EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable • Hacker News Board

Re: EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable

#271

Post by arcticbull » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 8:35 AM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #269

arcticbull wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that, crime, money laundering, terrorist financing and evasion of international sanctions allowing hermit kingdoms to finance nuclear warheads. But half dozen of one, I guess.

So if I give up just this little bit of privacy, all of those concerns melt away to nothingness? Or is it more likely that I give that away and nothing else really improves?

If you give up some privacy (subject to release with a judge's approval) then we can attempt to reign in bad actors. Deciding that we shouldn't attempt to reign in bad actors is, IMO, a bad call - and one I don't think enjoys broad-based support.

Yes, I think it's worse if North Korea gets a nuke than if the FBI gets a peek at my Amazon purchases pursuant to a judge's order.

Re: EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable

#272

Post by tummybug » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 8:35 AM UTC

qeternity wrote: post #263

max_ wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin's goal was to help people "get out" of the traditional financial system "not inside it". Everyone knows where the real money laundering and terrorist financing happens. It is done by the likes of HSBC, Standard Chartered and other big banks. This is public knowledge, as we have seen with the Panama papers and most recently the FinCen files. Our financial institutions are too rotten for you to even assume that…

> Everyone knows where the real money laundering and terrorist financing happens. > It is done by the likes of HSBC, Standard Chartered and other big banks. This used to be the case. And undoubtedly it still goes on. There simply weren’t many other mechanisms to launder money that didn’t involve large banks…until crypto joined the party. Crypto’s most popular feature is speculation, and its second most popular featur…

I would argue its second most popular feature is purchases on dark net markets. This has been a constant theme since bitcoin was first released and I think is always discounted when talking about the currency.

Re: EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable

#273

Post by kasperni » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 8:36 AM UTC

bigyikes wrote: post #172

d--b wrote: post #141

I’m amazed by how short sighted most of the comments here are. When it comes to large financial operations, society has clearly chosen transparency over privacy. Cause guess what, tax evasion, money laundering, political fixing, terrorism financing are things that exist and really are hurtful to our economies. Stop fantasizing that the government cares about the shit you buy. This is not about you. And Bitcoin’s anon…

> Stop fantasizing that the government cares about the shit you buy. This is not about you. It’s never about you, until it is. You should assume the government will do the maximum amount of evil given the power they are granted. This is the classic anti-privacy argument: this isn’t about you, you’re not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to hide, etc. Sure, there’s a pretty good chance that a random person, e.g.…

> You should assume the government will do the maximum amount of evil given the power they are granted.

Why? Shouldn't you then assume that all people will do the maximum amount of evil given the power they are granted. And what exactly makes government different then other places where power is concentrated? For example, crypto miners.

Re: EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable

#274

Post by KirillPanov » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 8:37 AM UTC

tinco wrote: post #252

garmaine wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In parts of the EU, maybe. That's definitely not the case in the US. Do you generally have to report accounts for which there have been no taxable events?

You don't have capital tax? Here in The Netherlands we pay a tax over assets exceeding some value. If you have a million, whether it's sitting a bank, or it's stuffed in your mattress, you have to report it and pay (a small amount of) tax on it. Afaik we also don't have taxable events, we just have income tax.

The US does not have a capital tax.

The US does have a realized capital gains tax.

Assets contained within a mattress are not realized capital gains, no matter how much their value increases while sitting there.

Re: EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable

#275

Post by sokoloff » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 8:38 AM UTC

retrac wrote: post #224

MrYellowP wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Large levels of public spending are a choice made by politicians, not society. Society does only little in regards to politics. All we do is make a glorified X every few years, allowed to choose between the plague and cancer. All they do is wasting our money and making life worse for everyone except themselves, their peers and the rich. It's like this at least everywhere in the western world. If the last year hasn't…

I can't speak for elsewhere, but giant cuts to the largest public expenses (healthcare, public education, social welfare) would just be political suicide here, all but guaranteed loss in the next election.

That’s one of the concerns of groups who prefer government to be no larger than necessary: the larger it is (around 15% of Americans are directly employed), the more self-inflating it tends to become.

Re: EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable

#276

Post by sgift » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 8:39 AM UTC

realcertify wrote: post #149

d--b wrote: post #141

I’m amazed by how short sighted most of the comments here are. When it comes to large financial operations, society has clearly chosen transparency over privacy. Cause guess what, tax evasion, money laundering, political fixing, terrorism financing are things that exist and really are hurtful to our economies. Stop fantasizing that the government cares about the shit you buy. This is not about you. And Bitcoin’s anon…

I would argue with "society has clearly chosen" statement. The governments are putting more and more strict regulations in place for last decades and they often don't care what the society thinks about those. There used to be a time not long ago when one could show up in bank with a bunch of cash and it would be of no issue. I don't think that terrorism was less important back then.

> The governments are putting more and more strict regulations in place for last decades and they often don't care what the society thinks about those.

Society votes for these governments.

I know, we all would prefer to argue that some shadow cabal decides what the government does and society has nothing to do with it, but at the end of the day it still stands: We vote for these people. We get the government we deserve.

Re: EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable

#277

Post by stavros » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 8:41 AM UTC

betwixthewires wrote: post #268

stavros wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The laws will be trivial to enforce. Expect to be unable to exchange cryptocurrency (that you own in your wallet) to fiat, which will almost kill the cryptocurrency market for anything other than speculation. I expect a parallel, dark economy will still be around, where people transact with cryptocurrency and can only exchange it for cash.

It will kill the speculative market. Their native use cases in their own systems will still be 100% viable. If someone uses for example bitcoin cash or miner as money as they're intended nobody can do a thing about it. For those people uninterested in off ramps this means little.

I use it as money as it's intended, to get paid for my work. The supermarket doesn't accept BTC, does that still make it 100% viable?

You better believe I'm going to be paid in USD from now on.

Re: EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable

#278

Post by caskstrength » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 8:46 AM UTC

kasperni wrote: post #273

bigyikes wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Stop fantasizing that the government cares about the shit you buy. This is not about you. It’s never about you, until it is. You should assume the government will do the maximum amount of evil given the power they are granted. This is the classic anti-privacy argument: this isn’t about you, you’re not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to hide, etc. Sure, there’s a pretty good chance that a random person, e.g.…

> You should assume the government will do the maximum amount of evil given the power they are granted. Why? Shouldn't you then assume that all people will do the maximum amount of evil given the power they are granted. And what exactly makes government different then other places where power is concentrated? For example, crypto miners.

> Shouldn't you then assume that all people will do the maximum amount of evil given the power they are granted.

Not OP, but you definitely should!

> And what exactly makes government different then other places where power is concentrated? For example, crypto miners.

One of them can send people-with-guns to your home to arrest you and take away your stuff.

Note that I'm not some crypto-anarchist absolutist, but IMO being weary and critical of governments grabbing more power is the right reaction.

Re: EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable

#279

Post by bouncycastle » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 8:53 AM UTC

d--b wrote: post #141

I’m amazed by how short sighted most of the comments here are. When it comes to large financial operations, society has clearly chosen transparency over privacy. Cause guess what, tax evasion, money laundering, political fixing, terrorism financing are things that exist and really are hurtful to our economies. Stop fantasizing that the government cares about the shit you buy. This is not about you. And Bitcoin’s anon…

tax evasion: Simplicity the tax system instead. Investigate ways to make it rewarding to pay tax through incentives.

money laundering: focus on catching the actual criminals and stopping real crime instead.

political fixing: privacy tech actually helps here. (Eg Secret ballot)

terrorism financing: terrorists don't need much money. Just a deranged mind, a hand gun or even a sharp sushi chef knife and a social media account are enough.

Re: EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable

#280

Post by meltedcapacitor » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 8:56 AM UTC

GekkePrutser wrote: post #5

Hmm the whole way bitcoin is set up is tailored to making this impossible. Anyone can write a wallet program and create a private key. Of course when converting to Fiat money they have a chance to ask for ID but I don't see this happening with bitcoin to bitcoin transactions unless the whole protocol is changed around.

No need to change the protocol. It can be done by making unaccounted-for keys unusable, if the regulated industry coordinates. For instance:

- the regulated crypto industry can form a mining cartel that only approves tx between whitelisted addresses and orphans any attempt at doing otherwise (a 51% attack), to save their investment in the "number go up" game.

- the regulated industry can at transaction level reject any output that is not, transitively, formed only of whitelisted addresses. Unapproved transactions could still be mined and used between unapproved participants, but it would cause a split inside the network with a BTC-dark (all contaminated outputs) and BTC-clear (whitelisted only) and an (underground) exchange rate between both would emerge, analogous to some third world fiat currencies with a regulated fixed government exchange rate with say USD that differs from the street rate.

The latter is already emerging in a way with discounts for paying ransomware in monero (which gives an implied xrate between tainted BTC and clean BTC) as a response to the small amount of blacklisting clear exchanges have started doing.