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EU to make Bitcoin traceable, ban anonymous crypto wallets

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

#241

Post by acdha »

cassianoleal wrote: post #239
acdha wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worse from the perspective of privacy: right now, if you use cash your transactions are not traceable and if you use electronic systems they're subject to whatever rules the institutions you use have (e.g. your bank definitely knows who you interacted with for as long as they retain that data). Bitcoin, on the other hand, makes every transaction public and permanent so anyone in the world can track you and they can r…

> People will say “oh, use a tumbler” — which is again putting a permanent “I'm trying to hide illegal activity” flag up in any of the situations where you really need it This is probably a correct analysis. It's very disheartening though. Replace tumbler with encryption and you'll get the picture. My desire for privacy shouldn't be a reason to "Minority Report" me. By the way, I know you didn't say otherwise - I'm j…

Oh, I agree — the part of me which grew up reading the CYPHERPUNKS-L list wants this to work but one of the big things I've learned is how all of the fun cryptography is just a tiny part of a social system.

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

#242

Post by johnday »

lionhead wrote: post #208
xtracto wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm ignorant. From my perspective it seems like the value of bitcoin changes too much, The value of Bitcoin fluctuates UP and DOWN too much *when compared to the US Dollar*. But compared say, to the Mexican Peso or say (more extremely) Venezuelan Peso, it has gone steadily up. So for us who don't live in a place with a sufficiently stable central bank and a trustful government, Cryptocurrencies are one avenue to sa…

If what you are saying is true, then there is a huge arbitrage opportunity there, unless there are sufficient transaction costs or legal deterrents involved. If the value of bitcoin relative to MXN is steadily going up (meaning that MXN is losing value relative to USD), then it automatically mean that the value of MXN is also steadily losing value relative to USD. So at the end, from a "value" point of view, nothing…

The value of MXN is going down relative to BTC and to USD at the same time. There is no arbitrage opportunity, beyond the obvious slow drip of money moving between the two and maintaining this balance.

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

#243

Post by southerntofu »

avnigo wrote: 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

That's the case for me indeed. I strongly agree with the arguments against Bitcoin, but i can only sympathize with a p2p protocol being hunted down by governments.

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

#244

Post by CryptoPunk »

acdha wrote: post #240
CryptoPunk wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The privacy comes from the system being censorship resistant, so the platform itself can not require you to KYC yourself to the state in order to use it, or be shut down or blocked by the state. The irrepudiable public record of transactions is needed to make it censorship resistant, and does indeed come with severe privacy risks, though those can be mitigated with zk-proof cryptography (e.g. https://aztec.network/ )…

> The privacy comes from the system being censorship resistant, so the platform itself can not require you to KYC yourself to the state in order to use it, or be shut down or blocked by the state. That's definitely a good example of the sales pitch, but think about how it works in the real world: 1. Nobody wants random numbers, so you have to link your Bitcoin addresses to real world identities on every transaction.…

>>3. The network requires an easily-blocked protocol to send large amounts of data on a continuous basis

No, you only need to be able to receive/transmit the data relating to your own addresses when using a light client. The full nodes can sit outside of any censored country.

>>The next point on the sales pitch is usually “use a tumbler” or “use separate wallets for everything”. These are impractical on a regular basis, guaranteeing that people will be compromised by mistakes and again have their full public transaction history linked, and there's a huge trust problem

I agree that that is true with Bitcoin, and that is why I don't promote Bitcoin.

>>It doesn't help anyone if, say, someone comes up with a great anonymous coin system but the local government is actively promoting exchanges and apps which are compromised

Good point.

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

#245

Post by acdha »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #244
acdha wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The privacy comes from the system being censorship resistant, so the platform itself can not require you to KYC yourself to the state in order to use it, or be shut down or blocked by the state. That's definitely a good example of the sales pitch, but think about how it works in the real world: 1. Nobody wants random numbers, so you have to link your Bitcoin addresses to real world identities on every transaction.…

>>3. The network requires an easily-blocked protocol to send large amounts of data on a continuous basis No, you only need to be able to receive/transmit the data relating to your own addresses when using a light client. The full nodes can sit outside of any censored country. >>The next point on the sales pitch is usually “use a tumbler” or “use separate wallets for everything”. These are impractical on a regular bas…

> No, you only need to be able to receive/transmit the data relating to your own addresses when using a light client. The full nodes can sit outside of any censored country.

Yes but don’t you think the government would monitor traffic to those and either block connections which aren’t made by approved local banks or ask you to prove you weren’t evading local laws? I just don’t see how this could safely be addressed with an optional network most people have no reason to use.

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

#246

Post by CryptoPunk »

acdha wrote: post #245
CryptoPunk wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>3. The network requires an easily-blocked protocol to send large amounts of data on a continuous basis No, you only need to be able to receive/transmit the data relating to your own addresses when using a light client. The full nodes can sit outside of any censored country. >>The next point on the sales pitch is usually “use a tumbler” or “use separate wallets for everything”. These are impractical on a regular bas…

> No, you only need to be able to receive/transmit the data relating to your own addresses when using a light client. The full nodes can sit outside of any censored country. Yes but don’t you think the government would monitor traffic to those and either block connections which aren’t made by approved local banks or ask you to prove you weren’t evading local laws? I just don’t see how this could safely be addressed w…

>>Yes but don’t you think the government would monitor traffic to those and either block connections which aren’t made by approved local banks or ask you to prove you weren’t evading local laws?

It's very little data being used by light clients, that can be routed a thousand different ways, not to mention encrypted.

And yes governments could certainly do a lot of things but I think that as the object of enforcement becomes the end users, the political cost of enforcing laws against technologies becomes higher, and a blanket crypto ban would require pretty Draconian measures against end users.

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

#247

Post by acdha »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #200
acdha wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was technically possible but nobody seriously did it because the transactions were very slow and fees were massive compared to everything else, not to mention that the deflationary design meant that anyone who did would be mocked for not having held on until the value went up. Remember all of those comments about people buying a pizza with what a few years later would have been thousands of dollars? That sealed it…

I was using bitcoin as a currency where I could in 2015. 'Seriously'. There were lots of restaurants, businesses, and even people who would accept it for payment, and transaction fees were completely reasonable. There is a lot of corruption and perverse incentives in Bitcoin governance, and I don't use it or hold it at all anymore, so I don't know how feasible it is to actually use as a currency now, other than that…

I was using “seriously” in the sense of enough volume to be inconvenienced if the system disappeared. There were a handful of businesses around here accepting Bitcoin but it was a small fraction of their sales and I believe most of them said they were converting it to USD immediately.

I heard about this from a few people I knew who tried it but stopped because it was slow and they felt it was more profitable to hold Bitcoin. I’d be quite happy to have Visa/MasterCard see more competition but this didn’t seem like it was ever going to reach that point.

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

#248

Post by herbst »

vkou wrote: post #130
elric wrote: 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…

Why do you think this is true? I use crypto weekly here in Switzerland because it's comfortable, fast and has lower fees. I could even pay my taxes in some places. Then there are millions of people with no proper access to banking that highly benefit from crypto. But some people just think it's all about illegal things and trading.

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

#249

Post by herbst »

burnished wrote: post #131
kobalsky wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add to what xtracto said, I live in Argentina and our currency has an annual inflation rate of 50% (it's actually higher, but I'll stick to official numbers). Banks here have a bad history of keeping your foreign currency deposits when things go south and then converting your balance at a government mandated exchange rate, which was a fraction of the real value (think 1/10 of the real value). Now, the government c…

do you use crypto for daily purchases, like going to a corner store or buying groceries, or is it more informal and a way to transfer money between friends? Or is it a store of value and you liquidate some periodically for purchases? Also thank you for educating me, this makes much more sense than anything from my perspective.

Not op. But I do buy groceries with crypto. Amazon is kinda irrelevant around here (Switzerland) and the biggest local competitor accepts crypto for several years now. Some places even accept it for taxes.

I rarely used to for P2P transfers, but I find crypto super useful for online shopping.

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