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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

#191

Post by ranbdj »

Hokusai wrote: post #181
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

HN is different depending on the time of the day. It's 02:00AM here in Europe, most of it at least. So the opinions that you see are not Europe time opinions but USA time opinions. I'm going to sleep now, but I'm part of the crowd that is strongly in favor of this type of regulations. I doubt that is going to be perfect, but it's a step in the right direction. HN is not a person but many different people in different…

There are more places in the world than Europe and USA. I'm in Vietnam and it's 8.30 am. So maybe the opinions you're seeing are from Russia, India, China, Thailand, Indonesia, or Mongolia as well as the USA?

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

#192

Post by ilaksh »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #149
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

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…

Visa is obsolete. That's the first point most people miss in these cryptocurrency discussions.

Credit cards require you to disclose your secret credentials that allow withdrawals from your account. Cryptocurrency payments do not because they apply math and computer science to the problem.

The banking systems are also mostly obsolete because they are usually on an outdated paradigm without a blockchain. Blockchains are the starting point for cheat-proof ledgers. Most existing financial ledgers are susceptible to manipulation. Some by design.

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

#194

Post by vimy »

ethbr0 wrote: post #139
anm89 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU prints Euros. The EU does not in any direct way control production of bitcoin. Custody of the two assets has bordering on nothing in common. Exchange of the who assets has bordering on nothing in common. Conflating them is wildly innacurate.

Who's going to exchange euro for crypto, if all European banks are prohibited from touching it?

People can just buy what they want with crypto instead of exchanging it for euro or dollar.

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

#195

Post by StanislavPetrov »

Hokusai wrote: post #181
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

HN is different depending on the time of the day. It's 02:00AM here in Europe, most of it at least. So the opinions that you see are not Europe time opinions but USA time opinions. I'm going to sleep now, but I'm part of the crowd that is strongly in favor of this type of regulations. I doubt that is going to be perfect, but it's a step in the right direction. HN is not a person but many different people in different…

>but I'm part of the crowd that is strongly in favor of this type of regulations.

It boggles my mind that anyone would support having the government tell you, at the point of a gun, what kind of software you are allowed to run on your own computer.

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

#196

Post by StanislavPetrov »

RileyJames wrote: post #157
djbebs wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government shouldn't know about any of that. Not their business.

And that’s the two sides of the coin. Where does this ‘government doesn’t know any of that’ actually work in practice? America has become a joke, the rich do not pay their share of taxes and face no punishment. They do not declare what they should be paying taxes on (spirit of the law, not what they can get away with, remember you wanted that honesty policy). It’s unfortunate that crypto has become a worse state of a…

> the rich do not pay their share of taxes and face no punishment.

The government tracks everything we do right now, and the rich still don't pay their share of the taxes or face punishment for it. So why don't we stop the tracking, since the rich aren't paying anyway, and stop pretending that blanket surveillance is somehow beneficial and desirable for the rest of us?

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

#197

Post by secondaryacct »

CarelessExpert wrote: post #117
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…

> The crypto world is running out of safe havens. So just to be clear, your definition of "safe haven" is, what, total lawlessness with no governmental oversight? Frankly, these moves make me think people are taking crypto seriously now, as we're finally treating it like real money or the banking sector and regulating it accordingly. If anything, it seems to me that should be a sign of success , not failure. (and I s…

But since it provides no advantage over normal currency, except lack of regulation, regulating crypto removes the incentive to onboard on it anyway.

It's slower, it expensive to run, fees are very flexible, value depends only on speculation and electricity spending - it would be a success if crypto trends towards 0 and we can finally try to USE them, but again, it would most likely be suboptimal compared to a banknote.

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

#198

Post by secondaryacct »

tablespoon wrote: post #135
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…

> 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. Which further proves the idea that c…

Especially since crypto relies on two state monopolies: internet licensed providers and electricity providers.

I can cut a tree and trade it around in piece more easily than I can use the internet state-monitored access to ask someone to use the state-monitored energy grid to print me a bitcoin.

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

#199

Post by progforlyfe »

StanislavPetrov wrote: post #195
Hokusai wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN is different depending on the time of the day. It's 02:00AM here in Europe, most of it at least. So the opinions that you see are not Europe time opinions but USA time opinions. I'm going to sleep now, but I'm part of the crowd that is strongly in favor of this type of regulations. I doubt that is going to be perfect, but it's a step in the right direction. HN is not a person but many different people in different…

>but I'm part of the crowd that is strongly in favor of this type of regulations. It boggles my mind that anyone would support having the government tell you, at the point of a gun, what kind of software you are allowed to run on your own computer.

Sounds a lot like the "illegal numbers" debacle.

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

#200

Post by pcthrowaway »

acdha wrote: post #126
dale_glass wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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 the fees are out of control, but I think it's unfair to say 'nobody seriously did it'.

I think most of the people still tied to proof-of-work crypto despite the massive environmental concerns which have become obvious more recently, have switched to a variety of other platforms, bitcoin cash being the closest one to bitcoin (but without the block-size constrained, allowing basically fee-less transactions, though you still have to wait for confirmations)

For full disclosure, I don't hold or use any proof-of-work crypto now (other than perhaps Nano, which is sort of a hybrid that has very small proof-of-work performed by the user making the transaction, and proof-of-stake at the validation/confirmation layer)

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