The treasury is expanding the Patriot Act to attack Bitcoin self custody • Hacker News Board

Re: The treasury is expanding the Patriot Act to attack Bitcoin self custody

#331

Post by gosub100 » Fri, Sep 12, 2025, 5:28 PM UTC

hombre_fatal wrote: post #213

Eridrus wrote: post #201

I think the case for why strong encryption is important is much clearer than why untraceable financial instruments are important and I don't think it's super compelling to argue that these things are actually the same, even if your opposition to government control is the same. I think it's actually pretty clear that almost all people are not capable of secure and reliable self-custody and would be better off with an…

I think it makes sense to start from the idea that you should be able to transfer funds to someone, like $100 to your mother, without needing the government or a megacorp to facilitate it. The same way I can gift my TV to my mom. Whether that's cash or cryptocurrency doesn't seem to matter since your argument would also apply to cash.

The far left doesn't believe in the idea of property ownership in the traditional sense. So no, I think the premise that you can transfer property to anyone without the government tracking it is incorrect. Taxes could theoretically be imposed, registration might be required to comply with a social "program" they are implementing, etc.

Re: The treasury is expanding the Patriot Act to attack Bitcoin self custody

#332

Post by ta1243 » Fri, Sep 12, 2025, 5:29 PM UTC

krapp wrote: post #306

ta1243 wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't adorn it with gold if you have taste. Trump is not going to live much longer than 2028 anyway.

[flagged]

Everyone is talking about it.

https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/photos-trumps-drooping-face-9-11-p...

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/trump-sparks-health-fe...

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/glob...

> Biden got taken down by the the "crippling senile dementia" meme because it's only a problem when it's Democrats

Democrats felt both Biden and Trump were far too old and senile to be in charge. And they were right.

The problem is that Republicans only felt it was Biden.

Remember when having a "consensual" blowjob from an intern was almost enough to get a president fired? Remember when presidents resigned when the public found out they were involved in organising a break-in?

That world has long gone, social media saw to that.

Re: The treasury is expanding the Patriot Act to attack Bitcoin self custody

#333

Post by krferriter » Fri, Sep 12, 2025, 5:31 PM UTC

rs186 wrote: post #168

jdiff wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe you have misread the comment. In 2015, it was expanded and extended until 2019. After that, it was allowed to expire and was not extended or expanded further.

My comment refers to the original news article: > The Treasury Is Expanding The Patriot Act To Attack Bitcoin Self Custody

"Acts" as they are passed by Congress are usually a huge collection of additions/deletions/modifications to existing law. And those changes can be unrelated and scattered across hundreds and hundreds of sections of existing statutes, each of which can have their own sunset clauses. So some of the things included in "The Patriot Act" expired, but parts are still active.

Re: The treasury is expanding the Patriot Act to attack Bitcoin self custody

#334

Post by Arainach » Fri, Sep 12, 2025, 5:32 PM UTC

goda90 wrote: post #105

aeon_ai wrote: post #44

I'm going to take a different tack on this one. --- Point 1 Crime is real. Can we agree on that? If you were in charge of identifying and locating criminals based on on-chain transaction data, what are the list of guidelines you'd put together to use PUBLIC DATA to determine suspicious behavior? If you're competent, at all, the list would look like this. Let's not immediately jump to "self custody is gonna be outlawe…

What crime needs to be identified based on transactions? Tax evasion? I can't think of any others that don't leave behind a real world mark that would be the thing that initiates investigation.

Following the money is important to investigating all sorts of crimes, as most crimes are done for money.

Arresting someone selling guns on the street doesn't stop much - they're quickly replaceable, you need to identify and determine where the guns are coming from. Same with human trafficking, drug trafficking, selling fake goods, and nearly every crime.

Re: The treasury is expanding the Patriot Act to attack Bitcoin self custody

#335

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Sep 12, 2025, 5:37 PM UTC

Eridrus wrote: post #239

mothballed wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you start with the assumption there should be regulation, even then IDK how you get there. You're regulating an "untraceable" utterance of a string of data. Pragmatically it's worse than trying to stop fentanyl, which is already impossible, and even trying to stop it has just made the gangs that much more powerful because they now control whole small nation-state tier light-infantry militias funded by black-market…

Nobody here is actually even arguing about the proposal here, just repeating platitudes and analogies. I don't actually care about this topic at all, but people should do a better job of defending their positions.

[deleted]

Re: The treasury is expanding the Patriot Act to attack Bitcoin self custody

#336

Post by Karrot_Kream » Fri, Sep 12, 2025, 5:40 PM UTC

lukeschlather wrote: post #237

decimalenough wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The draft text explicitly bans single-use addresses, which are used by any self-respecting wallet (Exodus, Ledger, Trezor) these days. The actual problem with the article/headline is that the "Patriot Act" has expired. Although I'm sure there are plenty of similarly vague laws that could be used to justify this.

What text are you referring to? The article has a screenshot of a tweet with a screenshot of an excerpt that seems fair to paraphrase as "anyone behaved in this sort of activity is suspicious." I don't see anything about a ban and if you're only using single-use addresses that seems probably not suspicious in absence of all the other things which if you're doing all of them, seem objectively like they can only be des…

I think single-use address use should not be marked as suspicious on its own but I agree in combination with other things in that screenshot I think it should. That's the "reasonable" line I have. This seems like the right balance for AML laws.

The rest of the discussion in this thread is awful. The article title is clickbait. The comments are mostly generic tangents about "crypto bad" or "muh surveillance". Guess it's par for the course when discussing cryptocurrency on this site.

Re: The treasury is expanding the Patriot Act to attack Bitcoin self custody

#337

Post by AnthonyMouse » Fri, Sep 12, 2025, 5:41 PM UTC

jordanb wrote: post #83

jihadjihad wrote: post #33

> [The Patriot Act] contains many sunset provisions beginning December 31, 2005, approximately four years after its passage. Before the sunset date, an extension was passed for four years which kept most of the law intact. In May 2011, President Barack Obama signed the PATRIOT Sunset Extensions Act of 2011, which extended three provisions. These provisions were modified and extended until 2019 by the USA Freedom Act,…

Whenever leftists say that "Trump is a symptom of an illness that has been metastasizing for a long time" this is what we mean.

> Whenever leftists say that "Trump is a symptom of an illness that has been metastasizing for a long time" this is what we mean.

It's also the thing I don't understand about party loyalty.

When candidate George W. Bush was running for President, he was saying all kinds of things about how big government is bad and regulation destroys small businesses etc. Clearly not consistent with what he did once he was in office. When candidate Obama was running for President, he was saying how those things Bush actually did were bad and unconstitutional, and then once he's in office he signs a Patriot Act extension, fails to pardon Snowden, etc. When candidate Trump, well, you know.

Most of this is structural, not partisan. And a lot of it is Congress even though people mostly talk about the President. The partisanship itself is structural -- get your state to use STAR voting instead of first past the post and you get more than two choices, and then liars can be evicted even if their state/district goes >60% to the left or right.

Re: The treasury is expanding the Patriot Act to attack Bitcoin self custody

#338

Post by beambot » Fri, Sep 12, 2025, 5:43 PM UTC

SubiculumCode wrote: post #252

lordofgibbons wrote: post #65

Bitcoin maximalists are learning that having a non-fungible and fully traceable ledger might be a problem. Even Satoshi called this out! As is, BTC is somewhat of a privacy nightmare. All of your transactions are on the public ledger for anyone with basic knowledge of statistics to correlate and see all of your transactions. Blockchain Analytics is big business! All the things the Treasury is considering to be "suspi…

Very true. In my opinion, and strictly from an American-centric view, privacy should only extend to transactions within borders between citizens. As soon as it involves transactions from outside our borders, then it is a national security concern. We know, right now, that both Russia and China are fueling internal political tension via massive and sophisticated disinformation/influence campaigns, a certain part of wh…

> a certain part of which involves paying influencers, extremists, shady media outlets, maybe a Representative or three in America to push their agendas, foment discontent aiming to destabilize and control the United States.

Doesn't this describe every political party and megacorp in the US too...?

Re: The treasury is expanding the Patriot Act to attack Bitcoin self custody

#339

Post by hombre_fatal » Fri, Sep 12, 2025, 5:43 PM UTC

Eridrus wrote: post #239

mothballed wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you start with the assumption there should be regulation, even then IDK how you get there. You're regulating an "untraceable" utterance of a string of data. Pragmatically it's worse than trying to stop fentanyl, which is already impossible, and even trying to stop it has just made the gangs that much more powerful because they now control whole small nation-state tier light-infantry militias funded by black-market…

Nobody here is actually even arguing about the proposal here, just repeating platitudes and analogies. I don't actually care about this topic at all, but people should do a better job of defending their positions.

I don't see how I made any less fortified, less relevant of a claim than you did.

You added that most people would be better off with intermediated financial transactions which is probably true for most day to day transactions, but the TFA proposal brings up the question of whether everyone should be forced to use an intermediary.

For example, just using single-use addresses would be considered suspicious, probably just because it complicates basic taint analysis. Yet that's a fundamental component of privacy, and to do otherwise is akin to how Venmo lets people see your own transaction history (a very odd feature btw).

Re: The treasury is expanding the Patriot Act to attack Bitcoin self custody

#340

Post by apazzolini » Fri, Sep 12, 2025, 5:45 PM UTC

TheGRS wrote: post #315

I have deep disagreements with my father on this subject. He worked as a federal agent for 30 years, mostly in digital forensics. He does not believe in the right to privacy in any of the same ways I do. Whereas I believe a right to privacy in your tools and communication is essential, he believes they infringe on the government's ability to catch criminals. Classic justification of "if you're not a bad guy, what do…

> If you're not a bad guy, what do you have to hide?

Next time ask him if he'd be OK living in a glass house, since, as he's not a bad guy, he has nothing to hide.