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EU to make Bitcoin traceable, ban anonymous crypto wallets

euronews.com

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

#121

Post by askl56 »

snarf21 wrote: post #116
anm89 wrote: 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.

The EU can't tell each country's ISPs what to ban or not. That is a matter for each country.

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

#122

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

kobalsky wrote: post #113
burnished wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

could you elaborate? I'm ignorant. From my perspective it seems like the value of bitcoin changes too much, having risen sharply in value recently, to spend as currency, but I'm also assuming that there are other more stable options. What kind of things do you buy, and how often? What sort of things do you do considering that the value might sky-rocket or dive overnight?

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…

Why can't you just invest in an index fund or a money market fund?

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

#123

Post by elric »

oceanplexian wrote: post #47
rad_gruchalski wrote: post #9

Everybody who ever thought that crypto currencies will not come under this scrutiny was highly delusional. All other governments will follow soon.

Governments can either get onboard, and come up with a reasonable, practical regulatory environment, or alternatively they will be left behind and Crypto will evolve to circumvent their wishes. It is a shame but the USA may end up leapfrogging the EU in the same way they have done with other innovations, like Social Media, Self Driving Cars, and other cutting edge tech. It turns out regulating entire sectors of the e…

And then what? Crypto will magically take over all government functions? Or will people be happy in a governmentless-society? Where hospitals and roads don't get built but at least there's "freedom"?

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

#124

Post by bserge »

Animats wrote: 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…

Any currency not backed by a military is doomed to fail the moment anyone with actual power decides they've had enough of it.

Afaik shitcoins aren't even backed by the threat of violence (i.e. "fuck with us and we'll do bad shit").

They only work as long as actual organizations with actual armed forces let them be.

Most people forget how fickle their freedoms are, and overestimate their extent.

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

#125

Post by bserge »

ajay-b wrote: 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.

Yeah, perhaps instead of working around it, people should work to change the existing systems.

Otherwise you're always going to be stuck completely underground and treated like a criminal/third rate citizen.

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

#126

Post by acdha »

dale_glass wrote: post #72
acdha wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More accurately, after years of failing to be viable as a currency the salespeople started claiming the goal had never been replacing cash and instead was some sort of poorly defined “store of value” instead of what they’d spent the previous decade spinning stories about. Since a real reserve currency is stable and backed by consistent demand, it’s unclear why anyone expects a pure fiat currency backed only by a smal…

Well, not really. BTC was sort of usable as a currency to a point. You could even buy games on Steam with it. But it had a 1MB block size limit, which was initially implemented to prevent spam. This was obstinately kept in place, and that quickly destroyed its usefulness as a currency -- since now there's a lot of contention, transacting is slow and expensive. This doesn't bother the people who want an asset to buy o…

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 its fate as a currency because anyone who has an alternative will be better off using it as long as speculators are pouring money in.

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

#127

Post by bserge »

askl56 wrote: post #121
snarf21 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The EU can't tell each country's ISPs what to ban or not. That is a matter for each country.

It's easier when most ISPs are owned by a handful of companies (looking at you, Telekom).

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

#128

Post by bserge »

nenadg wrote: post #74
burnished wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, where I live weed was decriminalized relatively recently. I could still get weed before, but I couldn't rock up some where and get a CBD soda, or a vape cartridge, or nice edibles, or a variety of products. In the same way you say "how will they ban anonymous wallets" you might say "how do you criminalize a plant", and thats by making possession illegal and following up on that by targeting people/places they e…

Looks like a ton of bureaucracy with little or no output. I agree, might be the same thing as a war against the drugs lmfao.

Yeah, that never stopped them before. Taxpayers are a magical thing.

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

#129

Post by wesleywt »

qnsi wrote: post #7

I understand anti-EU sentiment, but who uses bitcoin for something different than transfering illegal funds and speculation? I understand Ethereum and other smart contract cryptocurcies, but time when people believed Bitcoin is going to become currency are long gone

If you are in the HN news bubble then you will not have a rounded view on the use of crypto. It has bad and good aspects.

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

#130

Post by vkou »

elric wrote: post #119
anm89 wrote: 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

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 probably pay taxes on their gains/get tax credits on their losses.

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