I feel like growing up is realizing that the government is just a big gang. They do what they want and will enforce with menace what they want. They can change the rules, take your stuff and it ain't stealing because they said so. Sigh.
The treasury is expanding the Patriot Act to attack Bitcoin self custody
181–190 of 611 posts
Re: The treasury is expanding the Patriot Act to attack Bitcoin self custody
#182A lot of people keep looking for technology solutions to political problems. The fact is that privacy, especially of financial transactions, is becoming illegal. Any technology that allows you to send or spend money anonymously will be attacked by our governments. They won't be allowed. You can argue about whether you can get away with it due to difficulty of enforcement, but all that does is turn us all into crimina…
Spot on. Some think we need financial freedom, but in reality it's the freedom to fund scams and malware, launder money, dodge taxes, and buy stuff that’s illegal. That won't become legal just because you use "Monero" or whatever. Obviously we can't have privacy for financial transactions.
You forgot a few things on that list that people would like freedom for:
advocating for (or against) trans rights, protesting against the deportation of migrants, advocate against gun-control, and donating to (anti) palestinian causes
Are just a few things that people would like the freedom to do.
The point being, financial privacy is an important part of having a functioning democracy. But at the same time, financial control and limits are also an important part of a functioning democracy, for e.g. the 'freedoms' you mention. In the end, neither perfect privacy, not perfect surveilance are what we need. The best solution will be somewhere in the middle, with nuance.
Re: The treasury is expanding the Patriot Act to attack Bitcoin self custody
#183Maybe in 2028 a presidential candidate can run with removing the Patriot Act as one of their campaign points. I suspect the world will be very different then. The America I knew, remembered, and loved started dying with the passage of the Patriot Act.
Can you imagine the world today if Bernie had won?
He's never been a champion of financial freedom on an individual basis. He's consistently advocated for deeper and more intrusive regulations on cryptocurrencies.
Re: The treasury is expanding the Patriot Act to attack Bitcoin self custody
#184Re: The treasury is expanding the Patriot Act to attack Bitcoin self custody
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
"USA Freedom Act" We're truly living in Orwell's world.
Uniting and Strengthening America by Fulfilling Rights and Ensuring Effective Discipline Over Monitoring Act. It's just an acronym bro, don't get all worked up about it, now let's go down, the Two Minutes' Hate is about to start.
We're incredibly lucky the 'just an acronym' ended that way then. Had they named it the 'Joining and Reinforcing the Nation by Satisfying Liberties and Guaranteeing Efficient Control Over Surveillance' we would have ended with the JRN SLGECOS Act.
Re: The treasury is expanding the Patriot Act to attack Bitcoin self custody
#186Inevitable. Remember Roosevelt's gold confiscation. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102 It was forbidden to have more than 5 ounces of gold.
Good for Bitcoin, then ? Is it becoming a form of Gold, for real ?
Anything which threatens to rock the financial boat too much will be banned.
Re: The treasury is expanding the Patriot Act to attack Bitcoin self custody
#187I'm confused how the connection was made between "here are our guidelines for suspicious activity" and "self custody is outlawed"
It can be hard to figure out exactly what is outlawed with banking interactions. It seems a lot of the KYC/AML stuff is based on industry best practices and guidelines. There's no law you need a state ID with address to open a bank account, but when I tried to open up a bank account without an address I found it basically impossible. The bank will then cite that these practices are what they're held to as law, becaus…
See this very nice blog-post: https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/kyc-and-aml-beyond-th...
It explains how KYC and AML law function as a stochastic control on crime. How that is difficult to do through actual laws, and what the downsides of this system are.
Re: The treasury is expanding the Patriot Act to attack Bitcoin self custody
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
If only there were some sort of loud opposition to this act, predicting exactly the situation we're in today. Our elected representatives would have had to take a hard look at this and reject it due to its danger!
Couldn't agree more. Blocking SOPA / PIPA a decade or so ago was a nice reminder that when enough people speak up, bad laws can be avoided.
At the same time the legislature snuck in turning the US into a police state into the 2012 Defense spending bill. So while SOPA and PIPA was defeated, people did not pay “enough” attention in the end.
If we had that kind of reaction to making your internet worse as we did to making our rights worse we would be better off.
Re: The treasury is expanding the Patriot Act to attack Bitcoin self custody
#189Maybe in 2028 a presidential candidate can run with removing the Patriot Act as one of their campaign points. I suspect the world will be very different then. The America I knew, remembered, and loved started dying with the passage of the Patriot Act.
Can you imagine the world today if Bernie had won?
Probably very similar unfortunately. The current state of US politics is that any policy further than center or maybe slightly left of center has a snowball's chance in hell of making it through Congress. The best case scenarios is probably what Biden accomplished: temporarily pausing the slide into far-right authoritarianism. Maybe he's able to pass some extremely watered down version of health care reform or tax reform but that seems unlikely. Certainly nothing like true progressive platform he ran on is possible in the US right now.
Re: The treasury is expanding the Patriot Act to attack Bitcoin self custody
#190[flagged]
A few years ago, I tried to open a bank account, and was turned away because my visa stamp expired (despite having valid immigration status). The clueless clerk and her advisor were going through The Patriot Act to find justification. Fortunately, other banks weren't staffed with idiots, and I was able to open an account elsewhere after providing my documents.
I say you dodged a bullet, then. They are probably just as clueless handling everything else.