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EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable

bbc.com

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Re: EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable

#171

Post by ceilingcorner »

d--b wrote: post #141

I’m amazed by how short sighted most of the comments here are. When it comes to large financial operations, society has clearly chosen transparency over privacy. Cause guess what, tax evasion, money laundering, political fixing, terrorism financing are things that exist and really are hurtful to our economies. Stop fantasizing that the government cares about the shit you buy. This is not about you. And Bitcoin’s anon…

Last time I checked, “society” is more than the monied class that makes up government and finance. Bizarre that I have to point this out on a site with the word hacker in its name.

Re: EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable

#172

Post by bigyikes »

d--b wrote: post #141

I’m amazed by how short sighted most of the comments here are. When it comes to large financial operations, society has clearly chosen transparency over privacy. Cause guess what, tax evasion, money laundering, political fixing, terrorism financing are things that exist and really are hurtful to our economies. Stop fantasizing that the government cares about the shit you buy. This is not about you. And Bitcoin’s anon…

> Stop fantasizing that the government cares about the shit you buy. This is not about you.

It’s never about you, until it is. You should assume the government will do the maximum amount of evil given the power they are granted.

This is the classic anti-privacy argument: this isn’t about you, you’re not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to hide, etc.

Sure, there’s a pretty good chance that a random person, e.g. you, isn’t the target of these policies. However, when applied to an entire population, these sorts of policies result in privacy violations on a broad scale.

Re: EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable

#173

Post by cmckn »

stavros wrote: post #63
delaaxe wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Decentralize everything = make all your transactions visible by anyone

Except this is completely untrue, since there are private cryptocurrencies you can use.

You're not wrong, but this is really only relevant if a significant number of users actually treated these systems as currencies. Monero and others are not very popular, because the public transaction metadata of BTC and ETH doesn't matter if it's just a casino.

Re: EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable

#174

Post by tehjoker »

bigyikes wrote: post #172
d--b wrote: post #141

I’m amazed by how short sighted most of the comments here are. When it comes to large financial operations, society has clearly chosen transparency over privacy. Cause guess what, tax evasion, money laundering, political fixing, terrorism financing are things that exist and really are hurtful to our economies. Stop fantasizing that the government cares about the shit you buy. This is not about you. And Bitcoin’s anon…

> Stop fantasizing that the government cares about the shit you buy. This is not about you. It’s never about you, until it is. You should assume the government will do the maximum amount of evil given the power they are granted. This is the classic anti-privacy argument: this isn’t about you, you’re not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to hide, etc. Sure, there’s a pretty good chance that a random person, e.g.…

It's not that you're wrong, it's that the balance of power in the financial system is weighted strongly to the very rich, who own most of the money supply not held by banks and the treasury. Private transactions offer them incredible opportunities to screw the rest of us over.

Re: EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable

#176

Post by MiddleEndian »

dogma1138 wrote: post #78
gambiting wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As others have mentioned the EU is mulling an EU wide “ban” of transactions above €10,000. However most member states already have that in place including far lower limits. In Greece all cash transactions above €500 have to go through an AML due diligence process which includes a full KYC for both the buyer, seller and any beneficiaries of the transaction. Basically it’s too much of a hassle to do so businesses simpl…

>In Greece all cash transactions above €500 have to go through an AML due diligence process which includes a full KYC for both the buyer, seller and any beneficiaries of the transaction.

And this applies to trivial things as well, such selling a used bike or laptop to someone?

Re: EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable

#177

Post by bigyikes »

tehjoker wrote: post #174
bigyikes wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Stop fantasizing that the government cares about the shit you buy. This is not about you. It’s never about you, until it is. You should assume the government will do the maximum amount of evil given the power they are granted. This is the classic anti-privacy argument: this isn’t about you, you’re not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to hide, etc. Sure, there’s a pretty good chance that a random person, e.g.…

It's not that you're wrong, it's that the balance of power in the financial system is weighted strongly to the very rich, who own most of the money supply not held by banks and the treasury. Private transactions offer them incredible opportunities to screw the rest of us over.

Fair enough. I see this as a price worth paying for privacy.

Re: EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable

#178

Post by no_time »

idownvoted wrote: post #19

The only thing stunning about this, is how anyone ever could've believed that cryptocurrencies would not end in the dystopian future of a government knowing every single transaction of yours plus being able to confiscate every single e-penny at will.

Optimism and naivety on my part. When I bought a few (legal) things with bitcoin I have acquired from my friend around 2014 I really thought I was living in a better, more free future. Reality only started to dissapoint me more and more from there.

>government knowing every single transaction of yours plus being able to confiscate every single e-penny at will.

That can already happen with or without crypto.

Re: EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable

#179

Post by garmaine »

elmo2you wrote: post #83
BitwiseFool wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In parts of the EU, maybe. That's definitely not the case in the US. Do you generally have to report accounts for which there have been no taxable events?

Re: EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable

#180

Post by digianarchist »

xvilka wrote: post #131

I guess free promotion for Monero[1]. It's a shame they don't support anonymous smart contracts and don't even plan to. [1] https://github.com/monero-project/monero

Lots of promise and a lack of delivery from that project.

They sunk tens of thousands of community dollars into i2p integration instead of simply using Tor.

Multi-sig was totally impractical last time I looked.

Can't comment on atomic-swaps though. If that works that would make it useful.

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