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EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable

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Re: EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable

#371

Post by arcticbull »

krageon wrote: post #330
arcticbull wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you give up some privacy (subject to release with a judge's approval) then we can attempt to reign in bad actors. Deciding that we shouldn't attempt to reign in bad actors is, IMO, a bad call - and one I don't think enjoys broad-based support. Yes, I think it's worse if North Korea gets a nuke than if the FBI gets a peek at my Amazon purchases pursuant to a judge's order.

I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic, but given that NK already has nukes (and so do tons of other bad actors) I'm not sure what you think you're proving here. We already know this whole "give up your privacy for safety!" thing is nonsense, because the privacy has gone way down over the past years and safety has not changed at all. It's theater, a puppet show put up in order to rob you of your essential freedom for…

> I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic, but given that NK already has nukes (and so do tons of other bad actors) I'm not sure what you think you're proving here.

North Korea has leveraged cryptocurrency to evade sanctions to the tune of billions of dollars. [1] This has a material negative impact on global security.

> We already know this whole "give up your privacy for safety!" thing is nonsense, because the privacy has gone way down over the past years and safety has not changed at all.

We are roughly at one of the safest, most peaceful points in history. [2] This is in no small part due to our careful and measured efforts to balance privacy and the public good. Generally you have a right to privacy unless someone can show a good reason why you should lose that right - at least at a state level. I think this is the right balance. I think most people do too.

> It's theater, a puppet show put up in order to rob you of your essential freedom for the gratification and enrichment of another.

Citation needed. And I don't mean that glibly, if you have some data I'll happily read it.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2021/02/09/north...

[2] https://towardsdatascience.com/has-global-violence-declined-...

Re: EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable

#372

Post by voldacar »

csomar wrote: post #365
voldacar wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really, really want to believe this but I don't think I can. Over the past several years there has been an unquantifiable but subjectively enormous shift in the atmosphere of the cryptocurrency world. At one point it shifted from being about paranoid hackers and techies trying to create a way of doing transactions that was free from trusted third parties to being essentially a space for grifters to shill shitcoins…

One: Decentralized exchanges (aka no KYC, limits or restrictions of any kind). Two: Crpyto-backed smart-contract stable coins (similar to DAI). (aka USD tokens without the need for the US financial on-off ramps). Then watch this space skyrocket into the stratosphere.

I think decentralized exchanges are cool but they are only useful for people who already have significant crypto holdings. ~nobody gets paid in bitcoin. The initial transfer of fiat for crypto is the most difficult part since that's where the kyc, regulation, etc comes into effect.

I'm not sure what stablecoins have to do with anything i said.

Re: EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable

#373

Post by chrisco255 »

forty wrote: post #189
chrisco255 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's useful for privacy, which is a basic human right. It's useful if electronic systems go down. It's useful in an emergency situation. It's useful for donations. It's useful for instant settlement. You're more than happy to give away your financial sovereignty and to take away your optionality because you think they'll collect more taxes from it?

Financial sovereignty? I'm not sure what you mean exactly, but cash has value just because the states says so. If they ever said it's just paper, the next day it's worth 0. And I don't use cash already so I'm not giving anything away :) In my country, privacy doesn't include hiding financial transactions from the state. I think they have the right to know everything on this topic, even though cash obviously makes it…

No, it doesn't. The value of cash is decided by an open market. Crypto is proof enough that all you need is liquidity and a market for something to be exchangeable like cash.

Privacy is a universal human right. Your ignorance of that fact and your state's refusal to accept that is another issue entirely. But history is quite clear about what happens to countries and citizens thereof that continually encroach on private human rights.

Re: EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable

#374

Post by chrisco255 »

betwixthewires wrote: post #257
chrisco255 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an American, that's insane sounding to me. Without financial sovereignty the American revolution would have never happened. And we'd still be ruled by monarchs.

It is insane to me to be in discussions like this and see Europeans trust their government more than they trust their mothers. Literally every time in history they've gotten complacent with their governments their governments tried to kill them all, and still they never learn.

They seem to really miss feudalism.

Re: EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable

#375

Post by thesz »

ushakov wrote: post #52

> a company transferring crypto-assets for a customer would be obliged to include their name, address, date of birth and account number, and the name of the recipient guess what, Mr. Commissionaire? Bitcoin isn't a company and you don't need to ask companies to transfer crypto assets edit: this just shows how little power they have over the network, so they will tyrannise the middlemen instead

Exactly. This shows how much power they have over the network, because network is comprised of the middle man.

Re: EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable

#376

Post by rowanG077 »

franga2000 wrote: post #360
roenxi wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't buy the theory that someone else being well off makes me badly off. I also don't buy the theory that someone else being badly off should make me feel bad. Capital controls aren't going to help the unemployed, the homeless, the working poor, the huge percentage of people who constantly live one paycheck or one medical issue away from bankruptcy. Capital controls will make those problems worse; forcing people t…

> I don't buy the theory that someone else being well off makes me badly off You mean the theory of...mathematics? More money in one place necessarily means less money in another. If I sell a product for 100€ but only pay my worker 20€ to make it, I'm becoming rich. If my worker wants to buy that product, it costs them 5x their salary, but only costs me 1.4x. If all my CEO friends do the same for their products, the…

You assume economics is a zero sum game. Which I don't think is even remotely proven.

Re: EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable

#377

Post by thesz »

max_ wrote: post #228
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…

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…

I would like to prove you otherwise with shameless plug of my tweet [1].

[1] https://twitter.com/sergueyz/status/1365041519154061315

The amount of illicit transactioins is higher in bitcoin than in regular cash ($100 bills to be precise). I guess the same is for money laundering - amounts spent in legal transaactions going through current financial institutions will be much higher than money laundering there. And ratio between amounts of legal and possibly money laundering transactions will be higher for regular institutions than for bitcoin.

Precisely because of regulations and their absence.

Re: EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable

#378

Post by arcticbull »

x4e wrote: post #368
codebolt wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market is the source. Just look at the market cap chart here, you can see that it's been flat for the past few weeks (after a long period of exponential growth): https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/tether/

A flat price certainly does not mean no more people want to buy it, or even that a significant number of people no longer want to buy it

I think parent was referring to a flat market cap, not a flat price, and given the price is $1 a flat market cap does in this case indicate a lack of demand for further issuance.

Re: EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable

#379

Post by arcticbull »

thebean11 wrote: post #355
codebolt wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market is the source. Just look at the market cap chart here, you can see that it's been flat for the past few weeks (after a long period of exponential growth): https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/tether/

Tether market cap tends to grow during bull runs, and crypto's been pretty flat. I'm skeptical of this argument given that Tether is still trading 1:1 with dollars, and at an extremely high volume..

Volumes on USDT:USD pairs should be taken with extreme skepticism, after all, exchanges have a massive vested interest in the peg remaining fixed and are more than likely just arbitraging/wash trading to keep it there. It's hard to know with any sort of certainty how much actual volume is going back and forth across that pair. It also doesn't represent a redemption in any way vis-a-vis the backing assets so can at best be treated as (with a massive lump of salt) some connection to faith that someone else will accept it at 1:1.

Remember only entities Tether deems as customers are permitted to redeem in the first place, and more than likely only the exchanges are deemed customers. They know they can't redeem anyways so they don't bother even trying. That's my read on it anyways.

Re: EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable

#380

Post by idownvoted »

no_time wrote: post #178
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.

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