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

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

#371

Post by FloorEgg »

Eridrus wrote: post #221
hombre_fatal wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you start from an assumption that there should be no regulation, then your conclusion will be that there should be no regulation. That's not actually an argument for anyone who doesn't share your assumptions though and is largely just lazy thinking. Cash also has physical limitations that make large cross-border transactions hard, which crypto does not.

How about this:

Regulation is a controlling mechanism that puts constraints on what people can and can't do. Some constraints will enable more things to happen because it reduces certain risks (e.g. property rights and laws against stealing enable investment and development of property).

But when there is too much regulation it has the opposite effect, and instead of enabling progress it stifles it. It acts as a calcification that slows change and makes society less adaptable.

So it's not that regulation is bad, it's that too much regulation can be bad.

Now in terms of regulating people's abilities to transact specifically: in a health democracy putting some regulations on transactions will probably have a positive effect because it can limit abuse and risk, and therefore increase freedom for honest people to make transactions. However when a civilization reaches the point in its life cycle when it is transitioning from a healthy plurality into authoritarianism, the risk of over-regulation of transactions skyrockets and the elimination of privacy when transacting is extremely likely to lead to tyranny.

When someone acts like regulating transactions is inherently bad, they're either repeating something they heard and didn't question, or they're assuming the people they are speaking to are educated in history and have a healthy fear of tyranny.

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

#372

Post by AnthonyMouse »

deadbabe wrote: post #329
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…

No one ever answers the “what do you have to hide” question, which is a little sus.

> No one ever answers the “what do you have to hide” question, which is a little sus.

Poe's Law strikes again, but for reference there are even several major categories:

Some things are nobody's business. If you have religious parents and you're gay, you may not want them to know that, even if your religious parents work for the government.

People have proprietary secrets. A drug company or tech company can't be spending a billion dollars on 95%-finished R&D only to have a random cop take a $10,000 bribe to hand it over to a foreign competitor.

It's important to protect the political opposition from the incumbents. The thing Nixon had to resign over? That.

Sometimes the bad guys work for the government. If your abusive ex is a cop, they shouldn't be able to trivially find you without a warrant.

The government shouldn't be able to go on a fishing expedition. If you do something that isn't illegal, or that you have a right to do, that shouldn't be an excuse to trawl through your life so you can be prosecuted for breaking a law that everybody breaks but only people who step on the toes of the powerful are prosecuted for.

"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." -Cardinal Richelieu

"Saying you don't need privacy because you have nothing to hide is like saying you don't need freedom of speech because you have nothing to say." -Edward Snowden

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

#373

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

cratermoon wrote: post #223
komali2 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My big ask is, was it always this stupid? Like, all these huge historical events and figures, did it all go down as stupidly and clownishly as the modern USA? Was there an early 20th century fascist Europe equivalent to a man named Big Balls being beat up by children and a fascist police action being triggered as a result? Was there a Napeolonic era equivalent to a media figure known for making light of school shooti…

> was it always this stupid? Excellent question. There are two easily readable sources I know of covering historical events of the sort you're asking about. The first is Barbara W. Tuchman's The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam , where the entire premise is that stupid people did stupid things and then doubled down on stupidity as they went along. The second is Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of E…

Surely there was a lot of stupidity in Nazi Germany and hence the appalling results, but I think that during the second half of the 20th century most actors in western history were much less stupid than now, although maybe I'm just being naive.

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

#374

Post by jmyeet »

efeqasfcadvxcv wrote: post #366
jmyeet wrote: post #297

Bitcoin is a perfect microcosm for the tech sector in what happens when people who don't know how something works and refuse to understand it, try to replace it. Every aspect of the modern financial system exists for a reason. It evolved over time to deal with problems. Things like reversible transactions are a feature not a bug. Bitcoin is where all the gold bugs went who lamented the end of the gold standard. Most…

Rethink your ideas, you are very wrong here. It is a fantastic escape from debasement of fiat, and always has been an escape from the perils of fiat currencies. It was created for this very purpose in 2009, and has absolutely achieved this goal. A 2019 $ vs a 2025 $ are significantly different purchasing power. Yet a 2019 BTC vs a 2025 BTC shows remarkable capital appreciation. You can pick any time scale you like, a…

You've described an asset not a currency and sure, your asset will keep going up forever like so many assets before it, famously.

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

#375

Post by Ylpertnodi »

user34283 wrote: post #217
rocqua wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, financia…

> financial privacy is an important part of having a functioning democracy No, I don't think it is. Perhaps privacy for speech and voting are.

>> financial privacy is an important part of having a functioning democracy

>No, I don't think it is. Perhaps privacy for speech and voting are.

Cash works for financial privacy, and functioning democracies.

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

#376

Post by efeqasfcadvxcv »

jmyeet wrote: post #374
efeqasfcadvxcv wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rethink your ideas, you are very wrong here. It is a fantastic escape from debasement of fiat, and always has been an escape from the perils of fiat currencies. It was created for this very purpose in 2009, and has absolutely achieved this goal. A 2019 $ vs a 2025 $ are significantly different purchasing power. Yet a 2019 BTC vs a 2025 BTC shows remarkable capital appreciation. You can pick any time scale you like, a…

You've described an asset not a currency and sure, your asset will keep going up forever like so many assets before it, famously.

That changes nothing. And you can use it as a currency. Declaring it an asset is irrelevant. You can call Bitcoin a cryptocurrency, an asset, a currency, a scam, it doesn't effect Bitcoin in any way. Bitcoin doesn't care. Its sole purpose is as an incorruptible, debasement and censorship resistant ledger native to the public internet.

Of course this all redefines exactly what a currency or an asset IS. Is Gold a currency? Is it an asset? is it both? Its semantics. Both gold and bitcoin can be exchanged for goods and services.

Most assets will not keep going up forever in Bitcoin terms. Maybe no asset will, on long enough time scales. Most assets are plummeting in price considerably in Bitcoin terms. Today it takes 6-figure units of dollars to buy one unit of Bitcoin. On to 7 and 8, and more. Eventually, you will not be able to exchange ANY amount of fiat for Bitcoin.

You are free to ignore Bitcoin for then next 10 years, like most folks on HN have done for the past 10.

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

#377

Post by calibas »

calibas wrote: post #157
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,…

> In 2020, efforts to extend the provisions were not passed by the House of Representatives, and as such, the law has expired. The wording is confusing. Two provisions expired, not the entire Patriot Act. https://web.archive.org/web/20250306093943/https://www.nytim...

I looked into this a little more, and these were the final two provisions of the Patriot Act, so the did law expire.

Unfortunately, that doesn't mean a whole lot, as many of the provisions live on in the USA Freedom Act.

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

#378

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #266
Mouvelie wrote: post #181

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.

On the other hand you get to vote who is in the gang. So choose wisely.

Most of the people on the planet don't get to vote.

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

#379

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

drumhead wrote: post #164

Considering how they're clamping down on anonymity wherever they can, crypto wasnt going to escape their clutches for very long. How long before its seperated from it original aim and just turned into a gambling token.

Original aim was that people don't deposit Bitcoins into a bank, Coinbase etc, but use it to freely transact between themselves, outside of gov control.

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

#380

Post by xp84 »

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.

Cash and crypto do share similar properties that way... but with cash, you can't deposit say, $1,000,000 in cash into a bank, where you can use it for a lot more types of transactions, without forms being filed with the government, in order to both instill fear into the hearts of drug dealers and gangsters (etc) and to help catch them if they're dumb enough.

Now, drug dealers sometimes do just do as many transactions as possible with cash, outside the banking system, for that reason. But they're hindered by these anti-laundering regulations, which is considered a good thing by most.

To me then it sounds reasonable to impose similar limits and reporting obligations - treating crypto as much like cash as is practical - when it comes to exchanging crypto for dollars in any way. It doesn't prevent Bad People from conducting transactions in BTC directly, but they have always been able to do so with cash for some things.

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