing anything though, just stating fact. Whether this is good or bad is a matter of opinion. Personally I'm more than happy to see cash disappear since I think it's mostly useful for laundering money and tax avoidance.

Re: EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable

#82

Post by ushakov » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 9:27 PM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #75

ushakov wrote: post #31

i'm shocked how ignorant these lawmakers are, trying to gain control over a decentralised structure nobody asked them for this and even if this change ends up in bitcoin's core, it will ultimately fail to reach consensus our wallets are none of your business, EU, get out!

>nobody asked them for this I very much support the policy. Anonymous money pretty much serves one thing uniquely well which is avoiding the law, sanctions, laundering money, buying drugs or funding crime and I don't think any society has interest in having these markets exist outside of the purview of the state.

would you also support banning words?

it's apparent, that money launderers, drug buyers, criminals communicate using words

Re: EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable

#83

Post by elmo2you » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 9:29 PM UTC

BitwiseFool wrote: post #36

Animats wrote: post #3

"The new rules would also prohibit providing anonymous crypto-asset wallets." That's awful. Hosted wallets are an invitation for "exchanges" to steal.

What about generating your own wallet? Are EU citizens required to report that when they do?

I believe that the moment you hold valuable assets (i.e. any value of crypto currency) in any wallet, then you should report that (even now).

I have no idea how these new rules will play out, but I can image how exchanges might be forced allow only transactions with "sanctioned" wallets (i.e. traceable to person), and international exchanges not playing complying being blocked from to the EU market.

Re: EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable

#84

Post by SnowProblem » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 9:29 PM UTC

lxgr wrote: post #60

arthurcolle wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not right - pretty much all modern wallet software generates brand new key pairs each time there is a transaction, thereby creating a new address. The unspent utxo's (unspent transaction outputs) are then sent to the new address and the old address can (but shouldn't) be used.

This amounts to little more than trivial obfuscation in practice. The UTXO "privacy" model of Bitcoin has never worked out, and more modern cryptocurrencies aren‘t even attempting anything like it anymore.

In practice, Bitcoin's privacy model was never even tried though. BTC fees are so prohibitively expensive that no wallet or user would generate more UTXOs or transactions than they have to, making it trivial to trace, yes. But if BTC had been allowed to scale like it was originally designed, then wallets would not fear inputting and outputting potentially hundreds of UTXOs in every transaction of varying amounts so that it becomes practically impossible to trace.

On Bitcoin SV, basically a high-scale version of Bitcoin, there are today several wallets taking smarter approaches to privacy. HandCash's Output Bills [1] for example splits outputs into fixed denominations like cash, and Paymail [2] is a email-like addressing scheme to avoid sharing addresses publicly. I'm sure more approaches will be tried too now that wallets have some freedom to experiment.

[1] https://handcash.medium.com/introducing-output-bills-a-coin-...

[2] https://bsvalias.org/

Re: EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable

#85

Post by nootropicat » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 9:30 PM UTC

I traced the definitions a bit and it applies to:

" (8)‘crypto-asset service provider’ means any person whose occupation or business is the provision of one or more crypto-asset services to third parties on a professional basis; "

"‘crypto-asset service’ means any of the services and activities listed below relating to any crypto-asset:

(a)the custody and administration of crypto-assets on behalf of third parties; (b)the operation of a trading platform for crypto-assets; (c)the exchange of crypto-assets for fiat currency that is legal tender; (d)the exchange of crypto-assets for other crypto-assets; (e)the execution of orders for crypto-assets on behalf of third parties; (f)placing of crypto-assets; (g)the reception and transmission of orders for crypto-assets on behalf of third parties (h)providing advice on crypto-assets; "

which is extremely broad. In particular

'" (14)‘the execution of orders for crypto-assets on behalf of third parties’ means concluding agreements to buy or to sell one or more crypto-assets or to subscribe for one or more crypto-assets on behalf of third parties; "

is the most worrying - it appears to make block generation itself illegal (because of the kyc requirements) on any blockchain that can do anything more than simple transfers (which includes even bitcoin), because every transaction could be a dex swap of some type, knowingly or unknowingly to the block generator.

On the other hand, the additional point is

"Crypto-asset service providers that are authorised to execute orders for crypto-assets on behalf of third parties shall take all necessary steps to obtain, when executing orders, the best possible result for their clients taking into account the best execution factors of price, costs, speed, likelihood of execution and settlement, size, nature or any other consideration relevant to the execution of the order, unless the crypto-asset service provider concerned executes orders for crypto-assets following specific instructions given by its clients."

so clearly the intention was to regulate cexes, but the definition language is dangerously broad. If interpreted in the most strict way, it would basically make all blockchains that can't run on anonymous home nodes force every user to kyc - while anonymous home nodes would break the law, it would be unenforceable without China-style network filtering at least.

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...

Re: EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable

#86

Post by ushakov » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 9:31 PM UTC

BitwiseFool wrote: post #61

chippiewill wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're worried about that then Bitcoin isn't for you. It's not just Governments, anyone can see _every_ transaction as it's in the public ledger.

I'm aware that full ledger visibility is a fundamental part of Bitcoin. I'm actually more concerned that the governments and central banks of the world will push for near total traceability with their own currencies. Whether that comes in the form of "GovCoins" or reporting requirements, I do not know. But I think it is practically inevitable.

the banks are already reporting every transaction, including your personal info

see Common Reporting Standard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Reporting_Standard

Re: EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable

#87

Post by dogma1138 » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 9:32 PM UTC

ushakov wrote: post #31

i'm shocked how ignorant these lawmakers are, trying to gain control over a decentralised structure nobody asked them for this and even if this change ends up in bitcoin's core, it will ultimately fail to reach consensus our wallets are none of your business, EU, get out!

They don’t need to go after the protocol they can simply put legislation to regulate how exchanges and other services that allow you to trade and easily transfer digital currency operate.

Re: EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable

#88

Post by ushakov » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 9:32 PM UTC

nly wrote: post #69

Trias11 wrote: post #10

That's why the move to decentralized everything. This total control nonsense will eventually end and these dinosaur idiots will stuck with their own destructive ideas

Is uniswap really decentralised? I mean it has a domain you can take down

it's hosted on IPFS and the source code is on GitHub

https://github.com/Uniswap

Re: EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable

#89

Post by djbebs » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 9:34 PM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #33

thomasahle wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cash mostly isn't allowed today, if you are transferring large enough sums of money. Probably for the better.

Source of such bold claim? You can absolutely pay cash for (almost) anything. Even if you're buying a house, you can pay cash if both sides agree to it, and the solicitors check everything is legit and you can prove where you got the money from - but there is completely nothing in law that would prohibit such transaction from happening.

Legally speaking, no you can't.

Where I'm from basically anything above 1000€ you're legally prohibited from using cash and might be f8ned for it.

Re: EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable

#90

Post by AmericanChopper » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 9:34 PM UTC

monkeydust wrote: post #29

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're already not allowed to move undeclared cash across borders, not sure why you can't have a rule that you can't have undeclared crypto wallets. That does not ban cryptography, that just forces people to declare their wallets.

Yea I think that's what they are proposing. If your in the EU and move crypto around then you have to register your wallet with you PII with some EU authority?

A crypto wallet doesn’t have a location though. It exists simultaneously on every connected node.