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EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable

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221–230 of 402 posts

Re: EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable

#221
post #200
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…

Since when is Bitcoin anonymous? Buy one thing with Bitcoin with your shipping address and name and guess what, the seller can back track through the blockchain and knows your entire purchase history and crypto net worth.

Yes, Revil and Co clearly are technically illiterate and chose Bitcoin for their RaaS campaigns because they don't know anything about anonymity

Re: EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable

#222
I'm ok with this. Ideally private persons should have an allowance of around 5.000€ (or so) per month in privacy coin usage, where an invoice is the only traceable thing, and everything above that amount should be fully transparent to the authorities (IRS), and pseudoanonymously visible to the public, for journalists to be detectable.

Buy a car? -> IRS can see it. Buy a home? -> IRS can see it. Buy a Smartphone? -> None of anyone's business.

Companies on the other hand should have no such privacy allowance, unless they request and register it with the government and are forced to report any transaction made by them, where the level of detail of the transaction may vary (ie to hide the recipient of a weapons transaction, governments wouldn't approve otherwise, since they like to do shady stuff). The more detail is hidden, the more suspect the transaction will become, but will not appear anywhere public.

I'm not sure how feasible this is, but this would be somewhat similar to the distinction of cash and electronic transactions, with far better control on the amount of spendable cash and a good visibility of the transactions to the IRS.

Re: EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable

#223

I'm ok with this. Ideally private persons should have an allowance of around 5.000€ (or so) per month in privacy coin usage, where an invoice is the only traceable thing, and everything above that amount should be fully transparent to the authorities (IRS), and pseudoanonymously visible to the public, for journalists to be detectable. Buy a car? -> IRS can see it. Buy a home? -> IRS can see it. Buy a Smartphone? -> N…

Another approach I have seen is giving privacy to the spender but not the receiver of money: https://taler.net/en/index.html

Re: EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable

#224
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean not long ago when the government budget was 1% of GDP? Nowadays it's 40-60%, in developed countries. Large levels of public spending are a choice that we have made as a society, and the spending needs to be funded somehow.

Large levels of public spending are a choice made by politicians, not society. Society does only little in regards to politics. All we do is make a glorified X every few years, allowed to choose between the plague and cancer. All they do is wasting our money and making life worse for everyone except themselves, their peers and the rich. It's like this at least everywhere in the western world. If the last year hasn't…

I can't speak for elsewhere, but giant cuts to the largest public expenses (healthcare, public education, social welfare) would just be political suicide here, all but guaranteed loss in the next election.

Re: EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable

#225
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The location is where the secret key is stored. Wallet data is distributed but wallet holders are not. In any case this kind of thing will be implemented by mandating it at the exchanges where crypto is converted to/from traditional currencies, making it impossible to actually use crypto (legally) without complying.

> The location is where the secret key is stored.

What does that even mean, lol?

If I put the secret key, in a private dropbox account, do I no longer have to declare the wallet to anyone?

What about if I simply memorize the password?

Its not that simple, to determine where a secret key is stored.

Re: EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable

#226
post #18

>> The new rules would also prohibit providing anonymous crypto-asset wallets. Where should I send my Ledger to so i can be a good, obedient citizen and be compliant with this law?

You could be asked to sign a message provided to you by the government. That would be enough.

It's interesting, because normally a bank/exchange would do that for you, but in this case, it's up to you to report which assets you own. The fact that it is possible is the interesting thing here.

Re: EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable

#227
Its worth reading the original press release[1]

Relevant section:

"At present, only certain categories of crypto-asset service providers are included in the scope of EU AML/CFT rules. The proposed reform will extend these rules to the entire crypto sector, obliging all service providers to conduct due diligence on their customers. Today's amendments will ensure full traceability of crypto-asset transfers, such as Bitcoin, and will allow for prevention and detection of their possible use for money laundering or terrorism financing. In addition, anonymous crypto asset wallets will be prohibited, fully applying EU AML/CFT rules to the crypto sector."

"In addition, providing anonymous crypto-asset wallets will be prohibited, just as anonymous bank accounts are already prohibited by EU AML/CFT rules."

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_21_...

Edit: More content.

Re: EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable

#228
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…

Bitcoin's goal was to help people "get out" of the traditional financial system "not inside it".

Everyone knows where the real money laundering and terrorist financing happens.

It is done by the likes of HSBC, Standard Chartered and other big banks.

This is public knowledge, as we have seen with the Panama papers and most recently the FinCen files.

Our financial institutions are too rotten for you to even assume that the intention of this regulation is altruistic (i.e public benefit).

The tradition of regulation in finance is to perform a kind of scam called "regulator capture"[0].

It is what we have mostly observed to be the goal of complex financial regulations. For it to divert from this would be an exception.

[0]: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/regulatory-capture.asp

Re: EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable

#229

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.

The very rich also have the tools to dodge all those transparency regulations; and the political power to ensure that the ones they can't dodge, don't get adopted. By and large, all laws and regulations are for the proles.

Re: EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable

#230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you didn't address `"Q"-like LARPer/fraudster figure`

The information is out there for people to make up their own mind. But if you are confident that CSW is larping as Satoshi, let's have some fun and make it a bet.

Thank you because I honestly had no idea what that was referring to and you gave it a lot of colour
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