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EU to make Bitcoin traceable, ban anonymous crypto wallets

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141–150 of 267 posts

Re: EU to make Bitcoin traceable, ban anonymous crypto wallets

#141
post #30

The EU isn't doing anything to bitcoin. They have no ability to regulate bitcoin. They can make it traceable when it is held on kycd exchanges In their jurisdiction. That is a big difference

Any government can't regulate Bitcoin per se, but they can always regulate the intersection of their currency and Bitcoin. If they require banks to observe a whitelist of acceptable exchanges when honoring transfer requests, the banks will happily comply.

Re: EU to make Bitcoin traceable, ban anonymous crypto wallets

#142
post #137
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no need to put scare quotes around security. Cryptocurrencies are mostly used for one of three things. 1. Paying ransomware. 2. Buying drugs. 3. Day-trading. That's it. There's no meaningful slice of the pie that goes to #4. Almost all of us can agree that #1 is illegal, many people and countries currently believe that #2 is illegal, and almost all of us can agree that people participating in #3 should probab…

#4 is "holding currency independent of any central bank's monetary policy." Ironically, that's the strongest long term feature. But probably the one driving the least amount of volume (outside of hyperinflation states).

But the idea of it being a "currency" requires it to have some value outside of it being stored (IE someone wants to buy it).

If the only reason for it existing is to show how many you have, it has zero value outside the possible curiosity of "Having the largest number that happens to match this set of arbitrary mathematical restrictions"

Re: EU to make Bitcoin traceable, ban anonymous crypto wallets

#143
post #30

The EU isn't doing anything to bitcoin. They have no ability to regulate bitcoin. They can make it traceable when it is held on kycd exchanges In their jurisdiction. That is a big difference

Serious question: Couldn't they ban ISPs from connecting to known networks? A public blockchain must remain public and they can largely prevent that. They could (not saying they will) ban VPN connections to other countries.

Blockchain isn't where the concern is. It's where the exchanges interact with the banking system.

Re: EU to make Bitcoin traceable, ban anonymous crypto wallets

#144
post #130
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't need the ability to regulate bitcoin. They can just treat illegal exchanges as money launderers (or terrorism funders, or whatever else the go-to argument is today) and slap them with hefty fines. Anyone using these exchanges is committing a crime and can be treated accordingly. Anyone caught with large amounts of crypto can be treated as a criminal, the same way people who have large amounts of cash on th…

There's no need to put scare quotes around security. Cryptocurrencies are mostly used for one of three things. 1. Paying ransomware. 2. Buying drugs. 3. Day-trading. That's it. There's no meaningful slice of the pie that goes to #4. Almost all of us can agree that #1 is illegal, many people and countries currently believe that #2 is illegal, and almost all of us can agree that people participating in #3 should probab…

#4 is, or has been, evading laws in China and other countries with tight currency controls. A wealthy Chinese citizen can't necessarily just transfer money to a foreign bank account. But he can purchase crypto mining hardware and electricity for local currency, then sell the resulting coins for convertible hard currency on foreign exchanges.

Re: EU to make Bitcoin traceable, ban anonymous crypto wallets

#145
post #112

Does this not defeat the whole purpose of cryptocurrency? The fact that a government can control its transparency, anonymity, the “currency” is now just a digital object, like any other in a bartering system. I don’t like that a government can trace and identify payment. Perhaps that is nihilistic but it speaks for me to the heart of freedom.

Was the ability to move money easily between the government-owned systems and cryptocurrency ever a purpose, or did it just evolve organically?

Re: EU to make Bitcoin traceable, ban anonymous crypto wallets

#146
post #105

Sounds like this will only cause people to trade more in crypto. It's not like bitcoin needs to be able to be traded to fiat to be useful as an item for transferring value.

Maybe that's the point. By accelerating the use of it as a currency, it may become more widely used by larger commercial interests that the government can lean on.

Re: EU to make Bitcoin traceable, ban anonymous crypto wallets

#148
I've experienced HN to be highly anti-Bitcoin for some reason -- got instantly downvoted for commenting neutrally on it [0].

However, I sort of expected more people on here would sympathize with the Cypherpunk Manifesto [1] and band together against pressures to minimize our privacy.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28114156

[1]: https://www.activism.net/cypherpunk/manifesto.html

Re: EU to make Bitcoin traceable, ban anonymous crypto wallets

#149
post #148

I've experienced HN to be highly anti-Bitcoin for some reason -- got instantly downvoted for commenting neutrally on it [0]. However, I sort of expected more people on here would sympathize with the Cypherpunk Manifesto [1] and band together against pressures to minimize our privacy. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28114156 [1]: https://www.activism.net/cypherpunk/manifesto.html

The governement should know who you are and the bank you are associated too, if that's required to do business with them. Eg. VISA should be able to return my money to my bank account if someone has a chance to abuse the system and target me.

I don't want companies to share my information to third parties, this includes the banks about my purchases. And eg. Facebook shouldn't be able to target me because a site added their 'like button'.

Privacy doesn't mean lawless land of crypto companies hiding in unknown countries. I actually expect governement regulation to protect it's tax-paying citizens.

That's why we vote for them.

Edit: As a counter argument, there are also a lot of downvotes without reasonable arguments when you argument against crypto ;)

Edit 2: the informed article you shared is actually pretty biased from my POV, definitely not neutral + The additional sanity check when checking the author didn't check out either.

Re: EU to make Bitcoin traceable, ban anonymous crypto wallets

#150
post #51

The crypto world is running out of safe havens. China cracked down, and cut the power to large Bitcoin farms. In the US, the SEC and CFTC have been tightening up on crypto-related things that look like securities and things that look like exchanges. Israel kicked out the binary option crowd, which overlapped with the crypto crowd; they seem to have moved to Bulgaria. Now the EU. The bigger countries are in general ti…

I've come to realize that the current fiat scheme and the crypto scheme are both unethical in their own way. But it makes me sick to hear people talk about banning crypto without at least suggesting to dramatically reform the fiat system.

Crypto would not have existed in the first place if most people felt that the fiat system was fair.

People who don't acknowledge this at this stage are either totally blind or totally corrupt.

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